Hell, Nick Fury, and a Woman Scorned

I have to admit, I went through kind of a bizarre existential crisis leading up to my viewing of this movie.

YouTube has a way of recommending videos that don't really relate to the ones you normally watch, and then bombarding you with videos that DO relate to those recommendations after you watch them. In my case, this meant crossing paths with one video about Captain Marvel star Brie Larson's snarky comments on the excess of "white dude" film critics and how she wants to use Captain Marvel as her form of activism...and then watching dozens of other videos about that, the audience censorship on Rotten Tomatoes for Captain Marvel, Disney's alleged string-pulling to boost the film's box office numbers and review ratings, and how they're trying to hold this "glass-ceiling-shattering" film so high that feminist activists can't see Aliens, The Terminator, Underworld, Resident Evil, The Hunger Games, Wonder Woman, or Alita: Battle Angel in its shadow. And this went on for about a month.

So yeah, I was kind of conflicted about supporting Captain Marvel. I was curious to see the film because of its tie-in to Avengers: Endgame, and I get that Brie Larson just wants equal representation in every aspect of the film industry and only said it in the worst way possible, but all the drama surrounding this movie rubbed me the wrong way. Besides, I've only seen nine of the twenty Marvel Cinematic Universe films that existed before this, and the Avengers crossovers do a pretty good job of recapping things so you don't have to see the other films to understand them. And let's be honest, in today's age of YouTube spoiler reviews and Wikipedia plot summaries, no one has to see any movie anymore to know what happens in it. So really, what need was there to give Captain Marvel a ticket sale -- especially since Disney may or may not be buying enough tickets themselves?
 
Well, in the end, I got invited to a ten-year-old's birthday party to go see the movie, so I caved.

So what do I think of Captain Marvel now that I have seen it?

I don't know if it was intended, but I do think that setting this movie in the 1990's helps to make the whole don't-let-white-dudes-hold-you-down angle feel less ham-fisted. It's a lot more believable, though still debatable, that male air force pilots would be that discriminant against a female pilot back then, as opposed to today. The film doesn't show as many moments of that discrimination as you might think, but there are a few, plus some pretty blatant song choices like No Doubt's "I'm Just A Girl" and one cringeworthy line about how a responsible mother character needs to go along on a potential suicide mission in order to set a better example for her daughter. Although, I don't seem to recall the "I'm kinda done with you telling me what I can't do," line from the teaser trailer being said in the final film.

So yeah, the winks and nods at social justice gender politics throughout the movie can be a bit grating, but I don't think they're so prevalent that they overpower the story.

The story itself is pretty standard. It's an action mystery where Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Carol Danvers) gets stranded on Earth in the 90's and tries to stop aliens from invading it while also trying to remember her past. In Marvel terms, it's like a cross between the first Thor film and Howard the Duck if it starred Wolverine. There's a decent theme of paranoia and not being able to trust people at face value throughout the film, illustrated best by the shape-shifting aliens, and also one big twist that fans of the comics might not expect. Also, I did laugh at the end of the final showdown for basically giving the finger to one really cliched action movie trope. Overall, the story is passable, but it feels more like something you'd see in Phase One of the MCU rather than something you'd see near the end of Phase Three. It just doesn't have the same sharp edge to it that the franchise has evolved since 2008.

And speaking of 2008, it's worth mentioning that Captain Marvel contradicts a few things that were previously established in the MCU. One example is how Fury and Coulson refer to their organization as S.H.I.E.L.D. despite not coming up with that acronym until the end of the first Iron Man a decade later. It's a minor nitpick, but given how good the MCU seemed to be about avoiding those errors until now, I find it telling of how differently the studio approached this film's production.

I also agree with the criticisms that Carol just rising above something that was holding her down without really coming to terms with any of her personal flaws or mistakes is a pretty big narrative misfire. I'm actually curious to see her in Endgame just to see if the Russos course-correct this by making her more reflective.

But much like with Iron Man, the real driving force for Captain Marvel is the cast performances. This has got to be the most likable that Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has ever been in any MCU film. It's almost his origin story, showing how he started out as a lighthearted but levelheaded agent who was quickly forced to become more suspicious and deceptive. It's also pretty funny to see Jackson embrace his dorkier side by baby-talking to a cat and then awkwardly chasing aliens around with it.

Lashana Lynch as Carol's friend Maria Rambeau and Ben Mendelsohn as the villain Talos also do surprisingly good jobs in their roles. Jude Law gives his usual decent performance, and it's nice to see Clark Gregg make his big-screen comeback as Agent Coulson. The only weak link, surprisingly, was Annette Bening as Dr. Mar-Vell. I don't know how, but this movie managed to make a four-time Oscar nominee like her sound like she didn't read the script until an hour before the cameras started rolling.

As for Brie Larson...well...putting aside the way she comes across in real life, I didn't hate her performance, but I didn't like it enough either. She has a lot of good moments, especially in her scenes with Samuel L. Jackson, but I don't think she has enough sincere ones. You can tell Marvel Studios is trying to give her a combination of Tony Stark's humor and Steve Rogers's stoicism, and that makes sense since she's supposed to take their place as the face of the MCU after Endgame. However, Stark and Rogers used those traits largely as fronts, as defense mechanisms to help them cope with their situations. In private moments, we saw that they were more vulnerable, genuine, flawed people. They were fully realized characters, relatable characters, and so were heroines like Black Widow, Gamora, and Scarlet Witch.

What character flaws does Carol Danvers have? The only one I can recall the movie giving is that she's overemotional, but she hardly ever comes across that way. We get a flashback where she discovers that aliens exist when they shoot down her fighter jet, her passenger also turns out to be an alien and then dies from the crash, and she discovers from someone holding her at gunpoint that the fate of an entire race is suddenly in her hands; I don't think her facial expression or tone of voice changes once.

Even in those private moments where the protagonist is supposed to drop their facade, she's still either emotionally distant, snarky, or angry. We never get a satisfactory sense of humanity from her performance because the film seems afraid to make her vulnerable. I don't know if the fault lies with the actor, the director, or just the script again, but it doesn't make me connect with the character enough to really want to see her succeed.

I'm not sure why Marvel Studios is trying so hard to sell us on Captain Marvel. Maybe they're scrambling to outdo Wonder Woman since the DC Extended Universe made a female-led superhero film before they did and that gave DC some competitive traction. Maybe they're also trying to make up for the way they've handled their female characters in the past, such as not bothering to release any Black Widow action figures when Avengers: Age of Ultron came out. That's all just speculation on my part, though. One thing I can say for sure is that Captain Marvel is only groundbreaking in the scope of the MCU itself.

The irony is that looking back on all the drama surrounding this film's marketing, I actually think less may have been more. It's the end of the MCU's Phase Three; the studio doesn't have to work that hard to get viewers into the theaters anymore. There's barely been any advertisement for Endgame, but everyone's rearing to go see that. Heck, the setup for Captain Marvel in Avengers: Infinity War was such a morale booster after that cliffhanger ending that ticket pre-sales for this film were once through the roof. Had Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and even Brie Larson just taken a step back and let their movie sell itself, I think it would have fared much better. Some people probably still would have complained about the gender politics in the movie afterwards, but most of us would have gone into it more positively.

At the end of the day, I think that Captain Marvel on its own merits is just an average Marvel movie  -- and that's all she wrote.

What Made "Ice Age" Good?

With a current score of 11% on Rotten Tomatoes and a current domestic gross of only $58.7 million, it's pretty safe to say that Ice Age: Collision Course has been a disappointment. I would've said "a huge disappointment," or maybe even "a mammoth disappointment" to be witty, but I don't think anyone who's been following the Ice Age series from the beginning had high enough expectations for this film that it could be that much of a letdown. It's a shame, because the first movie actually was a solid and heartfelt piece of entertainment that deserved to have better sequels. Ever since the second movie though, the series has been trying to create a very different identity for itself, and it seems to have forgotten a lot of the key elements that made the original film good.

What are those elements? There's a lot to say in answering that, but I can narrow it down to three major points:

1. "Dramedy," Not Comedy

It's hard to believe, but Ice Age was originally pitched to 20th Century Fox as an adult drama and the studio suggested changing it to a children's comedy. The end result was a hybrid of the two that the filmmakers have always referred to as a "dramedy." You can piece together the original plot from various sources, and while I think it was smart of the filmmakers to tone down or scrap a lot of those ideas, it was even smarter of them to keep the story's more tragic elements intact. The reveal of Manny the mammoth's backstory catches just about everyone off guard the first time they see Ice Age, and dramatic surprises like that make the film challenging as well as entertaining. Because of that, we get more emotionally invested in the characters and feel a much stronger sense of reward when they succeed in the end.

The sequels, on the other hand, are pretty much straight-up children's comedies. They have very few serious moments in them, most of the new characters have quirks and gimmicks in place of personalities, and the heroes usually joke their way through perilous situations instead of reacting with fear. What's more, since the tone is lighter, the characters' personal problems are a lot smaller and less engaging.

It's said that this change was because of Scrat, the sabre-toothed squirrel who's always chasing after his acorn in wacky, Looney Toons-style fashion. He was the most popular character from the first Ice Age, so the sequels decided to make everything in them more zany like his scenes. The problem with this is that Scrat works best as comic relief, and if there isn't enough drama for him to relieve us from, then he serves no purpose. Filling an entire movie with cartoony antics makes him less unique, and now his scenes interrupt the story in the sequels more than they offset it. Drifting away from "dramedy" was just a cheap idea with a weak outcome, and it hurt the comedic elements that were already in place.

2. A Touch of Humanity

The first Ice Age film is the only one in the series to feature humans--Neanderthals, to be exact. They're one of the more interesting elements in the film, not just because they give the story its emotional core, but because they never talk. This creates more of a contrast between them and the animal characters while also allowing scenes where everything is conveyed through actions and expressions rather than dialogue. Scenes like that can add a lot of depth and subtlety to a film, and they're especially nice to see in children's movies because of that.

I've read that the filmmakers did consider bringing humans back for the second film, but they decided to drop them and explore other aspects of the Ice Age universe instead. It's kind of ironic, because all that the sequels really do is introduce new animals who are more anthropomorphic than the ones in the first film. They'e basically humans, except they have more exotic character designs and they're allowed to talk. There's nothing wrong with featuring new prehistoric creatures in each movie, but when all of the characters are animals who can speak to each other, there's no sense of wonder or suspense in any of the encounters. We know exactly where the heroes stand with everyone because everyone's motivation is said outright, and the intrigue of connecting with other species is mostly forgotten.

The closest the sequels ever come to recreating that dynamic with the humans is with the non-talking dinosaurs in the third film. Even then though, the emotion is somewhat lacking because the dinosaurs are too out of place in that time period. If the filmmakers wanted to explore other aspects of the series's universe, humans could have still offered a lot of different ideas. There were other species of cavemen living at the same time as Neanderthals, and cavemen did cause a lot of problems such as overhunting and competition for food and territory as their populations grew. However, more talking animals in the sequels meant more opportunities to cast big-name celebrities, so spectacle won out over heart once again.

3. Less is More

The first Ice Age movie was about three animals returning a lost human baby to its family while bonding with each other and trying to survive a pack of predators. That's it. There were no major global disasters, no discoveries of lost civilizations, and no magical, outer space excursions. The story was small and simple, and that gave it enough time to properly flesh out its most important elements.

There's too much of everything in the sequels. Too many characters, too many subplots, too many twists and turns, and too much at stake. It's overwhelming, and with so much crammed into each installment, none of the story elements has enough time devoted to it. There are interesting elements in the sequels, such as the character Buck in the third and fifth films and the relationship between Diego and Shira in the fourth film, but they only get superficial development. Imagine getting a flashback of what happened to Buck's family and how he came to live underground with the dinosaurs instead of just seeing a goofy story about how he lost his eye. Imagine getting a flashback of why Shira left her old pack of sabre-tooths and being reminded of what Diego's pack from the first film was like. These subplots could have been really compelling if they didn't have to share their hour-and-a-half run times with a dozen other stories.

Another issue with putting too much into the sequels is that it strains their plausibility. Ice Age: Collision Course is about averting an asteroid by launching magnetic rocks into space from a volcano while a squirrel in a spaceship plays billiards with the solar system. Not only is it nearly impossible to take that main premise seriously, it's also difficult to take the characters' personal story arcs seriously because of how ludicrous the threat to them is. I know that the first movie had a few implausible moments too, like the ice cave full of dinosaurs and spaceships and the river of lava that erupts out of nowhere, but at least those scenes were short and barely referenced again. Heck, the latter example actually sets up one of that movie's most earnest character moments, and since the lava eruption was likely caused by underground volcanoes which were common in prehistoric times, the character moment is able to overshadow the disaster. Again, less is more.

I will say this much about the Ice Age sequels: they did make a lot of money. The original film made roughly $363 million at the box office, and except for Collision Course, each of the sequels earned more than that. There is an audience for those kinds of films, but it's a different audience than the one that the series first drew in, and as we can see, the series is starting to lose that newer audience.

We're already hearing rumors that a sixth Ice Age movie will be in the works soon. If that's true, then I definitely think it should be the final installment in the series and that it should bring things full circle by reintroducing the above three points. I think it should be the film that finally brings back the baby from the original as an adult, and just as the characters speculated in the first film, he should now be a hunter who doesn't remember being rescued by animals when he was little. Have the character who first brought Manny out of his depression over his first family now pose a threat to his new family. That would be an interesting, dramatic conflict with a lot of tension and uncertainty, and the main premise could involve the humans and animals clashing with each other after a disaster at the start of the film forces them together. That way, we could still get some of the larger scale antics of the sequels while also having the drama of the original.

More likely than not though, this won't be the premise of any future movie. We'll probably get another sequel or two much like the last four until the franchise bottoms out, and then Ice Age will go on the same shelf as The Land Before Time and Home Alone as a good movie that spawned a baffling series. In the end though, that one good movie is all that matters. Hollywood could hurl a million sequels down on us that crash and burn, but however big their craters are, we can always find the original with all of its simple, "dramedic" humanity perfectly preserved in the ice below.