Captain Marvel (DVD) Review

After 20 years of wildly successful movies that turned the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a global blockbuster factory, Captain Marvel represents one of its more controversial, seemingly risky projects. It tells a standalone story, but it also puts its stamp on the larger MCU saga and tackles some powerfully relevant social themes. And it does so all while delivering a thrilling and thoroughly engrossing movie.

The film opens with Kree warrior Vers (Brie Larson) serving on a space-based commando team led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). In public, she’s a take-no-prisoners soldier who is always ready to prove her mettle. But in private, she struggles with her past, a conflicted woman with no memory of who she really is.

On a mission, she encounters a shape-shifting alien called Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and begins to piece together the clues that reveal her true origin. She soon finds herself in the middle of a war between two alien races — the Kree and the Skrulls — and is tasked with destroying the latter.

Along the way, she meets Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who she’s known from a post-credit scene in 2014’s Avengers: Infinity War, as well as a few newbies including Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther. But she also gets her first big fight with Iron Man, and a heart-wrenching decision that takes her away from the team.