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Make Mine Captain Marvel! (SPOILERS)


Jeor

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Just saw the movie; thought it was in the upper range of Marvel movies. Above average and enough to be deemed a success, no ruined expectations. Probably not as significant a hit as Wonder Woman for DC, but I don't know whether the general high quality of MCU had something to do with that (as opposed to WW being the best of DC's uneven production). Although I was a Marvel comics collector in my childhood (albeit early 90s) I don't really know much about Captain Marvel canon, so accuracy with comic books wasn't going to be a thing for me.

Things I liked:

  • Brie Larson's performance was solid. I was worried they were going to make her a "serious" sort of character given the powers, but she had moments of humour and light-heartedness that made the character more likeable.
  • Young Nick Fury: Great part and good to see SLJ in a full action role. Some people will say it takes away from the female lead, but I think his role was perfectly slotted in.
  • While being an origin movie, I'm glad they started in the middle and not from her childhood, urgh.
  • First credits scene whets the appetite for Endgame and I guess they came up with an explanation why she wasn't around during Infinity War.
  • Liked the references to the other movies with appearances from Coulson, Ronan and Korath.
  • The 90s nostalgia wasn't overdone, I felt it was handled well and didn't take over the plot.

Things I didn't like:

  • Final battle scene got a bit ridiculous and overpowered, when she destroyed all those missiles and basically could have done whatever she liked.
  • The movie sold the Skrulls well, but knowing their comic background and tendency to be antagonists I found it a bit hard - I kept on expecting them to backstab the heroes or do something weird. But, I suppose they're making their own MCU canon.
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Yeah the Skrulls were one of the many things I didn't have any preconceptions about, and the only thing I knew about the Kree was Ronan so the twist landed and then I bought it.

Samuel was great, and he looked like 90s Samuel. Brie fit the role quite well and was a lot more charismatic than they conveyed in the trailer, I loved that they had a guy tell her to smile and her response. Mendelssohn was really good as well and I think a fantastic choice to pull off the face turn.

Also I didn't expect anything on this front but the chemistry between Marvel and Rambeau was really strong, I'm not sure if that was intended or the actresses just had great chemistry on their own.

On your criticism about the final fight being ridiculous, you're not wrong that they ceased to pose a threat but I think it was intentional to set her up as being off the charts powerful. They need to be careful how they use her if that's the case, her conflicts will need to be ones that prevent her from being able to fight them which requires better writing.

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The most satisfying part of this movie for me was seeing how great Brie Larson was in the role. Between the so-so performance in the trailers and all of the ridiculous trolling online by people with axes to grind, I just wanted her to be awesome -- she was. The trailers failed to capture the playfulness of her character. She wasn't glowing photon energy, that was just sheer charisma. She did a great job balancing the inner turmoil of an amnesiac and someone who is just really good at getting shit done. She's cocky like Stark, but because she doesn't take herself seriously, it's endearing.

I was glad SLJ finally got a more significant role in one of these movies, and CM was the perfect place for it to happen since his chemistry with Larson was really great. You were having fun because they were having fun.

Ben Menselsohn, son! He was almost my favorite thing about this film. The twist with his character was great. More on that later.

Rest of the cast was solid -- Jude Law was Jude Law.

Lashawna Lynch as Maria Rambeau was as good as the reviews have stated. She had a pretty important role in limited screen time, so she had to make her scenes count -- they did. This is the first MCU movie that doesn't have some type of romance as a thread. This friendship between Carol and Maria was ultimately the "romance" and probably more effective than shoehorning in a dude.

As for the story, I really dug how they weaved in the mystery of who "Vers" was at the beginning of the movie. You pretty much figured things out as Carol did -- you never really knew more than her, and this movie had some really great twists. One twist was obvious -- Jude Law being the big bad.

But offsetting that by portraying the Skrulls as sympathetic characters was bold, and for me, a nice choice. There's no reason why they can't be villains later -- ultimately, this film showed they aren't a monolith. It'll probably complicate things for Carol when they do end up being a problem.

I thought the first two acts were stronger than the third. If you could complain about one thing, it's that the final act didn't have a ton of suspense and things resolved really quickly. There was never ever doubt...no real struggle. I guess I appreciated that Law's character gave up so easily, as what was the point?

"Where's Fury?" So good!

This is definitely up there with the top ranked MCU films for me.

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1 hour ago, Bastard of Boston said:

I thought the first two acts were stronger than the third. If you could complain about one thing, it's that the final act didn't have a ton of suspense and things resolved really quickly. There was never ever doubt...no real struggle. I guess I appreciated that Law's character gave up so easily, as what was the point?

After you've watched someone fly out of Earths atmosphere under their own steam, blow up an entire swarm of planet killing missiles and destroy a space cruiser by carving through it with the power of their own flight the idea of managing to beat them as an individual soldier seems rather far fetched. I'm with you, its unexpected but absolutely on point to try "Maybe I can manipulate her into fighting me without powers? Nope. Yeah I'm done."

I'm curious whether you interpreted her amnesia as being from the explosion? The Vox review I saw criticised the amnesia from trauma plot, but I thought the amnesia was actually caused by the supreme intelligence and was a core part of the themes of overcoming abuse, manipulation and gaslighting. Which frames it in a very different way.

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27 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I'm curious whether you interpreted her amnesia as being from the explosion? The Vox review I saw criticised the amnesia from trauma plot, but I thought the amnesia was actually caused by the supreme intelligence and was a core part of the themes of overcoming abuse, manipulation and gaslighting. Which frames it in a very different way.

No, I always suspected/knew the amnesia was due to Kree meddling. What I found compelling was just learning the particulars -- the whys and hows. I agree as well that it was central to some of the feminist themes of the film -- having Carol be contained and controlled...always told to not let her emotions dictate her actions, etc. I was reading some of the more tinfoil takes on the film -- of course, before anyone had seen it -- being that the feminist slant of the movie would be overbearing, and I didn't find that at all. It wasn't a perfect movie, but I thought it managed to hit those important notes without being cringey.

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I guess with Captain Marvel being overpowered, that's where the whole Infinity War storyline fits in. It's not really a story where she can just go and beat up Thanos and save the day; I'm guessing it's going to be much more about the "how" they do it. Obviously her powers will be a great help in that but it will be interesting to see how they fit her in with the existing Avengers cast or if there's going to be any tension. I'm guessing her flight powers may be important in getting to Stark.

And if there are going to be sequels, I guess for 90% of the film, she was inhibited so there's no reason why there won't be some way of doing that again to her to make things interesting. I suspect by leaving Jude Law and the Kree Empire intact, that might be an avenue they could explore in the future - I think Captain Marvel would find Earth a bit boring.

Agree the chemistry between Danvers/Rambeau was great, and the daughter as well.

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Once they revealed it was Yon Rogg who killed Mar Vell it seemed obvious to me that they manipulated her memory. If reviewers thought it was the Tessaract burst that caused the memory loss they really weren't paying attention.

I thought Brie delivered a good dead pan performance that some people have interpreted as wooden, and delivered the emotion at the right moments.

Disappointed we aren't going to get secret invasion. The Skrulls have ended up being one and done villains by not being villains at all. I dunno, maybe now that the Skrulls have a home again they'll start getting ideas. I guess they made the Kree the baddies in GotG and didn't want to complicate things by having the Skrulls be baddies too. The Kree are obviously still a dodgy lot.

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LOVED IT!!!!!

The 90's music and nostalgia was so satisfying! Goose stole the show, Marvel hasn't ever had a pet like that before.

I liked how the movie wasn't only Danvers Origin but the entire Avengers Initiative.

I loved to watch Ronan flee like that, he wasn't about to mess with her.

Obviously there were a few plots holes...Fury didn't think to call her when Sokovia was about to plummet to Earth and destroy the planet?

Also Fury did not seem upset at all about going blind in one eye??? And I dont understand why Goose scratched him at the end anyway.

The Avengers endscene was baller, made me very excited for Endgame next month

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I don't think that Sokovia thing is a plot hole - she's a LONG way away and that was an emergency that needed to be solved in an hour, there simply wasn't time for her to get back. There might have been other times she could have been called back for, but I guess that requires recognising how bad the situation is before it escalates to that short time frame emergency.

Winter Soldier actually seems the one that fits it best but maybe that's not bad enough since it's a human only problem.

As for losing his eye... He pissed the cat off while dangling it in his face. It was a bit extreme but he was doing it right after he saw it eat a bunch of Kree so I guess it decided he needed to learn his place, and as a human aware of his subservience he accepted the punishment lol.

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I really struggled to like Brie Larson, and ultimately I didn't find her that great. But maybe it was the writing and the directing that failed her. I know she dedicated a lot of time to get this right, but a lot of her performance just didn't click with me. From the very beginning it's established that the character has a humorous side, but every time she would crack a joke, I would be taken by surprise, like where did that come from. There wasn't an organic transition between the serious moments and humorous ones. Overall, the humor insertion felt off, with the exception of Goose, like they really wanted to tell a serious story, but then remembered this was the MCU, so insert joke here... and here. The climactic moment, when she faces against the Supreme Intelligence, and it parallels with a montage of her picking herself up every time felt like one of those inspirational commercials. 

Still, the movie had plenty of good stuff, too. Not being a comic-book reader, I dug the Skrull twist. It was helped by having Ben Mendelsohn as Talos. To paraphrase Screen Junkies, he has been the most recent MVP for villains, so you put him in a movie and automatically expect bad guy, but nope, not this time. Sure the Kree were dodgy to begin with, and I should have expected that Jude Law was the real villain, but they could have easily made the plot about two alien races that are bitterly fighting each other, not giving any fucks about who gets caught in the cross-hairs. 

The action scenes were good to meh. It started out with a strong action sequence, but most of the action scenes on Earth weren't up to par, except for the dog fight between Rambeau and Minerva. 

The CGI was pretty solid, and I really liked how well Jackson looked. Clark Gregg less so, but maybe it was because they blended old footage of the actors into the CGI, and I don't know how much footage Gregg had compared with Jackson. CGI Goose was pretty good, as well.

Jackson was pretty good, Goose was a highlight. I laughed out loud at how ridiculous the reveal of his abilities was, but in a funny way. They did set it up nicely. 

Being a 90s kid, I dug the nostalgia for the most part. It had a decent list of song choice. I liked that the secret USAF/NASA base had a B-2 bomber and a F-22, there. Not sure if the B-2 wasn't already in production in '95, but the F-22 was still in testing phase, I believe.

A good, but not great MCU movie. For me, it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack, about the same level as the First Avenger and Dr Strange. Honestly, the best part was the mid-credit scene. "Where is Fury?"

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I liked it. 

I would put it somewhere on the above average MCU movies. Its certainly better than Black Panther and the Ant Men movies, and Dr Strange. I'd put it around Homecoming in terms of quality. But at the same time, of all the Galactic Marvel movies, its probably at the bottom as it doesn't seem to have the spark and individuality of the Gunn movies and obviously doesn't come close to Infinity Wars.

  • Brie Larson was decent in the role, but I felt like she was a little shackled by the writing. I know she is good from Room, and there were moments in the movie where she shone, but on the whole it was very difficult to get a grasp of who Carol Danvers is as a character. She seemed to be wildly all over the place, being sparky and witty one minute, to quiet and limp another. I'm glad they didn't just turn her into the boiler plate Marvel hero who has a sparkling witty comeback for every remark, but at the same time, they needed to do something better to define who she is. All I got was.. shes a girl and she gets back up.. and stuff.
  • I enjoyed the structure of the movie, and the first half had me gripped enough that I wanted to figure out what was actually going on. Ok the reveal and the ending was a bit of a let down, but I appreciated that they tried to do things a little differently. I liked the flashback moments inside her head, and kinda wanted the movie to do more of that, to make us question what was and wasn't real (I'd just watched an episode of Rick and Morty, so this was how I was thinking) 
  • The de-aging is incredible. Thinking back to Tron Legacy and how godawful that looked, things have come a long way. I stared for ages at SLJs face and just couldn't see how they did it! I thought he was also the anchor of the movie and most of the good stuff revolved around him and his acting. I'm still not sure how he goes from the quirky funny Fury, to the miserable as a bin version of Fury we know these days.. maybe they will explain it at some point?!
     
  • Overall the Skrull plotline wasn't all that interesting, even if the twist maybe improved it a bit. I kept wondering if this wasn't some sly metaphor for Israel / Palestine.. but I'm probably being paranoid!
     
  • I'm still not sure what Captain Marvels power levels are. I don't really know much about the character, but so far she doesn't seem all the world destroying. Nothing she did so far seems bigger than anything Iron Man or Thor could do. She's being talked up but we haven't seen it yet.
     
  • Also, I don't know why some Kree are blue and some arent? Why is that?
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2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

 

  •  
  • Also, I don't know why some Kree are blue and some arent? Why is that?

Why are some humans white and some not? Maybe Yon-Rog is just a Kree ethnic minority :)

I liked the Skrull non-villain reveal, and obviously anything involving Goose was hilarious. The slow burn reveals of the backstory , so that we never knew more than Carol, was also well done, although it took me far too long to realise the thing on her neck was inhibiting her powers rather than giving them.

Also, the Marvel ident showing all Stan Lee’s cameos made me very emotional 

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I honestly didn't like the Skrulls-aren't-bad reveal. Sure, in the moment it worked- though Jude Law being so obviously the bad guy I feel like it only really worked as a twist anyway because I know who the Skrulls are from the comics- but it shuts off so much potential for the future. Like, okay, you could retcon it to say some Skrulls are bad- but it would be a retcon or an awkard fudge because this film makes it pretty clear that the Skrull invasion forces are a complete fabrication and there's no such thing.


Also there should be no debate about what caused her loss of memory- if it was the crash, why would her first memory as a 'Kree' be of a total fabrication, on the weird beach with the Skrulls? The Kree have obviously inserted that into her head. Anyone who thinks it was the explosion just wasn't connecting the dots much.



Overall, I enjoyed it well enough, though it's not in the upper-upper echelon of Marvel movies. The strongest point was absolutely the performances of Larson, Jackson, Mendelhson and Lashana Lynch, those carried the movie. The plot is pretty thin and the action is frankly quite poor for a movie of this sort of budget- not un-fun but not delivered with any real cinematic flair.

But anyway yeah, it is a good movie, I'd probably put it on par with the likes of the first Iron Man or Thor - definitely not as good as Black Panther or Thor 3 so it felt like a little bit of a step back but it's fine, does a job, and hopefully they can build on it.

I imagine the sequel will be in between this and the modern day. It'd be weird if that was the last contact between them for 20 years.

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I really loved this. I expected to like it but not love it. 

Brie did such a good job given what she had to work with. I agree with above that her character wasn’t as flushed out and we still don’t know much about Carol as a character. But I really love what we got of Carol Danvers. 

Lashana, Jackson, Law and Ben were all great. I liked the story and the interaction between all the characters. It was a great movie IMO. 

This is my favorite superhero orgin movie and a top fav of mine. 

I’m surprised that I came away loving this movie. So much has ruined this movie for me that I just wanted it to come and go as soon as possible but I’m going to get in as many viewings as possible before Endgame. 

For the sequel I hope it’s set in the present. With Disney getting the X-men back I think Rogue absorbing Carol’s powers and Carol dealing with that and becoming an alcoholic plus rediscovering herself would make a great sequel. 

I’m hoping that the Russos expend some on Carol’s character in Endgame. Also I don’t think Marvel/Feige will have a problem managing such a powerful character like Carol.

 

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Spoiler

Yay!   :leer:

That ^ was the movie review portion.  Now on to the important stuff!

Calling all comic book experts!  - - - -

Does the movie's version of how she got her powers actually make more sense than the comics where the exploding kree machine combined her DNA with Mar Vell's???     

Because, as a casual fan and reader of character synopsis articles, I always felt the comics origin story was wonky.  If getting access to half-Kree DNA opened up huge powers in her, shouldn't the whole Kree species be similarly overpowered??  (And i gather they're not).   So then the explanation is that the fusion of HUMAN dna onto the Kree template was what opened up Carol to cosmic level abilities...... which is just getting stranger and less likely by the second.   If the secrets of god level power were buried in human DNA long ago by the celestials who experimented on us and shaped the early humans into those 3 types..... that's.... some stupid celestials.   Errr, irresponsible.  Unlikely.   They encoded us with the potential to challenge them in later eons, once we stumble upon ways to unlock our godhood like Carol has?   Who does that?   Silly Celestials--godhood is for gods.   AND.... it smacks of the egotistical self image people like to have about human destiny....the idea that we're the center of the universe, and deserve to be, because...... humans!   We need stories to tell us we still matter after science has relegated us to a small random planet in a vast cold universe.   I get that, but when stories try to put us all the way back to being at the center of the universe again as secret gods I feel like it's an overreaction, you know?  Like, similarly, nobody thinks it's odd that so many of the infinity stones keep popping up on Earth (C- 53, was it?), even when Earth is clearly a backwater planet in a vast universe of interplanetary civilizations far more developed than ours?  But no, the infinity stones would of course seek US out as the species to party with, to weild them all, because..... go humans!    We've got something no other race of beings has.   Sure we do!    Teen spirit!   We overcome all.  That's why Star Trek's federation of planets was only possible once humans made it happen.  Anyway....

What I'm saying is I found Danvers' origin story oddly unbelievable as it appeared in print, the whole fusion of human/kree opening the secrets of cosmic power up to her.    But this movie version.....  it's like she was born of the tessaract energy, as Scarlet Witch was a child of the mind stone.   And a lightspeed engine would, by definition, open up the cosmos in strange ways, reaching into the interstices of space and making all kinds of energy manipulation possible.  For Carol too, now that it imprinted on her DNA.   A more worthy origin for Captain Marvel?    I'm thinking Yes.  Good on you again, Feige.  An exploding jet plane engine is a tad less flashy and intergalactic than a large scale  kree machine melting down, but I think this stands up to scrutiny better.

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I don't know much about the actual comic book origins but certainly the film explanation of her powers was believable in a superhero kind of way. She gets her powers from the exploding engine, which was really getting its powers from the Tesseract. Other people who touched the Tesseract or interacted with it in certain ways got zapped out of existence or teleported somewhere else (Captain America 1) but I could perform some mental gymnastics that the jet engine mediated what would have been its usual effect.

Another thing - I assumed the Kree messed with her memories, because I'm certain that in her first couple of flashbacks to Lawson's death, the person walking menacingly towards them was a Skrull, right? It was only afterwards that she realised it was actually Yon-Rogg.

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59 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Remind me... in GotG, Ronin has gone all rogue because the Kree have been wiped out, no?

No. He went rogue after the kree-nova war ended and he didn't want to stop fighting and take his revenge. 

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