Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019)

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Lost Highway
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#26 Post by Lost Highway » Wed Sep 19, 2018 6:34 pm

I don’t expect anything wildly different, but the sensibilities of directors like Joss Whedon, James Gunn, Shane Black and Taika Waititi still managed to come through in their MCU movies.


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mfunk9786
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#28 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Mar 08, 2019 2:12 pm

Audience participation on sites like that was always a mistake. Frankly, since the halcyon days of IMDB it's been a scourge. Luckily these idiots could care less about Letterboxd, the only oasis left

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domino harvey
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#29 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 08, 2019 2:14 pm

Like with Ghostbusters, the trolls should have just waited, as Captain Marvel is only getting middling reviews and fan responses, but stuff like this will drive those that only sorta like it to rating it higher to combat those who are just downvoting a woman

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tenia
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#30 Post by tenia » Fri Mar 08, 2019 3:36 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Fri Mar 08, 2019 2:14 pm
Like with Ghostbusters, the trolls should have just waited, as Captain Marvel is only getting middling reviews and fan responses, but stuff like this will drive those that only sorta like it to rating it higher to combat those who are just downvoting a woman
Moreover, the cast and movie team will also be able to use this to rebuke the possibly mixed critic and public response.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Marvel Comics on Film

#31 Post by movielocke » Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:53 pm

domino harvey wrote:Like with Ghostbusters, the trolls should have just waited, as Captain Marvel is only getting middling reviews and fan responses, but stuff like this will drive those that only sorta like it to rating it higher to combat those who are just downvoting a woman
Eh, the amnesia main plot (which is weird when the trailers avoid it entirely and tell a much clearer story) is probably driving the review response, but I’d say this is near the top of the middling avenger intro films, about like ant man or dr strange or Thor, but not quite as good as captain America and no where close to panther, guardians or iron man.

But like most of the space heavy marvel films (infinity war, Thor, guardians) this one is extremely dense with plot and mileau detail that is really hard to digest all at once, like those films, I expect the detailed world building of captain marvel becomes a lot less overwhelming on a second viewing.

But all that space opera plot density combined with an amnesia plot which seems engineered to avoid a stereotypical origin story narrative structure we’ve already seen in most every other origin story (instead giving us a center out structure, starting in the middle and building out both ends with overly complex approaches) and you have a film that is really different from audience expectations and undercuts the narrative flow of a typical comic book film while also reinforcing the setpiece fight scene structure—which because it’s not subverted is clearly the more important than the narrative.

I’d rank it about 12th overall.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Marvel Comics on Film

#32 Post by movielocke » Fri Mar 08, 2019 6:46 pm

I just read the vox article on the angry male comics nerds pre hating this film like ghostbusters.

I was thinking this film is getting mixed reviews and people are predicting a work backlash that overrates it in response, in spite of legitimate problems with the film.

But it looks like any woke backlash will be to overrate the film in response to the angry male comic nerds campaign against it.

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Finch
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#33 Post by Finch » Fri Mar 08, 2019 6:55 pm

Filmfreakcentral chimes in with one of the harshest reviews yet
The characters are undeveloped, the outlines of this universe are vague and uninteresting, and the less said about the multiple attempts at humour, the better. In the interests of parity, every actor in the film is wasted except, probably, the cat, who in one scene is comically flattened by G-forces and in another gets imprisoned in a little laser cat carrier the bad guys just happen to keep with them for situations like this. I don't know if there were massive last-minute changes to the script, but if there weren't I have questions about why the movie plays like bad improv in its best moments, Calvinball in its worst.
Slant Magazine updated their MCU film rankings and this is in the bottom five.

Clearly, the filmmakers had good intentions but this sounds just dire (If this and other garbage like Green Book is what Spielberg has in mind with the theatrical experience, more power to Netflix).

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movielocke
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#34 Post by movielocke » Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:53 pm

Finch wrote:Filmfreakcentral chimes in with one of the harshest reviews yet
The characters are undeveloped, the outlines of this universe are vague and uninteresting, and the less said about the multiple attempts at humour, the better. In the interests of parity, every actor in the film is wasted except, probably, the cat, who in one scene is comically flattened by G-forces and in another gets imprisoned in a little laser cat carrier the bad guys just happen to keep with them for situations like this. I don't know if there were massive last-minute changes to the script, but if there weren't I have questions about why the movie plays like bad improv in its best moments, Calvinball in its worst.
Slant Magazine updated their MCU film rankings and this is in the bottom five.

Clearly, the filmmakers had good intentions but this sounds just dire (If this and other garbage like Green Book is what Spielberg has in mind with the theatrical experience, more power to Netflix).
At work we were talking about the film Friday and the consensus seemed to land on this: that with such a prominent gaslighting theme to the entire film it is very hard to judge on first viewings if the parts one didn’t like were because they legitimately weren’t working or if the parts one didn’t like were because the gaslighting is subtextually interfering with fundamental audience identification elements like character interaction and natural dialogue. For example I thought Brie Larson was weirdly flat about two third of the time, but thinking about I am coming around to the idea that this is a deliberate acting and story choice reflecting how her brain has been messed with.


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movielocke
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Re: Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019)

#35 Post by movielocke » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:20 pm

watched this last night with my wife, she missed it in the theatres, and I am impressed that the film worked so much better for me a second time around, I'd elevate it up a couple of notches into the top ten of marvel films--and I think Brie Larson's performance is quite incredible, working on various levels I didn't appreciate the first time around (because I was trying to predict the plot rather than let it unfurl). and it is interesting, while the film played well with a big audience opening weekend, the film played better for just us at home in part because the sense of humor, particularly Danvers sense of humor, is sly, deadpan sarcasm. And a lot of the film's funniest bits were a bit buried by audience reaction to something else or the audience missing it entirely. It's reasonably different from the brash repartee of Guardians of the Galaxy for example, or the knowing whedonisms of the avengers or the RDJ humor of the Iron Man films. I also really appreciated a lot more how the film handled the scenes with Rambeaux and her daughter, which were more meaningful when you watch them a second time because you have more background context.

I do think that part of the film's problem is still this dichotomy: Captain Marvel has a standard Marvel film's action-sequence structure, but built around this standard action sequence structure is a deconstructed origin story. As I said above, they tell the story from the center out because they're centering the plot around brainwashing and identity and investigate the mystery of who she is and what her past is, but this is really disorienting when the setpieces are signaling an ordinary structure, but the story is not.

Which shows that the boldness they chose for EndGame where they correctly discarded the standard marvel film action sequence structure and built the movie differently. That movie succeeds in part because the story isn't conflicting with a substructure that demands a fight every reel.

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barryconvex
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Re: Marvel Comics on Film

#36 Post by barryconvex » Sun Jun 23, 2019 6:46 am

movielocke wrote:
Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:53 pm
For example I thought Brie Larson was weirdly flat about two third of the time, but thinking about I am coming around to the idea that this is a deliberate acting and story choice reflecting how her brain has been messed with.
Very weirdly flat and i don't think the character's circumstances are the reason for it. She just seems totally out of her element. ** Which is a shame as she's a gifted actor and has elevated not great material (Room)) before. This is an easy pick for the worst MCU movie as nothing here really works. It's not offensively bad just boring-amnesia as a plot device was stale about 150 years ago. And the retrofitting (that's probably the wrong word, i'm not sure what the correct term is) of older actors into their younger selves via CGI for flashback scenes such as Michael Douglas in the latest Avengers movie or Robert Downey Jr. before him is taken to an annoying extreme here.

**
SpoilerShow
It doesn't help that Larson has to act against a Pulp Fiction era Samuel L. Jackson (CGI'd into his younger self) for half the movie.

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tenia
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Re: Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019)

#37 Post by tenia » Sun Jun 23, 2019 7:32 am

Considering how many MCU movies fell for me into the "nothing really works" category (from Age of Ultron to Black Panther), I do wonder if this is that bad or just another mediocre-as-usual MCU movie.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019)

#38 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Jun 23, 2019 9:30 am

I thought it was a very internalized performance, especially in the third act. Larson's eyes are often expressing a lot while her face remains rigid or impassive. It gives the effect of someone who's repressed and disconnected from their internal life. She does give a childish, irrepressible, naive quality to her character in the brainwashed sections that feels kind of flat, but I thought it was appropriate, especially as it dropped away and more mature emotions came out. There was one moment of especially fine acting where a character, I forget which, asks Danvers if she's ok, and Danvers clamps down on her emotions, flattens her affect, and utters a steely "I'm fine", even as pain and loss continues to radiate from her eyes. Overall, it seemed like a more crafted performance than you get in the MCU, which tends to favour attitude over character.

I enjoyed this more than a lot of recent MCU movies. The focus on character, even if just buddy stuff, over frenetic, Bay-inspired action scenes, added to my good will. And there was a genuine emotional undercurrent to the movie that was handled well. Plus Ben Mendelsohn is there to steal every scene.

The beats are all familiar, but in the context of this series, I thought it successful and interesting whereas Black Panther was dead on the screen.

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