This past week, Kristen and I went and saw Captain Marvel. As always I was pretty excited for a Marvel movie, though Captain Marvel I might have waited to watch at home if Avengers: Endgame wasn’t so close to coming out. For me, Captain Marvel was a secondary character that I wanted to see the movie of, but when you have a baby at home and a projector set-up with surround sound, it’s easier to not go to movies sometimes, plus they don’t pause the movie at the theater if you have to go get more snacks or use the restroom.

Captain Marvel was an origin story, another thing that I’m little bit done with at this point, because we’ve had a lot. However, I thought they did a pretty good job with it and a pretty good job of subverting expectations. In the movie Vers, the main character who becomes Captain Marvel, doesn’t remember her life, she just has odd dreams where she’s somewhere else with someone else who she doesn’t really know. She, with the Kree whom she’s part of the team with, go to find an operative and she’s captured by Skrull who are looking for something in her head, and then she ends up on Earth.

That’s about all I’ll say and basically what you get from the trailers. I don’t want to spoil more than that, and all of that stuff happens quickly in the film. Instead, let’s talk more about what I thought about the film.

A quick overall thought would be that the movie is enjoyable, but not one of the best Marvel films. I have it in the bottom half of the Marvel films that I’ve seen (list coming at the bottom of the post). Now, that might seem fairly negative, but for me, only the last four or so Marvel films on my list (I haven’t seen The Incredible Hulk) that are officially MCU, so no X-Men or original Hulk or Spiderman, would I consider movies that I don’t want to watch all that often. Even those I don’t consider most of them to be bad films, except for #20.

Let’s start with a few things that bugged me. The character of Captain Marvel is a bit too over powered compared to most of the characters in the MCU. It seemed like she was stronger and tougher and had better power than Thor and Hulk, both of whom are a concern for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and comic universe) at times. And with that power boost, it felt like the first Marvel movie where it was just starting to fall into DC territory where the character was too powerful and nothing really seemed a threat. There was a decent line in there where Ronin basically left because he wasn’t ready to fight her, not because he couldn’t. But knowing how they handle him in Guardians of the Galaxy, it feels a little lack luster. Otherwise no one could keep up with her.

Also with Brie Larson herself as Captain Marvel. While she certainly looked the part of Captain Marvel, I didn’t think that she ever sounded the part. She always felt like there was something missing from her, some conviction that you get from the other super heroes when they are about to be heroic. The pacing to pull off the comedy lines, the right reaction to something that was said. It’s hard to watch a super hero film at times, though I think there were enough good things to make this film easily worth watching, there were times when the main character is on screen that you don’t really care about what she’s doing because she doesn’t have the super hero package that we’ve come to expect from Marvel.

However, there were a bunch of great things as well in this film. I thought that they nailed the Kree perfectly in the film. In the comics the Kree are very much a Lawful Neutral race, to borrow a Dungeons and Dragons term. In this film they are very much that as well. There is not any shade of grey for them, and they are going to follow the laws as written, because the laws have been written. I also thought that they did a good job with the Skrull. It wasn’t the normal comic book take on them, but it added some interesting dimensions to them. I really hope that we get to see more of the Kree and the Skrull in later films, and I’ve speculated before, but I’d love to see a Secret Invasion storyline done in the MCU.

The interactions between Goose and Nick Fury were great, and both of them were really fun characters for the film. Also, we got some more Coulson. But it was fun to have a film where we had Nick Fury play a large role. In some ways it was an origin story for him as well as Captain Marvel. There were a few hokey bits thrown in around him and his origin, but I thought it was good for the most part. And the interactions with Goose and Fury are great, so great.

I also thought that the music in the film was good. There’s one fight scene towards the end that I’ve heard people talk about how they really love the music for the scene. But I thought that both the music and the fight were pretty underwhelming. But there was a Garbage song in the film, so I was a big fan of that being there. And along with the music that gives it some 90’s nostalgia for some people (give me 80’s nostalgia any day), there were a lot of other good nods to the 90’s throughout the film. Just having there be a Blockbuster and Radio Shack that show up early in the film was good. There were a couple of pieces of technology where I want to double check that they actually nailed the time frame for it, because I would have put that in slightly later 90’s than the film is supposed to take place, but I’m sure someone else will have picked that apart.

So back to some overall thoughts on the film. I do think it’s a good teaser for Avengers: Endgame, I just wouldn’t call it a great film. And it’s one that I’ll watch again because it’s Marvel, but not because I’m extremely excited to see it again. In fact, this summer I’m probably going to do a full rewatch of the Marvel films in chronological order to the MCU timeline.

Overall Grade: C+
Critical Grade: B-
Casual Grade: B-

Marvel Movie Rankings:
1. Avengers: Infinity War
2. Thor: Ragnarok
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. The Avengers
5. Iron Man
6. Thor
7. Spider-Man: Homecoming
8. Ant-Man
9. Doctor Strange
10. Ant-Man and The Wasp
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
12. Captain America: Winter Soldier
13. Captain Marvel
14. Black Panther
15. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2
16. Iron Man 3
17. Iron Man 2
18. Captain America: Civil War
19. Captain America: The First Avenger
20. Thor: The Dark World

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