I was finally able to see Captain Marvel yesterday. And they managed to get me all misty-eyed with the opening credits that were dedicated to Stan Lee. I found it to be a genuinely touching tribute. And his cameo? A nice touch given the place in time where the movie was set.
As for the film itself? I enjoyed the fact that we just jumped right into the action. We've seen a lot of origin stories over the years that always seemed to follow a fairly set structure. But here? We start with Vers (I liked that touch) as something of an apprentice to Jude Law's Yon-Rogg. We get into the Kree-Skrull war, but it's not quite what we might have thought of it (or either faction). And we got to see Vers go through a path of discovery that informed both her and the audience of her origins at the same time. I thought that Brie Larson was genuinely likeable in the role. And I think that her sense of being ill at ease was in line with her own lack of knowledge about where she had come from, and the ensuing confusion that comes with learning that you had been lied to for years. When she finally realized the scope of her abilities by the end of the film? I saw a much more confident character.
Samuel L. Jackson brought an interesting new dimension to Nick Fury. And I think the de-aging process worked well. As for the eye injury? They lost me a little bit there. But was nice seeing how his relationship with Coulson developed. I was also genuinely surprised about the way the Skrulls story was told. I always had certain notions about them going back to the comics. And in casting Ben Mendelsohn as Talos I had some preconceptions about his character. Seeing how that aspect of the story went was a nice twist. And the 90's callbacks were noticeable but they didn't beat you over the head with them.
Where does this movie stand for me in the pantheon of Marvel movies? It was good, but not great. I'd place it somewhere in the middle of the pack, and if there's a follow-up film, I think that Captain Marvel's sense of self will be that much better affirmed.
I was actually happy to see the box office numbers were so high. Between the review bombing on Rotten Tomatoes and calls for a boycott against the movie by the manbaby trolls, it was good to see the movie do so well. It was a giant middle finger to the guys who are making fandom so toxic.
What gets me so irritated about the current climate is this: Stan Lee and other Marvel creators who were at the heart of creating the iconic characters born in the 1960's set out with a message that permeated their stories. Spider-man (and his alter ego, Peter Parker) along with the X-Men, who became some of the most popular characters in the Marvel Universe were the outsiders. They were people who were different: Peter Parker was a bookish kid with glasses who was on the small side and bullied by jocks, while the X-Men were born with abilities that made them very different from others, sometimes visually so. These were very plain metaphors for how our own society treated those who were different. Kids who were different tended to be drawn to these characters because they gave them a sense of belonging. Time passed and these characters slowly became part of the mainstream for comics - and evidently, so did the audience, no longer the outsiders. And with the mainstreaming of that segment of the audience they evidently believe that they are now some sort of gatekeepers to fandom. I find it troubling to see this, as these self-appointed gatekeepers seem to have forgotten that they and the characters they profess to love were once the outsiders, and now they regard fandom and the IP's as all full, and unable to include characters and fans who might now be regarded as the outsider.