Captain Marvel Thread

There be spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen Captain Marvel yet, be aware!

I went into Captain Marvel with a sense of anxiousness.

Mostly because there's seemingly two streams of thought in regards to the film. Either people hate it, or absolutely love it, and I was worried that it'd be a let down.

I was very happy with the film over-all. I think the problems I had with it were mostly because it was very much like other films we've already seen in the MCU. They did try to alter the approach of just how they show the genesis of her powers, and in that respect the film was more reminiscent of a memory mystery film in the vein of Memento. But ultimately they had to try and make her powers believable and organic despite the fact they really aren't either.

I thought it excelled in making Carol/Vers an interesting character, without the interesting thing about her being how super-charged she is. In that respect alone the movie was a wild success. I think about other characters in the MCU and think about what makes them interesting, and most of them it's their abilities.

What makes Carol so interesting is that even though she lost her memories, she's essentially the same brash person she was before. Always running head first into a fight, and always willing to do what's right no matter the cost. She's quirky, and funny, and always poking fun at her situation and the people around her and that made her character very likable and fresh. In a way she's a mixture of what makes Steve Rogers and Tony Stark so likable in the MCU. (and that makes me pretty nervous about End Game...).

Some things I really liked about it:

- After reflecting on it, I realized that they made her powerful, but not too over the top. Yes. She flies and shoots photon blasts out of her hands that can cripple space ships, and yes she's a living weapon. But she engaged in hand to hand combat with Kree warriors and it took multiple shots to keep them down (that was a pretty fun fight scene, btw. Extra points for using No Doubt in the soundtrack). We haven't really seen characters engage with the Kree in the MCU thus far, aside from the Guardians mixing it up with Korath and a power stone infused Ronan (both of whom kinda of seemed like an after thought in the script. Korath was just kind of there for a link it felt like), so we don't know where they are on the tough scale of things, but we can assume she's probably similar in power level to Thor based on what we saw. They've said they're trying to make her the most powerful character in the MCU, and it looks like if that's the case they didn't push the needle too far. She can mess stuff up, but isn't obliterating characters.

- The film unexpectedly answered a weird nerdy as hell question I've had since 2012. In the first Captain America movie they introduce the cube, but as far as I can remember they only ever refer to it as "the Cube". But in the Avengers everyone is calling it the Tesseract. It always bugged me how they knew that name. How they figured it out, or why they called it that. I shrugged it off, but it was always a nagging question I had in the back of my mind that I figured I'd never really figure out. This film explains how they found the name out. When Carol mentions that Mar-Vell referred to it as the Tesseract I had that "ah-ha!" moment in the theater that was wildly satisfying for my nerdy brain.

- I loved the way Brie Larson played Carol. She was having an absurd amount of fun in the role, and it really shone through in the performance. The genuine joy Carol seems to have while fighting was pretty hilarious for me. Like how she goes to create a diversion to give everyone else a chance to get away and when the Kree find her she's sitting on a railing kicking her feet looking genuinely amused with what's about to go down. Other characters in the MCU face fights with a grim purpose. She's sitting there with a sly smile on her fact because she knows what's going to happen and how fun it'll be.

- And lastly, I want to know what happened to Goose... guys... where's Goose?!?! Why isn't Goose in other MCU flicks?!?!?!?!

What did you think?