A disappointing debut for ‘Captain Marvel’ | Movie review

Years from now, chances are that when people sit around and talk enthusiastically about that movie with Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson, the subject is most likely to be Kong: Skull Island.

Which is bad news for Captain Marvel, with Jackson returning as Nick Fury and Larson in the title role as Marvel’s first female lead. It’s an auspicious moment that calls for a grand entrance, but the movie’s title character makes a very poor first impression — stuck in a baffling, bloated prologue that has her located in some alien galaxy and living under an assumed name, as though in the MCU version of witness protection.

Leaden exposition informs us that alien races are fighting, and someone named Vers (Larson), belonging to a race of people known as the Kree, is preparing for a commando raid against the forces of the hated Skrull, who are green and goblin-headed and also, judging by their voices, Australian.

The more you learn, the less you want to know. Vers (pronounced Veers) is haunted by barely glimpsed memories of some past life, and she searches for their meaning by having dream-state consultations with a “supreme intelligence” that looks like Annette Bening (because it is Annette Bening) standing in the lobby of the Scientology celebrity center.

Meanwhile, Vers’ boss (Jude Law) keeps telling her that she has to learn to control her emotions. This makes no sense, since her superpower (glowing fists with Hulk-level destructive force) only materializes when she’s angry.

The movie improves slightly when Vers eludes the Skrull and makes her way to Earth, circa 1995, where she probes the secrets of her past life and meets Fury. He helps Vers rediscover her lost history as fighter pilot Carol Danvers; she helps him deal with the shape-shifting Skrull aliens (including Ben Mendelsohn) who have followed her.

One assumes it’s the Skrulls’ maiden voyage to Earth, yet they somehow know American cultural slang (“I just came over to borrow a cup of sugar,” one says with a smirk), and are fluent in bad Earth dialogue.

It’s contagious. Larson is stuck trying to squeeze snarky laughs out of stale one-liners: “Was it something I said?”

Not likely, given the script, which gives Captain Marvel attributes, but not a personality. Writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have labored to make her a role model — she’s the first female Marvel superhero to get her own movie — but they haven’t given Larson much of a role.

She arrives on Earth as a “noble hero warrior,” and in time discovers that on Earth, she was ... also a noble hero warrior. And lest we somehow miss that she’s a woman for girls to look up to, Boden and Fleck introduce the character of a young girl (Akira Akbar) who looks up to her, with a kind petrified worshipfulness.

The MCU character most analogous to Captain Marvel is Captain America, but his corny resolute squareness has a counterweight — he has Tony Stark to grow annoyed at his relentless perfection and retro wholesomeness.

There are no dissenters in Captain Marvel, and if there were, she would pulverize them with her glowing power fists, as she does to a number of disposable bad guys, as girl power anthems blare in the background.

In the end, her eyes are also glowing, and she’s hurtling through space to end wars and rid the universe of mansplaining. That’s liable to take forever, and she may need Dr. Strange to help her bend time — they may convene later this year in Avengers: Endgame.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendehlson, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch and Akira Akbar. Distributed by Marvel Studios.

Running time: 1 hour, 56 mins.

Parents’ guide: PG-13 (violence)

Playing at: Area theaters