Captain Marvel

Spoiler Alert.

There was another time, dynamically transisting not long after the synthesized age, during which new technologies arose and alternative art forms flourished, perhaps lacking the clarity of its legendary progenitor, it still effortlessly distinguished itself in unsung awestruck parallel, and racism wasn't tolerated, and collectives were still ontologically featured, working people still telling their tales, which were told with honour and integrity.

Captain Marvel unreels in such a frame, and its characters find sanctuary within.

Although conflict and peril do bellicosely present themselves, and the keys to the past lie dormant in shielded oblivion.

Representatives of a colonialist empire come covetously calling after a pocket of resistance fighters escapes with one of their soldiers.

As resourceful as she is unyielding, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) sets out upon Earth to discover truths dissimulated.

She is aided in her pursuits by feisty Agent Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who is still somewhat green, and unaware of extraterrestrial life.

Thus, even though Captain Marvel excels at cultivating the new, it's also an origins story, the tantalizing mélange simultaneously revelatory on at least two distinct temporal levels.

Spatially pontooned.

It starts out slow, not that the action isn't constant, but it takes awhile to find its footing, as Danvers gradually learns more about her former self.

Or at least how to go about learning more about that self.

But it gets better as it proceeds, its overt focus on identity transformation skilfully worked into its cinematic ecology.

It uses comedy but isn't flip, takes things seriously to break them down, works in some Indiana Jones, and creatively plays with cyberspatial time difference.

Time differentials.

It may be my favourite Marvel film, inasmuch as it vigorously stands out on its own.

Great acting all around, but Lashana Lynch (Maria Rambeau) steals several scenes, she totally makes the most of her role, and perhaps delivers the best Marvel supporting performance to date.

Cool soundtrack too.

There's a surprising twist you don't often find in these films as well.

Oddly, even though I don't believe that aliens taught the ancient Egyptians anything, but rather that their geniuses created pyramids etc. while ours built hydrogen fuel cells, and the internet, the genius of a particular time, any given time, even caveperson time, making the most of the materials at her or his disposal, crafting ingenious artifacts/theories/structures/. . .  accordingly, while modifying them at times as he or she sees fit, I still entertained the notion that cats had been brought here by aliens one day, because the ancient Egyptians worshipped them, so I've heard, and, so far, it hasn't been possible to domesticate large raccoon populations, and I was discussing this with a friend one day, and I turned to look and saw his cat staring at me intently, with an otherworldly look on his face.

It's utterly ridiculous of course, but I still appreciate the mystery, and unless Robert E. Kahn and Vint Cerf (the internet guys according to wikipedia) turn out to have really come from space, or to have taken orders from alien rulers, I'll lean heavily towards the terrestrial origins of cats, until substantially proven otherwise.

Those little cuties.

😜