The Captain Marvel movie is out! And boy does it feel great to see a powerful woman-centric role played by Brie Larson as Carol Danvers! Now, this was a much-awaited movie with all the media hype before the movie release made me even more eager to watch the movie and to know what the hype was all about?

In the planet of Hala, Danvers (also known as Vers in planet Hala) keeps getting recurring nightmares of an older woman, and she mentions about this to Yon-Rigg (Jude Law) who’s her mentor and commander. She keeps asking her to control her emotions and trains her to also control her abilities with her powers and if not channeled right things could go bad.

For years, she’s had her past hidden from her, been manipulated into believing she needed to rein in her powers to be a better warrior for the Kree. This was not true. She had been fighting.with one hand tied behind her back, and when she realizes who she should really be fighting for, her might is unleashed and she becomes unstoppable!

when a rescue mission to extract a Kree operative from the Skrulls goes wrong, Vers  lands in Los Angeles in 1995 and slowly comes to realize the Kree and Skrull war isn’t what she’d been told and that her strength is far greater than she knew. Vers’s main weapon is her hot-glowing fists, which issue explosive proton blasts. In her new battle with the Skrulls, she blasts a hole through the spaceship where she’s being held and ends up crash-landing on Earth—right through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store.

Most 90’s kids are going to enjoy the nostalgic elements in the movies, all set in the ’90s,including a RadioShack, a quaint AltaVista search engine, the foot-tappingly fitful loading of a CD-rom, a pager, and also the soundtrack, which includes tracks by Nirvana, Heart, R.E.M., and others.

In a parking-lot showdown outside the Blockbuster, Vers encounters the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), explains her battle against the Skrulls, and (after showing off her proton-blasting powers) soon follows him into official archives to read her case file and discover her own identity.

Captain Marvel is the first solo superhero movie with a female lead; the studio had to go big. It also had to provide a story for why women heroes had been held back for so long.

Danvers, before getting her powers her life on Earth, was an Air Force pilot, who, along with her best friend Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), was not allowed to fly combat missions because of her gender. It’s no spoiler to say that what she recovers of her memory will help her fight and succeed—in a colossal battle in space.

Now what makes this story out of the ordinary is the fact that most of the Avengers either get their power by their own will or either born with it. Which makes Danvers quite a rare one. Since she’s been told to control herself because she is unable to have control over her power and emotions. Captain Marvel was told that her anger in a fight was too much, that it would get her in trouble. That wasn’t true, it was just that everyone was afraid of her extraordinary powers and her might.

What I loved about Brie Larson was the natural grace she carries, when she was an air pilot she was a normal woman with a normal physique, not some tomb raider or muscled woman, who most action movies tend to portray. What made her powerful was when she realized her own potential.

This is a great movie to show your daughters, I wouldn’t call this an all feminist movie it has a good balance, loved the scenes of Samuel Jackson and the cat! also do stay till the end of the credits for a pleasant surprise! 😉

 

 

 

 

 

Empowerment has not one but two definitions: to be given power by someone or something, and to realize one’s own potential, to empower oneself. Many heroes rely on the former. Captain Marvel embodies the latter.