There are only a few certainties in life. And since 2008, Marvel delivering a good superhero movie is as certain as you can get. Captain Marvel is the 21st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie franchise and while their track record will remain intact, it's the first movie where we felt that Marvel Studio's mastery of the superhero movie formula is starting to be a bad thing. 



Marvel still comes out with movies that surprise us from time to time. Guardians of the Galaxy was a breath of fresh air and Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, while technically not part of the MCU, was the most refreshing superhero movie we’ve had in a long while. Captain Marvel was not one of those movies, though.


To be frank, it bordered on if-you’ve-seen-one-you’ve-seen-‘em-all territory. The impeccable CGI, the quirky choice of songs, the villain with misguided morals, the hero that overcomes—all these can be said about a handful of MCU movies that came before Captain Marvel. Marvel knows this formula works (DC can’t seem to figure it out completely, though) and while more of the same isn’t necessarily bad, it definitely does not lend itself to many memorable moments.


All the same tropes and devices that the MCU has so brilliantly explored all these years are present in Captain Marvel—which is to say nothing new is brought to the table. There were the obligatory plot twists but none that will stick with you after the reveal (there was one twist we saw coming from a mile away). The use of humor and plenty of '90s pop culture references were appreciated but hardly new since Guardians and Thor: Ragnarok. Then there was the premise of breaking barriers with Carol Danvers being the first female lead in the MCU (which was probably the one thing DC did first over Marvel). But this was no Black Panther and this is by no means a landmark film from a cultural or societal standpoint.


The material tried to play on Danvers being a woman and a human (which, apparently, in the grand scheme of the universe can be classified as a weakness), which is effective in theory and has worked in various forms in other MCU films before. But Captain Marvel tried too hard to push these conflicts on us when Danvers' womanhood and human-ness ultimately don’t matter when she is revealed to be such an unbeatable force (which is the same reason why we think there hasn’t been a great Superman movie, but that’s a completely different story). Fortunately, the cast in its entirety delivered a good enough performance that managed to make it all seem somewhat believable.


There's no doubt about it: Marvel wields its own genre-specific formula with surgical precision. And it does so again with Captain Marvel. But it’s the calculated moves brought about by such proficiency that cause this movie to suffer from a lack of something special. Marvel is at their best when they venture out of the box they've created for themselves. Captain Marvel is another good superhero(ine) flick from the MCU which fits squarely inside that box and, in being viewed within the context of the franchise it belongs to, unfortunately becomes quite generic. Aside from tying up a few story arcs (including minor ones such as how Nick Fury lost his eye) we see this movie as merely a front act for the Avengers: Endgame—a good front act we don’t mind seeing, but one that only serves to keep us satisfied until the main event.