A Superhero an Emotion Away

Captain Marvel is an unsatisfying interlude between Avengers films

Starforce member Vers has a hard time of it on the Kree planet of Hala. Much like her human female counterparts on Planet C-53, if the slobbering exhortations of Captain Marvel’s male critics are a useful yardstick in measuring what women must bear here on Earth, Vers endures a constant barrage of nonsense from men. Her mentor, Yon-Rogg, for instance, repeatedly reminds her to tame her emotions — how familiar must that particular refrain be for female earthings? Even the Supreme Intelligence, Kree civilization’s AI ruler, feels it necessary to drive this point home. The use and abuse of emotion, then, is the thematic lynchpin of Captain Marvel, the twenty-first entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sad it is, indeed, that the film ultimately fails in its thematic objectives by unsuccessfully evoking the very depths of feeling it seeks to explore.

Opportunities abound for the film to achieve some sort of emotional resonance but all of them fall flat. The affecting personal narratives we’ve become accustomed to in recent superhero movies — whether it be T’Challa’s juggling of tradition versus change or Miles Morales’s adolescent struggles towards adulthood — are completely lacking here. Vers’s personal story, to begin with, is emotionally lusterless…