CAPTAIN MARVEL

This, the 21st instalment in the MCU (yawn), starts off poorly.   

I couldn’t get excited by the early scenes which do the usual world building (the Kree are the good guys, and the Skrull are shape-shifting baddies trying to infiltrate the Kree Empire). 

Our protagonist is Vers who has strange dreams and no memory of her early life, and there’s the usual stuff about her having untapped powers which she needs to control.

Then she’s off on an important mission against the Skrull - cue some dull action scenes, all CGI, and murky as hell.

Still despite everything I sensed that there might just be a decent story trying to crawl out from under the dross, and so it proved.

The first indication of this is when the Skrull capture Vers and search her mind.  There, very confusedly, they find memories which seem to indicate she is really a Top Gun-type pilot from Earth, named Carol Danvers.

Vers escapes (some more boring action) and heads for Earth with the Skrull In hot pursuit.

There Vers meets a youthful Nick Fury and things slowly pick up, especially when we and Vers learn that the Skrulls are actually refugees being mercilessly persecuted by the nasty Kree. 

I was a little put out at first by the head Skrull having an Australian accent but then again why should every alien have an American accent?  Anyway there’s quite an affecting scene when he is reunited with his family.

Another good scene, with some nice visuals I liked, is a confrontation between Vers and the Supreme Intelligence. The latter is an AI entity, who in this scene takes the form of Mar-Vell, who was in reality a good Kree scientist who had gone to Earth to try to help the Skrulls by inventing a light speed machine.  Mar-Vell is played by Annette Bening who looked as though she was having fun.

Thankfully there's some lightness and humour to proceedings. For example there’s a cat (who’s not really a cat) who gets to play an important part in the story (and who is named Goose in a nod to 'Top Gun'.)

I’m always up for a story of female empowerment, and Brie Larson as Captain Marvel certainly impresses as a bold and independently minded addition to the Marvel panoply of superheroes.  In fact I would have liked to have seen more of her in 'Avengers Endgame’)

Carol has a close friend Maria who is also a pilot and who gets into the action herself in a climax which was less heavy-handed than usual.

So after a slow start this MCU outing just about did enough to earn a muted thumbs up.