In recent years, Marvel has shown they don't really known how to deliver a bad movie. They seem to be either excellent, or good. CAPTAIN MARVEL for me is pretty good, and on an A - F scale, I give it a B for delivering on many fronts.
I'll ignore the stupid "controversy" with the dumb fanboys in my comments here, and instead commend Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson on a job well done for telling this story for what it is.
It's a different kind of hero story with a heavy dose of nostalgia from the 90's, aided by visual icons and orchestral tracks from that decade. I don't recall an iconic, original theme song for Marvel, rather the use of music is focused on irony or moments of pathos.
Demonic looking aliens are revealed to actually be good guys, delivering an important message about how one should not judge an entire group of people, be they demon looking aliens, Muslims, Mexicans, or whatever. And the message to never give up, no matter how many times we fall, hit me on a visceral level.
It's sprinkled with effective humor, such as when they absurdly ask a shapeshifting alien to turn into a filing cabinet or a Venus Fly trap. Jude Law and Ben Mendelsohn turn in fine supporting performances in their respective roles. And I found myself mesmerized not just by Jude's eyes or Ben's makeup, but the VFX in general. Samuel L. Jackson's Fury has a funny de-aging filter that worked for me, but he does look a little off.
Egyptian mythology reveres cats as sacred, and if they ever ran across a cat like the one in this film, I can understand the reverence. The cat, Goose, does steal the show in some of the scenes its in towards the end. Although I was sad how the cat does answer a question about Fury's past.
It begins strong, with its cool, alien architecture and world building, turns into a buddy cop movie in the middle, (where I noticed it seemed to lag for my date), but delivers a strong third act and climax, planting seeds for the next AVENGERS movie (as you do in one of these kinds of movies).
In the climax, our heroine is told to "prove herself" to the male villain, (after already proving herself many times) and she promptly kicks his ass. Women in general, and Captain Marvel in particular, don't gotta prove to you nothing.
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