“Captain Marvel” Flies, but Doesn’t Quite Soar in Marvel’s First Woman Led Feature

It’s said that the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference, that feeling of just not giving two shits about something, like an annoying ex or cardio. That same indifference surmises the overall sense around Captain Marvel, 2 full hours of convoluted dribble that is good enough to not be bad, but not bad enough to be memorable. So, why is Marvel Studios’ penultimate film in a whopping 10-year, 22-movie arc leading into Avengers: Endgame, so damn dull? *Spoilers Flying in like F-16s* Written by indie writer/directors Anna Bolden and Ryan Fleck, and co-writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Vers (pronounced “verse”), an alien Kree woman and member of their armed forces – or so she thinks. In reality, Vers is Carol Danvers, a human US grounded fighter pilot (women weren’t allowed to fly combat in the 90s) from the planet earth who somehow wound up on the Kree homeworld with no memory of her former life, strange dreams of another world, and the ability to shoot proton blasts from her hands. Her amnesia takes center stage when she’s kidnapped by shape-shifting Skrulls, the Kree’s mortal enemies, who then scour her subconscious in search of information from Vers’ past. After an excitingly daring escape, Vers crash lands into a Blockbuster store in Los Angeles circa 1995 and meets a young two-eyed Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). From there, the occasionally dynamic duo takes us on one of the most mediocre buddy cop action flick rides since Rush Hour…