Captain Marvel (2019), dir. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

They know what they're doing.

https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel

lol, that's good

Any little girl for whom seeing CAPTAIN MARVEL has an appreciable effect on her self-worth, her ambitions, or her sense of what’s possible for her own life, is an unimaginative bore and I don’t care to know her

— Maddie Whittle 🤷‍♀️ (@maddiewhittle) March 4, 2019

i think posting that says more about you than the movie

so far I've only spotted one amusing Captain Marvel tweet in the wild

Captain Marvel sitting at the Air Force Base fumbling for change for the Air Force vending machine to get a refreshing ice cold can of Air Force

— glory / glory / glory (@bombsfall) March 5, 2019

Reviews are ... middling.

seems like the reviews are on par for a lot of the Marvel "origin story" flicks. which is to say "not a classic, but a good time".

one of the things that makes Rotten Tomatoes functionally useless is that, just to eyeball it, most of the "fresh" CM reviews are...2.5/4, 3/5...not exactly glowing endorsements, but it still sits at "89% fresh" wtv the fuck that means. (this is the first time I've noticed that they'll consider 2/4 "fresh" if the rhetoric is forgiving enough)

lol at Morbs' post

these movies would be motherfucking landfill in a quality culture

these movies are also pretty easy to ignore if you're not interested in them tbh

try having two teen daughters who love them and want to watch them with you

thank GOD for the Thor movies and Spider-Man

lol at morbs tweet

but actual lol not yknow angry at morbs lol

hope its better than black panther

BP is OK if you pretend the credits roll after the waterfall

Walter Chaw:

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe's very own Solo, Vers (Larson) is a Kree warrior who trains with Kree warrior Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). When I spell "Kree" with a "k," I mean it: these aren't the First Nations "Kree," they're mostly-green space aliens at war with shape-shifting lizard people called Skrull. As the film lugubriously opens like a corpse flower in a greenhouse, Vers is captured by Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and has her memory probed, leading to a flashback to 1989 in which Vers is Carol Danvers, plucky test-pilot given to cheeky affirmations shared with her buddy (wait for it) Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch). Say it out loud. Yeah, baby, Maria RAMBO. Sick, right? Carol, see, was a human but is now Kree because reasons, leading to the whitest inspirational declaration I have ever heard when she says, summoning would-be iconic gravitas, "My name is...Carol!" (It's no "They call me Mister Tibbs!", but it's destined to be memed whenever some soccer mom calls the cops on a renegade lemonade stand going forward.) This is just one of many attempted moments of affirmation in Captain Marvel, with another coming when Carol robotically intones at Yon-Rogg that she doesn't need his approval--an assertion that essentially says his accusations of her being incapable of controlling her emotions are not only true but indeed the root of her strength. Not what they meant? Well, then, they had over two hours to be clearer; and why are you defending something that cost the GDP of a small nation to produce and advertise? Look, if one small girl is inspired by Captain Marvel, that's fantastic. When I was a small Chinese boy, I loved Condorman. I had the novelization and everything. Condorman is one of the two or three worst movies ever made. Captain Marvel is not just the worst MCU film, it's also the worst DCEU film--and, folks, I really hated Suicide Squad and Justice League. I'm glad Condorman exists because of what it meant to me, but Condorman, let me repeat, is terrible. I'm also glad that Captain Marvel exists, I guess, because real equality is when movies about women are allowed to be as bad as most movies about men.

I was never going to see this anyway, but now I do kinda wanna see Condorman a little bit.

The debut appearance of Monica Rambeau was published the same month as /First Blood/ landed in theaters, and three years before the sequel film made that name synonymous with military toughness, imo. Seems pretty unlikely that there's any connection.

based on a cursory IMDb'ing, Condorman sounds like a hoot

I've always meant to see it, while routinely forgetting it exists and mixing it up with Pumaman.

Wikipedia says Monica Rambeau first appeared in 1982. First Blood also out that year. Just coincidentally, my guess. Other than phonetics, the characters have no shared characteristics. But hey, why would filmfreakcentral.net let research get in the way of a hyperbolic, Comic Book Guy review? Fwiw, I don't have stock in the film. Just not a fan of bandwagon, self-indulgent pans.

too few movies are torn to pieces by hyperbolic reviews tbh

It's so easy to laugh. It's so easy to hate. It takes guts to be gentle and kind.

whats easy isnt whats always wrong

The debut appearance of Monica Rambeau was published the same month as /First Blood/ landed in theaters, and three years before the sequel film made that name synonymous with military toughness, imo. Seems pretty unlikely that there's any connection.

I was never going to see this anyway, but now I do kinda wanna see Condorman a little bit

Saw it in theaters at the time! Disney does a bizarre Bond manque, in essence, but you get a Henry Mancini score and Oliver Reed eating the scenery. Plus, at the very end of the film, the lead actor from Orson Welles's Mr. Arkadin in a one or two line role!

I feel like I might have read another Walter Chaw review at some point. Holy fuck, is he a shitty writer. If Armond White was Comic Book Guy...

I don’t want to derail into this thread into my defence of Walter Chaw, but his positive reviews are definitely a different animal than his pans.

Anyway, carry on Marvelletes. I’ll show myself out.

enjoyed this a lot.

Walter Chaw is a cock.

it has an orange cat in it apparently so I'm 110% going to see it this weekend

enjoyable mid-tier marvel. i'll always love Brie

more of a stilton man myself tbh

*changes username to Brie en crüt furiously*

I loved this!

the Kree orgy scene was a little much tho

second favourite air force-related movie featuring a cat named Goose

watching Mississippi Grind on Kanopy

I'm sorry, I haven't been interested in this movie (apart from a general "hey, good for Brie Larson") and haven't read this thread -- but this was directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck??

well, some of it was

what about the rest?

Harmony Korine

sounds sick

the real answer is that the action sequences in MCU movies seem to be outsourced to Disney/Marvel's....in-house crew, whoever that entails. I'm still waiting for a decent tell-all on how their production process works.

Do you have a source for that? I've definitely seen Ryan Coogler geek out about all the small intentional stuff he put into one of Black Panther's fight scenes.

I think it depends on the director

But Lucrecia Martel said this recently

I received an e-mail from Marvel for a meeting,” Martel said. “So I went to the [Marvel 10th Anniversary] reunion. I actually signed this thing where I can’t talk about that reunion. Marvel and other such production houses are trying to involve more female filmmakers…What they told me in the meeting was ‘we need a female director because we need someone who is mostly concerned with the development of Scarlett Johansson’s character.'”

Martel continued, “They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’ I was thinking, well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.”

Yeah that's the intvw I was thinking of. (also, I'm quite sure she wasn't supposed to disclose that, but gives zero fucks)

I remember reading, or discussing here, around the time of Iron Man 3, that they send the directors to some intensive CGI action sequence boot camp. Certainly at the time there was no indication Shane Black was capable of an over-the-top CGI spectacle, for example. I do think the quality of the action sequences in these movies boils down to the quality of the writing, and that a lot of them are driven by quips and personal interactions and that is what sticks out. It's why the airport fight in Civil War stands out as a highlight, or for that matter why Spider-Man Homecoming worked so well.

and this is the relevant Coogler piece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNHc2PxY8lY

oh shit i didn't know this was the condorman thread

i too was enthusiastic about condorman as a child, though admittedly it was more the concept of condorman then the actual movie, which was fairly unwatchable (though there are, i am certain, many worse films in the world)

character of maria rambeau clearly inspired by arthur rimbaud, i don't know how chaw missed this

I am glad for this Condorman appreciation.

Anyway, just got back from seeing CM and yeah, solid midrange Marvel film with some sharp moments. Came in with lowballed expectations and it all turned out fine.

I enjoyed it a lot, I was wondering if there was a bit of "Okay, we're going to have the first female lead in a Marvel film, we should make sure that Samuel L Jackson is on screen for 85% of the film" - which is progress I suppose!