Captain Marvel with spoilers

[Starlord]

So now that a good portion of folks have seen it, who is everyone's fav female Marvel character?

 

1.  Black Widow

2.  Scarlet Witch

3.  Mantis

4.  Okoye

5.  Valkyrie

[RDU Neil]

26 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

My thoughts:

 

It was good, but not spectacularly good. That's OK because Black Panther set an impossibly high standard and I knew going in that this movie wasn't going to meet it.

 

Winter Soldier, Civil War, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Ant-Man & the Wasp... my top five Marvel movies, all doing something very different, but all powerful, well written, engaging, humorous, well directed, plotted, choreographed...

 

... and then they gave us this crap with Captain Marvel?? It isn't just about "impossibly high standards" it is about not even living up to the original Thor movie or Iron Man 2 levels of good.

 

26 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

That said, it played to tropes. I am upset that it has been getting hate from "fans" simply because of the casting. Which is not at all fair, and to put it bluntly sick. Random commenters on Rotten Tomatoes are not gooing to decide whether I'm seeing a movie. I leave getting opinions on film; to the people who see 100 movies a year as part of their jobs. And Brie Larson was fine. And when it did play to tropes it played to them well.

 

I hate that I feel people are bending over backwards to say good things about CM because of the shit-bro anti-SJW types being, well, as shitty as they are. And the tropes were awful... Samuel Jackson as the wide-eyed black guy comedy relief? Really? That was appalling. Jokes like "You don't tell your boss and I won't tell mine!" pause... horribly forced laughter from the actors. God the writing was awful.

 

We finally see the Kree in any depth and they are still just 1950's adolescent imaginings of a space empire?  or especially... "We have a human embodied with amazing cosmic energies, let's... put her on a special forces team and see what happens?" WTF? The movie was simply stupid in ways that Marvel should have long outgrown.

 

And all of the "empowered woman" tropes were pure pandering... as I said elsewhere, it was "Free To Be You And Me" level of after-school special moralizing.

 

26 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

 

Of course, the Kree turned out to be that bad guys. That was something I expected but was still surprised when it happened. and the Skrull (the ones who were sent to Earth at least) were not entirely blameless for their actions. They had to do what they did, I'll give them that, but inspiring paranoia isn't a great thing to do. It reminded me of a somewhat about average Doctor Who episode, and the Skrill makeup was terrible. 

 

The skrulls are bad... no they are good... but they did all kinds of stupidly bad things... and no, don't ask us to explain our set-pieces... like the Skrulls have a giant, sophisticated war ship and a mind-reading machine even the Kree don't know about... but yeah... we'll forget about that as soon as we move on to the next set piece. And the Skrulls running around with... like clubs and maces? What?

 

 

26 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Still, I enjoyed it. It wasn't a night at the movies (or a Cinemark club ticket) wasted. Again, Black Panther set an impossibly high standard for superhero films. I remembered that, and never expected Captain Marvel to meet that standard.

 

It doesn't have to be top notch, it just has to be good, and this wasn't even close. My wife wept during Wonder Woman, and I loved that movie and we've watched it ten times, easily. She was bored and disappointed and I wanted to fall asleep in Captain Marvel.

 

[RDU Neil]

10 minutes ago, Starlord said:

So now that a good portion of folks have seen it, who is everyone's fav female Marvel character?

 

1.  Black Widow

2.  Scarlet Witch

3.  Mantis

4.  Okoye

5.  Valkyrie

 

Assuming you are talking about MCU female heroes

 

1. Nakia

2. Agent Carter

3. Black Widow

4. Okoye

5. Wasp/Hope Van Dyne

[RDU Neil]

24 minutes ago, Greywind said:

I thought Winter Soldier was about how far you'd go to save a friend.

 

That was actually Civil War... responsibility of power and how far will you go to save a friend with those powers.

[Cygnia]

Solid film.  Loved Goose.  But I told the hubby he could wait for Netflix.

[Ranxerox]

5 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

 

That was actually Civil War... responsibility of power and how far will you go to save a friend with those powers.

 

In Winter Soldier, Steve also put it all on the line to save Bucky.  So, it is an ongoing theme there.

[drunkonduty]

Ladies from the MCU:

 

1: Agent Carter

2: Okoye

3: Hope Van Dyne

4: Shuri

5: Black Widow

 

My top 3 are a really close run thing. I mean, if there was an Okoye or Hope van Dyne spin-off that might tip the scales... Just in case any Disney execs are reading.

 

RDU Neil: mate, we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. ?

[Lord Liaden]

No love for Pepper Potts?

[drunkonduty]

I like pepper. I do a mean peppered lamb.

[Duke Bushido]

On March 10, 2019 at 10:21 PM, Pariah said:

I found this article informative on that point:

 

Did Brie Larson Say Captain Marvel 'Wasn't Made For' White Men?

 

to;dr version: No, that's not what she said, and what she did say wasn't even about Captain Marvel.

 

 

You, Sir, are a hero to all mankind.

 

Thank you.

 

 

14 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

Black Panther was about isolationism, tribalism, colonial diaspora, etc.

 

 

and it gave me my now-favorite racial slur:

 

"Colonizer."

 

 

 

 

[mattingly]

My top five MCU ladies:

1. Jessica Jones (not MCU, so she doesn't really count)

1. Cassie Lang

2. Valkyrie

3. Mantis

4. Darcy

5. Peggy

 

[mattingly]

Close runner up:

 

6. Shuri

 

[lemming]

Saw the film yesterday.  I enjoyed it, though parts of the story didn't make as much sense after thinking about it.

I didn't see Larson's acting as wooden; She was playing someone who was having her emotions tamped down for the last six years.

In my own rankings, it's a solid in the middle of the pack of films for the MCU.

[Bazza]

Saw it. Liked it. Seems to be a modern myth come to life. 

 

(Also someone in Hollywood understands mythmaking besides Lucas). 

[slikmar]

On ‎3‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 7:21 PM, Pariah said:

I found this article informative on that point:

 

Did Brie Larson Say Captain Marvel 'Wasn't Made For' White Men?

 

to;dr version: No, that's not what she said, and what she did say wasn't even about Captain Marvel.

How dare you try and bring reality into the internet rantings. Sheesh, next time you will be asking people to calm down and actually discuss things.

[Pariah]

2 minutes ago, slikmar said:

Sheesh, next time you will be asking people to calm down and actually discuss things.

 

I'm a high school teacher. This is literally every day of my life.

[Christopher]

On 3/12/2019 at 4:42 PM, Starlord said:

So now that a good portion of folks have seen it, who is everyone's fav female Marvel character? 

 

1.  Black Widow

2.  Scarlet Witch

3.  Mantis

4.  Okoye

5.  Valkyrie 

Mantis
Black Widow

Scarlet Witch
Valkyrie
Okoye

 

29 minutes ago, Pariah said:

I'm a high school teacher. This is literally every day of my life.

Ah yes. Work habbits are the hardest to beat.

[Starlord]

Btw,  Fury told Cap in the first Avengers that Howard Stark fished the Tesseract out of the ocean while looking for Cap.  So, did Mar-Vell steal it from Stark? 

[L. Marcus]

Probably a joint AF-SHIELD project.

[Cygnia]

Probably more Pegasus-SHIELD

[Dr. MID-Nite]

From my FB review....

 

Movie review: Captain Marvel(2019): This movie got a lot of bad press going into its release. Luckily, the majority of it is unwarranted. This is another in a long string of good comic book super hero storytelling. The film's only real weakness is its awkward attempts to fit the events into the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe...which is rather clumsily done. The "cat" stuff(no spoilers) is also pretty stupid....though admittedly funny. It's paced pretty well for a two hour flick and the casting is terrific. Some fun Easter eggs for the comic fans and a good amount of action/humor for everyone else. There are two after credit sequences(of which only the first is worth the time). Ironically enough, the name "Captain Marvel" isn't used even once in the film. Though the "finding my true self" troupe is a common theme used in films, it works well here.

 

Overall, I enjoyed it.

[Hugh Neilson]

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

Btw,  Fury told Cap in the first Avengers that Howard Stark fished the Tesseract out of the ocean while looking for Cap.  So, did Mar-Vell steal it from Stark? 

 

Perhaps the fished it out of the ocean (where it fell in First Avenger), seconded it to Pegasus (where Mar-Vell worked on it), retrieved it after the Flerkin "returned" it, it passed through a variety of other projects, eventually to the one we saw in Avengers, and Fury thought it better to just cover the aspect of its retrieval that Cap would be aware of, that it was at the bottom of the ocean and Howard fished it back out.

 

I note that Howard would not have been around when Cap was thawed out, so they must have recovered the Tessaract some time before they recovered Cap.

 

To Captain Marvel's power level, IIRC she burned out a lot of her Binary powers doing something heroic.  Perhaps Endgame will parallel that arc, such that returning half the universe to life requires she burn out some of her powers.

[slikmar]

IIRC, from the First Avenger, Howard found the Tesseract relatively quickly after Steve went down, while looking for Steve. I would probably say within 6 months to a year.

[slikmar]

Just got back, put me in the crowd that liked the movie. I thought Brie pulled off pretty well a person who, for 6 years with only vague flashing memories, has had her mind messed with and been repeatedly told to harness her emotions. I took the few jokes and emotional outbursts as her subconscious fighting back. I thought her interactions with Fury were great. I agree that Skrulls weren't without sin. Loved the shoutout to Photon.

[Netzilla]

My wife and I just saw it last night and I quite enjoyed it.  I'd put it in the top half of MCU films but not in the top quarter.  My wife enjoyed it more than I did.  Compared to WW, I consider them about on a par with the exception of CM having better villains.  As a result, it gets a (very) slight edge over WW from me.

 

As for what the underlying theme of the film is, I see it as having several.  First is how the Kree higher-ups find someone with massive potential power and then try to turn that person into a weapon to fight their wars with no real concern as to her well-being.  This has echos of how soldiers get treated in the real world by politicians all the time.  Useful in a time of crisis but otherwise ignored or simply paid lip-service to without any real regard for their actual well-being.  Additionally, as others have pointed out, there's the theme of the protagonist's true strengths comes from within and finding out who one really is, not from being told what to do/how to act.  Also already pointed out, is the theme that getting back up and continuing to try after failing is what makes one strong.  Finally, the theme of not abiding by limitations that others put on you but rather finding out for yourself just how far you can go.  That was possibly the most obvious theme of the film in my eyes.

 

On a different story/characterization beat, I liked getting to see a relatively young and unjaded Nick Fury.  I would have found it hard to suspend my disbelief if he was as confident and competent 24 years ago as he is currently.  I also didn't consider him to be simple comedic-relief or useless.  He did a pretty good job of evading Skrulls and was even able to out-fight one in HtH except that mere human strength isn't enough to really hurt one.  I'll agree that his main role in the film was to be Carol's guide on earth, but really, he's never been a front-line fighter/problem solver in any of the MCU films.  He's always been in the role of shadowy behind-the-scenes manipulator who arranges things so that the best person available can get the job done.  Probably pretty hard to do that when you've only got level 3 clearance in SHIELD.   His losing an eye to an incredibly dangerous alien animal that was able to disguise itself as a cat, I was perfectly fine with.

 

So, all-in-all I quite enjoyed it and my wife wants to see it again in the theater which is something she almost never does.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Netzilla
Protagonist, antagonist, what's the difference.