By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Reporter
Captain Marvel, the latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe lineup, bridges together introductions of new characters while also showcasing old characters and reliving a nostalgic time period of the early 90’s. Captain Marvel herself is only the second female Marvel character to have a title movie (the first was The Wasp in Ant-Man and the Wasp last year), but she and her fellow companions and rivals bring another superhero adventure to the big screen.
At the movie’s start, Captain Marvel is introduced as Vers (played by Brie Larson). She is a soldier for the militia of an alien species called the Kree, and she has no memory of her past. During a mission to stop a species of shapeshifters called the Skrulls, Vers ends up stranded on Earth in 1995 and realizes that a team of Skrulls has extracted a memory from her past that will lead them to a hyperspace weapon. To stop them, Vers teams up with SHIELD agent Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) to get to the weapon before the Skrulls do.
The storytelling of this movie mostly gets lost in the great big mix of already established Marvel canon. Without some prior knowledge of the Kree alien species (look first into Guardians of the Galaxy) or a general familiarity to Fury, then a moviegoer can easily be confused for most of this movie. However, there is no need to be alone in that confusion as Vers herself does not know who she truly is either, so moviegoers get to go and uncover her identity in the same sympathetic manner that she does.
If a person is up to relieve the past, then there are plenty of nostalgic nods to lifestyles and brands of the 90’s that can be sure to bring delight. This movie is also not shy of taking both expected and unexpected turns with the characters and adds in that comic relief that Marvel movies are known to include. The action scenes in this movie tend to be a little too well choreographed, making the impression that the steaks are not as high as they should be, but overall those scenes are cool as Vers takes on most of those scenes by herself.
In connecting this movie with a Jesuit values that is exemplified here at Regis, Captain Marvel would be labeled under “Cura Personalis” – the care of the whole person. Vers shows the audience that it takes time to develop a true sense of identity, and that it only comes from realizing that every living thing on Earth deserves dignity with regard to mind, body, and spirit. She also goes through both supportive and deceitful relationships that lead her to the values of dignity she wants to exemplify which shows how her spirit has grown and how she turns those values into real life actions.