Short NO-SPOILER version: Captain Marvel, for me, is an entertaining and enjoyable MCU film, but not a great one, largely because it never quite engaged me with enough emotional or narrative stakes to keep me at the edge of my seat.
Brie Larson (along with everyone else) is likeable and strong and interesting, and I don’t feel at all like I got ripped off buying a movie ticket for this (versus, say Iron Man 2), and I even think it’s (just) worth seeing in a theater vs waiting for home release. But if this is the character that Marvel is planning on hinging the next phase of the MCU on, then her anticipated activities in Avengers: Endgame had best be a tick up from what we get here.
Rating: ★★★ ½ of 5 (with a ♥)
Note: The movie has two in-credit scenes, a “big picture” one after the initial animated credits, and then a charming denouement after the credits are over. Worth sitting through.
If you want a few more spoilers, here’s my Letterboxd review.
This AV review captures some of what didn’t quite work for me in CM. It’s not so much the movie being bad (it’s not), it’s just not as good as Marvel set the bar for it to be.
I quite enjoyed it, it pretty much sucked me in, in the first few minutes and I found it to be a fun movie. I liked how they resolved the various Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel origin stories into a nice concise story that made the whole thing work better. I got very verklempt with Stan Lee practing his Mallrats line (the original Stan Lee cameo). I also enjoyed that the only limitation was herself, that she had to fight all of the lies and BS that the Kree (and men in her history) had used against her (Captain America always got back up because it was the right thing to do, Captain Marvel got back up because fuck you.). I liked the message, and I liked the story.
Now the big question is how is this all going to play out in the next Avengers movie.
I also have a big time line question about one of the post credit scenes (amusingly, more than half left after the first one).
@Stan – I do think they did a tidy job on the origin story. Indeed, as an origin story tale, I think it did a better job than a lot of other super-hero tales.
And, yes, both Stan Lee “appearances” were excellent.
I’m really surprised people left — everyone in our (full) theater stayed through to the end of the credits.