Captain Marvel with spoilers

[Bazza]

Why is Fury's eye injury an issue? You really trust a spy to tell you the truth? C'mon. 

[Christopher]

7 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

How many years did the flerken sit on the air force base, never causing a problem, waiting for the chance to claw out an ally's eye? 

You seem to be under the impression that the Flerkin was an ally of Nick Fury and the rest.

All it really did was eat the guys that would have put a muzzle on it again and eat something sparkly. And not eat those Scrulls that posed as Kree (either because they would not put a muzzle on it or because it was full). Any helping with the story might have been coincidental.

 

I mean we still are not 100% why the cats hunt rodents/birds just to put it inside the Living Room. It is not like either of us is eating them and cats do understand they wander into the trash.

[Greywind]

He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets.

[archer]

 I went out of my way to avoid watching trailers and reading spoilers so that I'd look at the movie with the freshest eyes possible. I just saw it this week and, going back to read this thread, I must say that I agree with almost every negative comment made about the movie so far.

 

1) Wooden acting- not just Danvers but Fury, the Rambeau's, the Skrulls, the Kree

2) Bad choice of accents was distracting - minor quibble but part of blending in as a shapeshifter is doing the appropriate accent. Doing the right accent to match your target should be automatic.

3) Unmemorable or non-existent plot

4) Loss of Fury's eye - one of the low points of the MCU so far

5) Lame Skrull shapeshifting

6) Lame Skrull motivations, the movie would have been much better with both Kree and Skrull as villains

7) Captain Marvel way overpowered at the end compared to anyone else in the MCU (and inconsistent power levels earlier in the movie)

8 ) Unbelievable that a Skrull scientist wouldn't recognize space coordinates or at least suspect they were coordinates which were in space

9) Calling the invention a "lightspeed" engine was confusing when calling it any other sci-fi sounding name would have at least not have sounded retro compared to the tech the Kree already had.

10) Also unbelievably stupid that a Kree scientist would give a breakthrough lightspeed engine to a race of shapeshifters who had a grudge against her race. Superior speed is a military weapon. Any scientist who is a member of a spacefaring race which had been at war for decades would know that superior speed is a weapon rather than a tool which would bring peace.

11) I kept expecting Korvac to do something special but he never did. If they wanted Korvac to be seen but do nothing, they should have had him standing at Ronan's side, not be part of the Kree's SEAL team.

12) Abysmally stupid cat alien

 

I understand that people liked the Men in Black movies with their stupid aliens with stupid powers. But Nick Fury was holding the damned cat when the damned cat picked four aliens up off the floor, which means that Nick Fury was holding the weight of a cat plus four aliens in his outstretched arms. I can accept a super-strong alien cat. I can't accept a super-strong alien cat which temporarily gives Nick Fury super-strength just long enough for the cat to swallow the aliens. No, that was just bad writing.

 

The movie would have been so much better if the Skrull had been uneasy and scared of the cat the whole movie, while the cat was nothing else other than a cat for the whole movie. That would have just made the alien seem quirky and alien rather than introducing the cat as being a part of a whole other race of aliens which had no justification at all for why it was on Earth, much less in that place at that point in time.

 

====

 

I don't follow actors and actresses, had no idea who Larsen was, and go out of my way to avoid hearing spoilers but it penetrated even my intense disinterest that Larson was playing up the feminist angle of the movie as she was making the talk show circuit promoting the movie. I was pleasantly surprised that the movie didn't come across as some political manifesto. I noted the same feminist/anti-male/whatever scenes in the movie which others mentioned, but honestly, I see those all the times in movies, TV shows, and commercials anyway and this movie wasn't any more blatant than anything else in pop culture. The Carol Danvers character started off her superhero career as Ms. Marvel so I wouldn't have been exactly shocked to have seen a heck of a lot more than her burning the face off of Arnold Schwarzeneger and stealing a rude guy's bike.

 

Anyway, given this movie, if the Captain Marvel character were to literally disappear from the MCU, I would not be sad at all. And I say that as a big fan of Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel and Binary from the comics. I didn't like the movie overall. When it inevitably shows up on TV with another MCU movie on another station, I'll tune in to any other MCU movie rather than watch Captain Marvel. I needed to see it to set up the next Avengers movie. But I don't feel a need to see it over and over like I do some MCU movies which I watch whenever I need to feel better.

 

I thought Wonder Woman was much, much better than Captain Marvel. But I think that's true because of Chris Pine vs Jackson, rather than because of the leading ladies. I thought Gadot was better than Larson but not by a huge margin. But Gadot worked off of Pine wonderfully while Larson and Jackson had no chemistry on any level (whether lovers, friends, people who happened to be on the same planet at the same time, etc.). And I say that as a Marvel fan, not a DC fan, and as someone who has never cared much for the Wonder Woman character.

 

My wife fell asleep during Captain Marvel, I woke her up so I wouldn't have to endure it alone. And she was the one who was pushing for us to go see it sooner rather than later.

 

On the good side,

 

a) Ronan the Accuser looked better in this movie without the ridiculous face paint.

b) Nice cameo by Phil Coulson. I kept wanting him to have more dialogue because his actor knows how to deliver a line.

c) I didn't mind that the "Avenger" name was Carol's call-sign. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. In the context of the movie, it made sense.

d) The de-aged Fury looked good. If I didn't know he was old, I wouldn't have guessed it from the SFX.

e) I liked having both blue Kree and pink Kree and the fact that Captain Marvel didn't comment on it. Logically it should have been just a background fact of life to her and she shouldn't have taken special note of it.

f) The Rambeau's didn't add anything special to the movie for me but I can see why they were there as part of the fan service.

g) I didn't mind Fury trying to be funny: everything is all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

 

[massey]

De-aged Nick Fury looked really good.  It's really impressive that they can do that now.

[Duke Bushido]

I don't get why so many folks (it's not just here) are bagging on the flerken.  They're an established part of the Marvel universe; they weren't just invented for this movie.  Yeah, Marvel has a history of stupid-ideas-as-aliens, but honesty, most of the early comic book aliens were goofy ideas.  That hasn't gone away, it's just that now the odd ideas are created for deus-ex-machina roles instead of being the majority of aliens.  Honestly, DC comics seems to think that it's not possible for aliens to not have incredible super powers, but folks don't tend to bag on them so much.

 

 

There.  It's not that I'm in love with flerkens.  It's just a point I had to make.  I made my once-a-decade trip to reddit and was overwhelmed with flerken hate-- which I suspect is from people whose first exposure to flerkens was this movie.

 

3 hours ago, archer said:

g) I didn't mind Fury trying to be funny: everything is all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

 

 

  

 

Nice.

 

 

[thirty minutes of typing redacted in the interest of not starting a conversation I don't have time to participate in]

 

 

I guess I'm the only person here who is completely fine with the idea that Fury lost his eye in some un-manly accident?   

 

[L. Marcus]

No no, I'm fine with it too. Had a little chuckle at that one.

[Old Man]

Un-manly? He went hand-to-hand with a flerken and only lost an eye!

[massey]

I did laugh when Fury is like “oh yeah I’m sure this will heal up just fine” and the Skrulls look at each other and shake their heads.

[slikmar]

19 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Yeah, that probably makes for more interesting head canon, but how exactly does one lose an eye to a bullet without having one's brains blown out at the same time?

Tahiti - It's a wonderful place.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

Un-manly? He went hand-to-hand with a flerken and only lost an eye!

 

THANK YOU! 

 

In the words of Mgatu:  "I thought I was taking crazy pills!" 

[Hugh Neilson]

2 hours ago, Old Man said:

Un-manly? He went hand-to-hand with a flerken and only lost an eye!

 

It was sitting in his lap and it clawed out his eye.  Sounds a lot different from what you describe.

 

"Wow, Uncle Nick - what happened to the flerken?"  "Oh, I brought it home and keep it as a housepet - I don't think it would do that again!"

[megaplayboy]

Just saw it yesterday.  Generally liked it.  A few thoughts:

--love that the Kree are (accurately) portrayed as elitist, imperialist pr**ks

--didn't think CM too overpowered, I put her on par with Thor, so she's the WW to his Superman

--these films are getting a tad formulaic and I would like to see more risks taken going forward

--Now I really want to see Super Skrull in a movie, or maybe even the Skrullian Skymaster(sadly, Marvel could film a Squadron Supreme trilogy that outperforms Justice League by every metric)

--I expect to see a grown up Monica Rambeau in CM 2/3

 

[Old Man]

27 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

It was sitting in his lap and it clawed out his eye.  Sounds a lot different from what you describe.

 

Nick Fury keeps a flerken as a pet!

[Armory]

I thought her acting was fine.  She was playing someone trained to be an unemotional soldier.  It was her character arc that was a bit weak but I see that as the fault of the writers, not her performance.

 

I was bugged for awhile about the whole flerken thing.  Whether or not they explain later why the thing suddenly attacked Fury, it struck me as completely random and jarring.  As was Fury's nonchalance about losing an eye.

 

I agree that the lightspeed engine story doesn't make much sense; these races are already capable of racing all over the galaxy; I think the writers could've thought about it for another ten minutes and come up with something better.  Call it a teleportation engine, or a dimensional portal generator.  Something, almost anything, else.

 

My main concern coming out of it was the same thing articulated by a couple of others here:  power creep.  She's way overpowered compared to the rest of the MCU.  I really don't want to see her single-handedly drop Thanos, but they sure have made it appear that she could.  I have trust that Feige and the Russo brothers (my next cover band name) are smarter than that.

[archer]

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I don't get why so many folks (it's not just here) are bagging on the flerken.  They're an established part of the Marvel universe; they weren't just invented for this movie.  Yeah, Marvel has a history of stupid-ideas-as-aliens, but honesty, most of the early comic book aliens were goofy ideas.  That hasn't gone away, it's just that now the odd ideas are created for deus-ex-machina roles instead of being the majority of aliens.  Honestly, DC comics seems to think that it's not possible for aliens to not have incredible super powers, but folks don't tend to bag on them so much.

 

 

There.  It's not that I'm in love with flerkens.  It's just a point I had to make.  I made my once-a-decade trip to reddit and was overwhelmed with flerken hate-- which I suspect is from people whose first exposure to flerkens was this movie.

 

 

1) For people who are not watching Marvel's Agents of SHIELD television show, their only exposure to Kree (stated explicitly as such) was Ronan who was described as an extremist and therefore presumably not a representative sample of his race. So the Captain Marvel movie was an introduction to the Kree for most of the audience.

 

The Captain Marvel movie was also served an introduction to the Skrull race (and did an extremely poor job of that, in my opinion).

 

The Flerken were a third race tossed into the movie, at random and with no explanation of why it should have a spot in the movie. There was nothing in the movie that "being a Flerken" accomplished that Goose "not being revealed as a flerken" couldn't have accomplished just as well with only very tiny alterations.

 

The Carol Danvers character existed in the comic books for 38 years before a Flerken came into her life and it was eight years after that when she first found out that her "cat" was really an alien lifeform.

 

I think the MCU could have slow-rolled that reveal by saving it for some other movie and have helped the pacing of this movie.

 

2) As I said earlier, having the Flerken pick up four alien humanoids while Nick was holding the Flerken made zero sense from a physics point of view or from the powers which a Flerken has. If they want to display a Flerken as a Flerken, fine. If they want to imply that Fury is given superstrength by holding a Flerken, that isn't fine at all because the MCU isn't planning on "holding a Flerken" being something which gives someone superstrength. That was just an example of bad writing.

 

3) Flerken are intelligent enough to understand idiomatic English (comic book canon) but aren't intelligent enough to refrain from scratching out someone's eye for absolutely no reason (which real cats who are house pets can easily do)? No, that's just more bad writing.

 

 

If the movie hadn't suffered from not adequately developing the two alien races it was already introducing to the audience plus had done a good job of writing the Flerken (instead of screwing up majorly twice), I wouldn't have had a problem with the Flerken being part of the movie.

 

If Fury had put the cat down and been fighting an alien and Goose had swallowed four aliens while Fury's back was turned, that could have been a great comedic moment. Fury would have had a "what the hell happened" look on his face when he turned around then glanced down at Goose who was casually licking his paw and pretending that nothing odd had happened.

 

If the cat had been defending itself and Fury got his eye accidentally scratched while trying to save it, that could be understandable. But apparently I'm supposed to, as a moviegoer, like the Goose character even though it attacks allies at random and does them permanent serious harm?

 

If the movie had introduced any other Marvel alien race by having it randomly claw out the eye of one of the most popular characters in the MCU, I wouldn't be expected to like that alien race based on that experience. Why should a Flerken be any different? Why should the people who wrote this movie expect me to treat a Flerken any differently? 

 

Why should I emotionally treat it as a cat when the writers went out of their way to shove my face in the fact that it wasn't a cat? The writers portrayed our only example of the Flerken race as being a HUGE jerk. That doesn't endear me to this Flerken or to the Flerken race in general.

 

The writers should have easily got that much information out of test screenings of the movie, long before it was released, even if everyone in-house was too stupid to figure it out.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Yeah. 

 

Still don't have a problem with it. 

 

Wonder why they changed his name, though. 

[Greywind]

Top Gun

[archer]

15 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Wonder why they changed his name, though. 

 

Her Flerken's name was Chewie. The other known Flerken's name was Goose.

 

The MCU people more likely to run into Star Wars infringement problems than run into Top Gun infringement problems.

 

Just because Disney owns both Star Wars and the MCU doesn't necessarily mean that the two sections of the company play nice with each other.

[archer]

17 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yeah. 

 

Still don't have a problem with it. 

 

 

You're statement was "I don't get why so many folks (it's not just here) are bagging on the flerken" which seemed to imply that you wanted an explanation of why people are bagging on the Flerken.

 

If you had been honest up front and told me, "I don't care why people are bagging on the Flerken" I wouldn't have wasted my time writing up an explanation for you to read.

 

In case I wasn't clear up to this point, I find it irksome when people deliberately waste my time.

[Starlord]

We can't waste people's time?

 

Great, there goes about 75% of my posts.

 

 

 

Ok, ok...90%.

[archer]

51 minutes ago, Starlord said:

We can't waste people's time?

 

Great, there goes about 75% of my posts.

 

 

 

Ok, ok...90%.

 

If you misrepresent what you are wanting to accomplish by posting and thereby waste other people's time in writing a response, I would argue that you are being rude.

 

If you are intentionally misrepresenting, then I'd argue that you are being intentionally rude.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

You're statement was "I don't get why so many folks (it's not just here) are bagging on the flerken" which seemed to imply that you wanted an explanation of why people are bagging on the Flerken. 

 

Your intuition was correct:  I did not get it.  I appreciate you taking the time to provide a possible rationale. 

 

 

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

If you had been honest up front and told me, "I don't care why people are bagging on the Flerken" I wouldn't have wasted my time writing up an explanation for you to read. 

 

I told you nothing.  I made a statement on a message board, on a thread being participated in by many people. 

 

Now I will accept that this might have been less strenuous for you had I said "the players are taking a snack break, so I've got fifteen minutes or so to make a couple of calls, hunt up a couple of maintenance parts for the truck, and maybe squeeze a minute or two into checking out an online group I have grown to appreciate.  To that end, I ended up here and read this thread to see what other posts might be here.  That's how I found your reply, and I really appreciate it.  You might have a point: it makes sense that a reasonable number of people seeing this movie are even less-exposed to the source material than I am (which is really saying something).  Looking at it from that point of view, I don't really know that I wouldn't react the same way they are.  Thank you for pointing that out.  I can see that maybe they wanted something much cooler for the "how he lost his eye" story: like somehow taking a bullet in the eye but not the brain behind it.  Losing an eye to a scratch from an alien cat isn't super cool.

 

For what it's worth though, even knowing this, the flerken story just doesn't seem like something to get upset over: it was still backstory.  Ultimately it seems they are getting upset because the movie doesn't match their expectations or their head-canon or maybe some comic event, but it doesn't really seem like such a deal-breaker moment to me. "

 

The problem is its a hell of a lot to type in two minutes using two thumbs, and not having until just now how delicate you are, there wasn't a real drive to make sure all the implications came across.  I should have remembered that first and foremost, your feelings are the point of all communication. 

 

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

In case I wasn't clear up to this point, I find it irksome when people deliberately waste my time.

 

It might not come across that way, but I didn't intend to.  I understand irksome, though.  For me it's when someone assumes they are being victimized because something doesn't set right with them. 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

The MCU people more likely to run into Star Wars infringement problems than run into Top Gun infringement problems.

 

Ah! 

 

Funny; I hadn't even considered the Star Wars connection.   Good looking out.  Thanks! 

(have to add you to tomorrow's thanks list.  Seems I've still been too grateful of late.   

 

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

What the heck? 

 

My thank you to you went through, but the one from earlier didn't. 

 

Wierd.  Now I've got to hunt that post back down. 

 

Thanks again, though.