Captain Marvel (MCU)
- Thread starter Carlie
- Start date
.Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
Back. Eh, it's fine.
- AKA
- TresDias
It seems like most reviews I've come across are either determined to sell it as Marvel's first official flop or the Second Coming for cinema. A couple of them, though -- from The Wall Street Journal and Common Sense Media -- seemed to hit a grounded note.
- AKA
- Joe, Arcana
I enjoyed it!
It didn't capture me the way some Marvel storylines have but Captain Marvel herself is fantastic.
It didn't capture me the way some Marvel storylines have but Captain Marvel herself is fantastic.
I went in expecting a particular character archetype. Serious, no nonsense, direct and stoic. You know the one, what Hollywood thinks is the only way to make a 'strong female protagonist'.
What I got was muchhhh better. Carol is spunky, she has a cheesy sense of humour and is a bit of a goof. She's not perfect and strong, she's wild and undisciplined.
She for sure beat my expectations so I had a great time!
What I got was muchhhh better. Carol is spunky, she has a cheesy sense of humour and is a bit of a goof. She's not perfect and strong, she's wild and undisciplined.
She for sure beat my expectations so I had a great time!
Gary Caelum
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Gary Caelum
Is this gonna be necessary to see to understand the final Avengers film?
They're pretty annoying and inconsistent in which movies you need to see to understand the larger story arc.
They're pretty annoying and inconsistent in which movies you need to see to understand the larger story arc.
- AKA
- Minato
Probably not. Carol's friendship with Fury is very unlike how the Avengers know him, which I imagine will come up. That's about it.
Gary Caelum
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Gary Caelum
Does it have anything actually relating to the larger Avengers arc though? Or is it just a completely disconnected origin story?
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
Captain Marvel opens with $153M at the domestic box office and $455M globally, making it the 6th best worldwide opening.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...-opens-historic-153m-us-455m-globally-1193585
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...-opens-historic-153m-us-455m-globally-1193585
- AKA
- Chloe Frazer
I really enjoyed the movie but yeah this was a problem. I'll admit the movie was a lot funnier than I thought it would be but there were moments were they couldn't let a moment be without making a joke
when Talos reveals himself in Maria's house, tense moment and then he starts drinking from a plastic cup for example.
Brie Larson was great, the problem was that the script didn't really give her a lot to work with. She's a pretty static character throughout the film, there's no growth in the film and the movie could've leaned into more the psychological impact of her amnesia.
Has no one learned anything from Solo? Not everything needs to be answered and if you are it better not be something stupid like
a cat scratch for cheap laughs. Just why?
I will say that while the movie didn't have the best plot, it did have some great performances, Maria was great, the Fury/Carol buddy cop dynamic worked really well. Ben Mendelsohn was fantastic and
the twist that he wasn't in fact a villain was really clever considering his track record of playing villainous characters.
He was in two scenes and neither one did anything to expand his character.
I was pleasantly surprised how funny Carol was, I was a bit worried going in that she would have too much in common with Steve. But there's some key differences, she is more pragmatic and less stoic than he is.
Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
Takes a special kind of person
to hang onto a cat after it claws your eye out. [/spoiler
To be honest I actually liked the balance of humor in this movie for the most part. Ragnarok was way too completely over the top to the point of ruining scenes, but this movie did a much better job of toeing the line.
Honestly I don't mind Goose being the reason Fury lost his eye XD lol
- AKA
- Chloe Frazer
- AKA
- Tets
Sequel should be called Carol Danvers: Strongest Avenger 
The soundtrack gave me occasional Metroid vibes in the beginning? Which is fitting what with the one time Brie Larson cosplayed Samus Aran
Movie itself was typical Marvel fare. Which means I enjoyed it well enough.
The soundtrack gave me occasional Metroid vibes in the beginning? Which is fitting what with the one time Brie Larson cosplayed Samus Aran
Movie itself was typical Marvel fare. Which means I enjoyed it well enough.
Flerken sounds like a Rick and Morty thing even though this is apparently from the comics.
Also, the Stan Lee tribute with the Marvel Studios logo was great ;_;
Also, the Stan Lee tribute with the Marvel Studios logo was great ;_;
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- AKA
- TresDias
Over and above any of this, I'm just glad they kept the origin of her superpowers simple -- a notion they've altogether lost in the comics at this point with the recent "The Life of Captain Marvel" miniseries.
Though not the most egregious sin the comics arm of Marvel has committed lately, it certainly played its role in my recent decision to stop reading new Marvel books. Warning: nerd rant incoming ...
In the comics, Carol got her first set of powers in an accident somewhat similar to that of the circumstances depicted in the film. During a battle with Colonel Yon-Rogg, a Kree device called the Psyche-Magnitron exploded behind her and the superpowered Mar-Vell (the original Captain Marvel) as he was carrying her to safety, releasing radiation that resulted in his DNA being blended into hers, and also copying some of his powers into her.
It's important to observe before we go any further that Mar-Vell's powers weren't natural to his physiology either.
Mar-Vell originally had no more superhuman abilities than simply being noticeably stronger and more agile than the average denizen of Earth thanks to being from a world with stronger gravity, and wearing his Kree battlesuit kept these advantages at their peak. It was only from being experimentally augmented by a scheming Kree prime minister, then later being gifted with a pair of cosmic-powered bracelets that he came to possess any of the powers he would share with Carol.
Ms. Marvel, as she would be called, would eventually lose these powers, however, when they were absorbed by Rogue of the X-Men (during the period Rogue was a supervillain, before she joined the X-Men) -- and Carol would never get those powers back. Instead, she gained new abilities when she was captured alongside the X-Men by members of yet another alien race, the Brood, who used her in an experiment that would result in her gaining the ability to project the energy of a star.
Despite Carol's current powers not coming from the Kree warrior Mar-Vell -- and despite the powers he did pass to her never being his simply by virtue of being Kree anyway -- "The Life of Captain Marvel" seeks to establish this as the new origin for Carol's powers: her mother, Marie/Mari-Ell was actually a Kree warrior all along as well.
An elite warrior at that, Mari-Ell was sent to Earth as a spy just like Mar-Vell before abandoning her mission after falling in love with and marrying an Earth man, Joe Danvers. Carol, thus, is half-Kree, and her Kree mother displays the same powers as Carol, including flight and the ability to project blasts of energy -- neither of which were even abilities Carol was ever shown to have acquired from the initial Psyche-Magnitron incident.
Carol's original ability to fly was provided by a web of circuitry built into her costume that produced flight by facilitating an interaction with the Earth's electromagnetic field. Exposure to a second explosion from the Psyche-Magnitron's power source later would imbue the costume's benefits directly into her physiology. Her energy projection abilities, meanwhile, didn't even exist until the experimentation she experienced at the hands of the Brood.
Yet here is Marie Mari-Ell Danvers displaying both abilities as Carol's heritage -- again despite there never being an ostensible connection between Carol's current powers and Mar-Vell, and despite there never being a connection between any of these powers and being Kree.
The story makes every attempt to convince readers, however, that this should be the case. "They're triggered in battle, usually by adolescence," Mari-Ell says of the abilities she and her daughter share. The Psyche-Magnitron didn't imbue Carol with Mar-Vell's powers, she adds, it simply activated her own inherent power via "an ancient Kree defense mechanism."
Let us never mind, I suppose, with observing that as a major/sometimes colonel in the U.S. Air Force ... as well as a special ops agent who had worked with both the CIA and SHIELD ... and as the head of security at the perpetually beleaguered Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during Mar-Vell's time masquerading as a scientist there -- Carol was well experienced in combat and life-or-death situations that should have already triggered this "ancient Kree defense mechanism" were it there to be activated.
She was, in fact, described as an expert in both armed and unarmed combat, as well as one of the best people the Air Force had, with her file marked "classified." She was also critically injured during one of many ordeals at the Cape Air Force station a few issues prior the Psyche-Magnitron incident.
In other words, the rush of a combat situation was nothing new for her, despite whatever impression "The Life of Captain Marvel" tries to portray.
In point of fact, the new story providing this clunky, ham-fisted retcon can't even keep straight when these powers were supposed to have manifested for Carol. "The Life of Captain Marvel" shows her demonstraring superhuman strength as a newborn in a hospital room with her parents as she squeezes her father's finger to the point of causing him unexpectedly severe pain. Yet no mention is made explicit or even so much as implied of this superhuman strength or any other superhuman ability being displayed again until after the incident with the Psyche-Magnitron.
We have to face this poorly designed retcon for what it is: a misguided, if well-intended, attempt at separating Carol's powers from the legacy of a male character, having acquired them while operating as a satellite character in that male character's book. "Not borrowed. Not a gift. Not an accident," her mother says. "They're not anyone's but yours. They never have been."
This misguided silliness has even given us such absurd claims as these from a CBR.com review: "Captain Marvel's new origin story puts women and their stories first"; or that her mother "is no longer the helpless mother, perpetually in the background and victim to the tantrums of a drunk abuser. Now, she’s a complex woman with complex problems and a long list of hard choices she had to make."
No, Marie Danvers now comes off as an even more helpless and emotionally weak woman than ever before, seeing as she apparently had the physical strength to fold her alcoholic, male chauvinist husband's head up his own asshole all along -- yet not only did she stand idly by for years while he abused her children, she actually defended his behavior, and continues doing so during "The Life of Captain Marvel."
Equally shameful, the last time Marie was seen in a comic prior to this retco-origin, she chews Carol out for not visiting in years while her father has been slowly dying of lung cancer. Apparently, Marie expected her daughter to put aside that thoughts of the man immediately conjure memories of abuse.
Some giant leap for womankind that dreck is.
And as for "putting women and their stories first"? Let us also never mind that Carol had even less agency in being born than she had in the Psyche-Magnitron incident. Though she was in that situation because she was captured by Yon-Rogg to use as a pawn against Mar-Vell, she at least was valuable to that end for reasons of her own choosing.
For that matter, what precisely are we to take from the apparent suggestion that nothing in Carol's career up to that point had been sufficient to trigger this "ancient Kree defense mechanism"? Not her training in the Air Force, CIA or SHIELD. Not the dangers she experienced in spy work and special ops. Not any of the other deadly situations she had already encountered as the head of security for the Cape Canaveral base.
I question what is to be the takeaway from that, because to this reader it sounds an awful lot like the implication must be that all the rest of her career was so so cozy that these other established hallmarks I speak of were wiped away to make room for the shoehorning-in of alien heritage.
I suppose this is yet another instance of recent discontinuity that may best be left explained by the reality reset following "Secret Wars" a few years ago, but claims like "your back issues matter" squarely don't hold up in this kind of willy-nilly, make-it-up-on-the-fly environment. Granted, that's always been a danger of the format, and such things have happened more than once -- but they're being embraced to such an extent within the comic line now that pitfalls no longer seem like something one falls into by accident. It's as though they have been deliberately dug out wider and deeper to serve as skatepark bowls.
I say again what I've been saying a lot lately: thank God for the MCU. I don't know for how long it will be able to avoid the same nonsense the comics have succumbed to, but right now, it's the only option for an increasingly jaded old fan like me.
It's important to observe before we go any further that Mar-Vell's powers weren't natural to his physiology either.
Mar-Vell originally had no more superhuman abilities than simply being noticeably stronger and more agile than the average denizen of Earth thanks to being from a world with stronger gravity, and wearing his Kree battlesuit kept these advantages at their peak. It was only from being experimentally augmented by a scheming Kree prime minister, then later being gifted with a pair of cosmic-powered bracelets that he came to possess any of the powers he would share with Carol.
Ms. Marvel, as she would be called, would eventually lose these powers, however, when they were absorbed by Rogue of the X-Men (during the period Rogue was a supervillain, before she joined the X-Men) -- and Carol would never get those powers back. Instead, she gained new abilities when she was captured alongside the X-Men by members of yet another alien race, the Brood, who used her in an experiment that would result in her gaining the ability to project the energy of a star.
Despite Carol's current powers not coming from the Kree warrior Mar-Vell -- and despite the powers he did pass to her never being his simply by virtue of being Kree anyway -- "The Life of Captain Marvel" seeks to establish this as the new origin for Carol's powers: her mother, Marie/Mari-Ell was actually a Kree warrior all along as well.
An elite warrior at that, Mari-Ell was sent to Earth as a spy just like Mar-Vell before abandoning her mission after falling in love with and marrying an Earth man, Joe Danvers. Carol, thus, is half-Kree, and her Kree mother displays the same powers as Carol, including flight and the ability to project blasts of energy -- neither of which were even abilities Carol was ever shown to have acquired from the initial Psyche-Magnitron incident.
Carol's original ability to fly was provided by a web of circuitry built into her costume that produced flight by facilitating an interaction with the Earth's electromagnetic field. Exposure to a second explosion from the Psyche-Magnitron's power source later would imbue the costume's benefits directly into her physiology. Her energy projection abilities, meanwhile, didn't even exist until the experimentation she experienced at the hands of the Brood.
Yet here is Marie Mari-Ell Danvers displaying both abilities as Carol's heritage -- again despite there never being an ostensible connection between Carol's current powers and Mar-Vell, and despite there never being a connection between any of these powers and being Kree.
The story makes every attempt to convince readers, however, that this should be the case. "They're triggered in battle, usually by adolescence," Mari-Ell says of the abilities she and her daughter share. The Psyche-Magnitron didn't imbue Carol with Mar-Vell's powers, she adds, it simply activated her own inherent power via "an ancient Kree defense mechanism."
Let us never mind, I suppose, with observing that as a major/sometimes colonel in the U.S. Air Force ... as well as a special ops agent who had worked with both the CIA and SHIELD ... and as the head of security at the perpetually beleaguered Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during Mar-Vell's time masquerading as a scientist there -- Carol was well experienced in combat and life-or-death situations that should have already triggered this "ancient Kree defense mechanism" were it there to be activated.
She was, in fact, described as an expert in both armed and unarmed combat, as well as one of the best people the Air Force had, with her file marked "classified." She was also critically injured during one of many ordeals at the Cape Air Force station a few issues prior the Psyche-Magnitron incident.
In other words, the rush of a combat situation was nothing new for her, despite whatever impression "The Life of Captain Marvel" tries to portray.
In point of fact, the new story providing this clunky, ham-fisted retcon can't even keep straight when these powers were supposed to have manifested for Carol. "The Life of Captain Marvel" shows her demonstraring superhuman strength as a newborn in a hospital room with her parents as she squeezes her father's finger to the point of causing him unexpectedly severe pain. Yet no mention is made explicit or even so much as implied of this superhuman strength or any other superhuman ability being displayed again until after the incident with the Psyche-Magnitron.
We have to face this poorly designed retcon for what it is: a misguided, if well-intended, attempt at separating Carol's powers from the legacy of a male character, having acquired them while operating as a satellite character in that male character's book. "Not borrowed. Not a gift. Not an accident," her mother says. "They're not anyone's but yours. They never have been."
This misguided silliness has even given us such absurd claims as these from a CBR.com review: "Captain Marvel's new origin story puts women and their stories first"; or that her mother "is no longer the helpless mother, perpetually in the background and victim to the tantrums of a drunk abuser. Now, she’s a complex woman with complex problems and a long list of hard choices she had to make."
No, Marie Danvers now comes off as an even more helpless and emotionally weak woman than ever before, seeing as she apparently had the physical strength to fold her alcoholic, male chauvinist husband's head up his own asshole all along -- yet not only did she stand idly by for years while he abused her children, she actually defended his behavior, and continues doing so during "The Life of Captain Marvel."
Equally shameful, the last time Marie was seen in a comic prior to this retco-origin, she chews Carol out for not visiting in years while her father has been slowly dying of lung cancer. Apparently, Marie expected her daughter to put aside that thoughts of the man immediately conjure memories of abuse.
Some giant leap for womankind that dreck is.
And as for "putting women and their stories first"? Let us also never mind that Carol had even less agency in being born than she had in the Psyche-Magnitron incident. Though she was in that situation because she was captured by Yon-Rogg to use as a pawn against Mar-Vell, she at least was valuable to that end for reasons of her own choosing.
For that matter, what precisely are we to take from the apparent suggestion that nothing in Carol's career up to that point had been sufficient to trigger this "ancient Kree defense mechanism"? Not her training in the Air Force, CIA or SHIELD. Not the dangers she experienced in spy work and special ops. Not any of the other deadly situations she had already encountered as the head of security for the Cape Canaveral base.
I question what is to be the takeaway from that, because to this reader it sounds an awful lot like the implication must be that all the rest of her career was so so cozy that these other established hallmarks I speak of were wiped away to make room for the shoehorning-in of alien heritage.
I suppose this is yet another instance of recent discontinuity that may best be left explained by the reality reset following "Secret Wars" a few years ago, but claims like "your back issues matter" squarely don't hold up in this kind of willy-nilly, make-it-up-on-the-fly environment. Granted, that's always been a danger of the format, and such things have happened more than once -- but they're being embraced to such an extent within the comic line now that pitfalls no longer seem like something one falls into by accident. It's as though they have been deliberately dug out wider and deeper to serve as skatepark bowls.
I say again what I've been saying a lot lately: thank God for the MCU. I don't know for how long it will be able to avoid the same nonsense the comics have succumbed to, but right now, it's the only option for an increasingly jaded old fan like me.