Before RytheGeek reviews Endgame (which comes out next week), Mabel and RytheGeek reviewed Captain Marvel. So here we go. Spoilers in all.

Mabel-

Captain Marvel was ok.

The action was there, the plot was there, the characters were there but, that being said, there were a few things about it that bothered me as a veiwer.

Please note: I have no lore or background or previous love for Captain Marvel or any Marvel character. Everything I observe is solely based on how I felt about the movies. Everything I say is how I felt slowed the movie or made it unbelievable (go figure, a superhero movie being unbelievable).

I find that recently it is a trend, especially with female superheros, to have a scene where someone struggles with a task for a few minutes before the main character fixes it to show off their power/knowledge.

In the movie, Captain Marvel and Nick Fury are stuck in a secure room where they had to get out. For a solid 3 minutes, Fury painstakingly lifts a security guard’s fingerprint off his badge with tape and uses it to open the secure door. Later, they’re met with another door that Captain Marvel just blasts the handle off the door within seconds.

Under the time crunch they had, my question is why would a military trained officer like Captain Marvel allow precious minutes to be wasted to watch Fury struggle? You can argue that it was a funny scene but there are less time consuming ways to pull that scene off without losing it’s punch.

The movie itself is very fast paced, sometimes not even allowing the audience a chance to breath and process before sucking us back into action and information, which is something I kind of expect from an origin movie. Because of this fast paced, information packed format, there were a few things that were rushed in the interest of time.

In the movie, the Kree had been waging a war on the alien race of Skrulls. Captain Marvel had been apart of Kree’s battle for some time but, upon coming to Earth, she learns that she might be on the wrong side of the fight.

The development of Captain Marvel switching sides happened too fast. It literally only took one short scene for her to decide that the Kree were actually that bad guys. The transformation was not earned. After Captain Marvel gets her memories back, she learns that her previous commander was an alien fighting on the wrong side of a war and that her commander was shot by her new Kree commander. The reason Captain Marvel switches sides is vage at best; there are so many unanswered questions and assumptions that she had to ignore:

Which side of the war was Vell talking about?

How could she know that the man who killed Vell wasn’t actually a Skrull pretending to be him?

Why trust Vell after she lied to her about her race?

The decision was made so fast that it almost doesn’t make sense. After we get to the hidden ship, then it makes sense but Captain Marvel had already made up her mind before that.

RytheGeek-

I had trouble writing this review. For a lot of reasons. On the one hand I don’t feel this movie was for me, it’s not your typical guy superhero flick, and that’s great. I loved Wonder Woman and initially I loved Captain Marvel too. It was fun and fast and bright and shiny. But after sitting down and thinking about it I had some huge issues with it.

First I think they ruined a perfectly good villain. This is the same issue I had with Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3. All three movies took amazing comic book villains and made them lame and weak compared to their counterparts. The Skrulls has so much potential. They literally could have changed the face of Marvel and the MCU as we know it. Instead they just were refugees. While I do understand the political importance in today’s climate of discussing refugees, I don’t think it should be infused in films. Unless you are making a strictly political film. They took an amazing villain bank and made them lame. Just as they did in Iron Man 3 to the Mandarin and Ultron in Avengers 2. All had great potential and yet…

My second big issue is something Mabel touched on, the turn over. Flash back to one of the best MCU movies to date, Captain America Winter Solider. We meet the title character, the Winter Solider and discover who he really is, Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s best friend. We find out Bucky was brainwashed by Hydra to be the perfect assassin. Sound familiar?But he was brainwashed by mere mortals and not a super advanced alien race may I remind you. Bucky, just like Carol, tries to break his “programming”. The major difference between them is that he spends five years after he learns the truth breaking his programming. She spends mere hours or days. I guess Hydra could be better at brainwashing, but I really doubt it.

My last big issue is why I’ve hesitated writing this article, the worst part of the movie, which isn’t even in the movie at all!

The fans.

I’ve been part of toxic fandoms before, like Rick and Morty or Star Wars. But this is the first one that made me truest uncomfortable. If you don’t love, and I mean loooove, Captain Marvel, you’re called sexist and bigoted. I’ve seen it in the comments. I’m not hating on this movie because of females. I’m hating because of plot holes. I hate Iron Man 3 just as much and I consider myself a huge Iron Man fan. I think people can critique movies and films and not be sexist pigs.

Personally I think Brie Larson has been a large contributor to the toxic fan culture. She acts like she knows everything about comic books and is the best actress ever. Her interviews have shown as much. And quite frankly she isn’t. She even lied about doing her own stunts, which is clearly wrong. She has pictures on set with her.

That all being said I still didn’t hate Captain Marvel. I give it a solid 7/10. It could have been far worse. They had great action and I love the Fury/Danvers dynamic. Not to mention Goose. That cat is great.

Thanks for reading

-Mabel and RytheGeek

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