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Rise of the female superhero or easy marketing ploy: Captain Marvel Review

In today’s current social climate, where the empowerment of women is gaining respect and acknowledgement, it’s with no surprise the world’s biggest movie franchise, Marvel, last week released its new blockbuster, Captain Marvel. This is the franchise’s first ever film with a female lead.

Released strategically a day before International Women’s Day, the film stars Brie Larson as the lead character ‘Vers’ – a warrior from the planet Kree with supernatural powers. The film follows her journey trying to find a woman she knows only as ‘Supreme Intelligence’ (Annette Bening), while being chased by ‘Skrulls’ – beings from another rival planet.

For much of Captain Marvel the movie is set in the early ’90s in LA, which works well with incorporating Samuel L Jackson’s character ‘Fury’ into the setting. One of the key elements to this film’s entertainment value is the interactions between Vers and Fury where the synthesis of the serious nature of the situation they are in and the small amounts of comedy which pop up work well together. The acting display from Ben Mendelsohn as Talos is also a great addition to the film with his quirky British accent a great feature of the film.

Throughout the course of the film there are continual hidden messages about events in the Marvel cinematic universe, which ultimately I believe is one of the key ingredients to this films pending success – continually looking for clues in anticipation for the upcoming Avengers. While on a whole it’s not, and I don’t believe it should be the most focal part of the movie, Captain Marvel ultimately does end up looking like one big teaser to the upcoming mega blockbuster in the Avengers series. I would argue that while I enjoyed seeing hints at the next movie, an inaugural woman superhero movie should have left me thinking about how awesome it was seeing a woman superhero, not how much I was looking forward to another movie. I’d overall argue that this movie was merely just a ploy to garner more interest and anticipation for the company’s upcoming film.

Overall, I genuinely liked the movie on a whole purely out of its entertainment value, I would argue that the movie’s release and context was more a marketing move by Marvel than a move to highlight women characters. I give it a 6.5/10 based on this.

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