I already messed up my Marvel Movie Journey by watching the wrong FIRST MOVIE. I think my brain decided to go on vacation when I decided to watch Captain Marvel before Captain America but oh well lol. In the end, I’m glad I did that because I really, really did not like Captain Marvel. Watching these two movies out of order means I get to recover from Captain Marvel with some Steve Rodger and I can’t complain about that lol.
First of all, I am so glad that this was not the origin story for the Marvel Universe but at the same time, I still feel like it is an origin story in it’s own way. The introduction of Captain Marvel is what lead to the Avenger’s Initiative and also how the universe got its name and how the Marvel universe even became a universe so I had really high expectations for this movie. It’s also one of the few solo female lead hero movies in the Marvel Universe so I was hoping for something explosive and unfortunately, ended up being pretty disappointed by it.
This movie decided to heavily rely on flashbacks which I personally think is the falling point for many potentially great movies. When you’re telling the story through flashbacks and relying on flashbacks to serve as the major source of character development for the mc (main character), it’s really hard to connect with the mc. The flashbacks have to be extragood and emotionally gripping for the audience to relate to or connect with the main character and this movie is the perfect example of how thing’s go wrong with flashbacks.
We’re introduced to side characters and relationships through these flashbacks and honestly, I feel flashbacks is too generous of a term for what truly felt like way too fast glimpses that offered very little. It’s hard to connect with these prior established relationships so when Captain Marvel ended up bumping into one of her prior acquaintances and that friend started to cry and get emotional over them getting reacquainted, I didn’t rally care and couldn’t connect with the blossoming friendship. It kind of felt abrupt and that it happened too fast.
Also the whole plot of this movie didn’t make sense. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a spoiler paragraph of how ridiculous the plot of this movie was and how it was just messy and flat.
And that’s the main problem with this movie. Everything felt so surface level. We never dove into anything, there was no conflict, no struggle, no tension, and everything was so ridiculously easy. There were so many opportunities they could have explored that would have added more depth to the plot and Carol Denvers as a character. They could have had her really question everything but with just flashbacks and quick transitions, nothing felt tangibly shocking or gripping.
Carol Denvers as a character was just…meh and once again, one dimensional. Her personality was really driven to be something of someone who’s cool, fun, lackadaisical, funny/witty, and honestly she just came off a bit cocky? I’m not sure if that’s the word. But you know who else is cocky and witty? Tony Stark. He’s literally famous for being careless and cocky. The difference between the two is that Tony Stark has so much more depth as a character. He struggled, he conquered, he lost, he won, he had flaws, there was so much more to his character that we could grip on to and root for. He struggled and he overcame stuff but in this movie, there was zero struggle.
Carol Denvers just didn’t struggle as much as other characters in the universe did. Besides Tony, Thor lost family and Captain America lost decades, friends, his identity, and so on and so forth. The way Captain Marvel found out she had powers and how quickly she came to learn how to use them felt so easy. I feel like her character didn’t get roughed up as much as the other characters did. Given that it is the first movie and there’s still time for real conflict and tension to be introduced into her story line, I still feel like the first movie could have done a bit more for her character.
All in all, I feel like there’s a lot of character development that needs to happen for me to really connect with Carol Denvers. Everything that happened in the plot was way too easy and the character didn’t really evolve or grow as much as other characters in other Marvel movies did. The story telling wasn’t the best and it felt pretty flat for what should have been a bad ass, female hero movie.
Did you like this movie?
*** SPOILERS!
Also the whole plot of this movie didn’t make sense. This movie is about a war between the Kree and the Skrull. Carol Denvers is a soldier for the Skrull and she’s trained to take down Kree because they’re invasive and a danger to society. The Kree are described as super deceitful, manipulative, shape-shifters and hard to trust. For the majority of the movie, this is true and all of a sudden, she decides to switch sides when literally five minutes earlier, she warned off someone about the dangers of the Kree and why not to trust them. I mean yes, there were things happening that lead her to question the validity of everything she’s been told as a Skrull warrior but still. The transition between attacking them and trusting them was way toooooo fast that it was a bit laughable and made the plot a bit questionable. The Kree were like trust meeeee and a min later she was like ‘kay. They didn’t show her questioning it as vigorously as any other character would have.