mcu_cosmic | CAPTAIN MARVEL REACTION POST

Unsorted thoughts:

Did you know this film is set in the ‘90s? This film is not entirely certain you know that it’s set in the ‘90s. It is going to throw some more ‘90s references at you just to make sure. Wait, maybe you missed it somehow. Here, have even more ‘90s references! Radio Shack! CD-ROMs! TLC! Grunge flannel! NiN! Moar ‘90s all the time!

They’ve really come a long way with that youngification sfx. Almost entirely (but not quite) out of the uncanny valley now. Young Samuel L. Jackson looks a hair more natural than young Clark Gregg, which I suspect is more due to the conventional wisdom regarding black people aging vs. white people aging than any kind of digital wizardry.

Side note, Brie Larson and Samuel L. have CRAZY chemistry which means now I ship them together. Maybe OT3 with Maria Rambeau? I will think on this further.

I would watch an entire other movie just focusing on pilot shenanigans. “The Adventures of Maria and Carol: Now With Even More Blatant Top Gun References”.

Which is probably my one current criticism, if you can call it that - the pacing is brisk, and the storytelling is good, and the screenplay+actors do a heroic job of jamming as much character relationships and emotion as they do in between all the explosions. But I wouldn’t have minded the running time being even longer, honestly, to see all the in-between bits that were cut, shown only in flashback, or only hinted at. There was A Lot of story to hurtle through at top speed, no lie.

I suspect the fact that a woman co-directed and co-wrote, and more women contributed to the story, is why this passes the Bechdel Test with stunning ease and is definitely the least problematic Marvel movie with regard to women. In fact, I keep discovering that all my favorite blockbuster movies of the last few years - the ones that have matured and made a marked leap in quality over the rocky comic book movies of yesteryear were all directed and/or written by a non-white and/or non-male person. HMMMMMMMM.

The sfx really do look stunning. Like, I really enjoyed Aquaman, and the sfx were...fine in that movie, but Marvel is on a whole different level, seriously. That’s what Disney money will get ya, I guess.

Comic book fans will find themselves on the receiving end of some interesting plot twists. I was more surprised than I would’ve been if I’d gone in without any preconceptions stemming from comic book knowledge, actually.

And my verdict is: I like what the MCU did with it. Especially because it turned into another not-so-subtle anti-imperialism metaphor with some pointed jabs about refugees seeking asylum, and I am 100% here for that.

Comic book fans will find themselves on the receiving end of some interesting plot twists. I was more surprised than I would’ve been if I’d gone in without any preconceptions stemming from comic book knowledge, actually.

I really liked what they did with that! I've seen theories for years that Captain Marvel would be the entrypoint into the MCU version of Secret Invasion, where some people get impersonated by Skrulls for a long time and no one realizes, and I love that we just cut that whole storyline off at the knees and got this one instead. :')

Exactly! That’s the kind of “edgy twist” that’s actually edgy and a twist. On one hand, I have complicated feelings about these kinds of messages coming from studios owned by massive corporations that aid and abet in the exact kind of behavior that the messages are against...but on the other hand, I still absolutely, gleefully love that one of the biggest movies of 2019 revolves entirely around a big, fat, massive “fuck you” to anti-refugee narratives.

It’s literally about asylum seekers! And the native-born citizens who immediately and with no reservations jump to help them find asylum as soon as they realize that the Empire Metaphor has been lying to them. What a gloriously blatant middle finger to all nativists everywhere, endorsed and backed by one of the biggest economic powerhouses anywhere, completely immune to their tiny xenophobic fists.

I've seen theories for years that Captain Marvel would be the entrypoint into the MCU version of Secret Invasion, where some people get impersonated by Skrulls for a long time and no one realize

I was FUCKING DREADING that, including the supposed proof that 'oh some of your faves will have been Skrulls'! Ugh.

Especially because it turned into another not-so-subtle anti-imperialism metaphor with some pointed jabs about refugees seeking asylum, and I am 100% here for that.

YES, SAME.

Man, that opening Marvel Logo pulled no punches, did it?

I enjoyed it! Amazing job on showing relationships. I was expecting less emotions and more punching to rock and roll. Even though I made it to the theater and free of spoilers and other people reactions, I still get so intense about watching Marvel films that I always needs to seen them 2x just to get past my own expectations.

I adored all the characters.

They really went all out for some interesting compositions. Nice.

Edit: More thoughts at my journal.

Edited 2019-03-08 10:03 (UTC)

OH MY GOD THAT MARVEL LOGO AS;LDKJFASLKDJFA;LSKJDFA

You could *hear* the gasp in my theater, and then people started applauding. It was so touching.

I am delighted to get both emotions AND punching to rock and roll, because I need both to be truly happy. :') And thanks for linking to your journal post!

It was great.

Honestly, the "hero becomes fully realised" moment with that montage of past Carol getting up and up and up again meanwhile the Kree realise they're actually fucked as she's winning against the AI, I died.

And then I died some more when Carol cut through Yon-Rogg's manipulative dude bullshit by refusing to play his game, I literally clutched my heart, it was that good.

The Skrull reversal was excellent! I understand they've been villains in the comic books so I expected them to stay villains, but nah.

All the humor was great, all the actors were great. I loved Fury getting proper screentime for once and it looked like Jackson was having fun with it too.

The end scene made me like 100% more excited for Endgame.

All your feelings are my feelings!! The hero moment, Carol just blasting Yon-Rogg (SO satisfying), and I freaking love the Skrull reversal. And it helped me be more excited for Endgame, too, which I appreciate, bc I've been kind of just bracing myself for it up until now.

OMG, I LOVED THE MOVIE!

NGL, I approached it with rather high expectations and the movie delivered pretty much 99.999999% of the time. My ONLY GRIPE is that we didn't get any Carol/Younger!Rhodey mentioned or shown (like in the comic books).

I have a longish post abt my feels to write (my notes were copious) and I'll link back to it.

The end scene made me even MORE excited for Endgame. ;_____;

I was really surprised by how much more excited I am about Endgame now! Love her just APPEARING inside their compound, which I feel is not a power she displayed in the movie proper.

i saw it last night and i can't even put into words how i feel about that movie. i cried (like holy shit that scene where they show her getting knocked down but then SHE see's herself getting back up and that's what makes her fight back?? sobbing into my hands) and spent most of it grinning like an idiot just so happy to see carol up on the big screen (and also i saw you kelly sue congrats on the cameo!)

and that END CREDITS SCENE even though i just watched a whole movie with her in it when she showed up i still gasped as loud as i did in the infinity war scene where her logo showed up on the pager.

god i don't even know what i want to say except i want to go see it again right now and also i need endgame to HURRY UP.

Man I totally missed the Kelly Sue cameo!! I'm so glad she got one, though. I started reading Marvel comics shortly after Carol got her big redesign and Kelly Sue started writing her, and it's wild to see Carol on the BIG SCREEN just six years later.

I really enjoyed it, and several times I was just overwhelmed with delight. My previous knowledge of Carol is mostly drawn from the Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon and this Carol isn't quite the same but I love her anyway.

I have a (spoilery) reaction post at my journal but will pull one bit out to share here:

Maybe the montage of Getting Back Up Again was a bit heavyhanded, but I loved it, and it reminded me of Miles in Into The Spider-Verse. There's a lot of parallels between both films: the person who becomes powerful by being in the right place at the right time, who becomes a hero by what they decide to do with that power, who keeps getting back up again.

I loved the montage, no matter how heavyhanded, and I liked how it was paired with the Supreme Intelligence telling Carol she was nothing. And then she PROVED IT WRONG.

Just that bit where she walks up the power blast - it's hard and it's difficult but she is NOT GIVING UP. (Carol gets back up again because Fuck You)

(I am about 90% sure there's a similar walking-up-the-power-beam scene in Earth's Mightiest Heroes - which has a completely different plot about Skrulls - but I've had a migraine today and can't watch moving pictures, so I can't check it out.)

"Carol gets back up again because Fuck You" is such an excellent tagline. :')

Maybe the montage of Getting Back Up Again was a bit heavyhanded, but I loved it, and it reminded me of Miles in Into The Spider-Verse.

It actually reminded me of the last episode of Buffy where she gives that speech, "Every girl who can stand up, will stand up" and they show girls all over the world getting back up again. One of them is even playing baseball, just like young Carol.

Oh that's cool. I missed the last season of Buffy because around the time it was broadcast I moved out of the shared house with a subscription to the right TV channel, and I never did catch up on it again.

There are lots of little bits and pieces that I enjoyed about it. The lack of 'sexy skin' and no romantic plot, even Jude Law's character sparring with her but not in a sexual way. Her and Fury's friendship and how much Fury trusted her to be competent. She's running around the ship playing decoy against a dozen and more Kree fighters, while he has the cat that's swallowed the Tesseract - but he's not raw about it at all.

I really loved the way that she just did her job without any particular angst. There was a setback, but she just got back to her feet and went about doing it. No drama, just do it.

Annette Bening did a great job as the Supreme Intelligence and Mar-Vell/Dr. Lawson, and Ben Mendelson as the Skrull leader (and in the end, ally) was an excellent choice.

Overall, I'm happy with it. I was just hoping to be entertained, and I was and I enjoyed it, and I'll go back and watch it again.

I didn't realize until someone pointed it out to me, but the most skin we ever see on Carol is her knees through her holey jeans. And it was SO refreshing. Meanwhile I spent the entire movie fanning myself, because holy crap that confident strut is 🔥🔥🔥.

I really loved both Bening and Mendelsohn. They had me in the palm of their hands pretty much from the beginning.

(Actually, I think she might have gotten that comment from me.)

Yeah, even I didn't realise it until I walked out of the theatre and was giving non-spoilers to friends in a Discord room.

I really want the sequel to have more of both of them. And be set in the present day. And show us Monica and what she's doing, and have Maria Hill take over the Fury-type role. (Okay, so, I want Maria Hill to be much more in everything in MCU, and not always paired up with Fury, but this is me, so...)

Please, please, please let there be a CapMarvel 2. Please...

Fortunately, with a projected opening weekend of like $150 million, I don't think there is any doubt that we're getting a Captain Marvel 2. :D And yeah, I'm really excited to see what kinds of stories they can give Carol (and Maria Rambeau!) now that she's all established.

Edited 2019-03-11 03:21 (UTC)

I am way out of it, such that I know not what a 'good' opening weekend is.

But I figured that, even if the numbers weren't absofuckinglutely amazing, we'd get something after Endgame.

I guess, also, I'm a little worried since I saw it at 5pm the day after it opened and the theatre was at the local megaplex cinema had 300+ seats and maybe 20 people were there watching it. I mean, I chose the time as the least likely to have people there, but I expected at least half-full...

Well, if it makes you feel any better, my local had 35 showings yesterday and most of them were mostly sold out when I showed up at noon. In any case, the articles I read said this was on track to be the 7th-best opening weekend for an MCU movie, which is very solid.

Much better. Thank you. :)

Friday evening IMAX on opening day here, the screen was FULL. Both multiplexes in my town had 10+ showings a day over the weekend, and even the arts cinema has it on a few times in the big screen.

(I was hoping to take Older Child to see it (he's 12) but I was flattened by a migraine on Sunday, so it'll be sometime this weekend instead.)

I'm not even sure what to add, and I clearly need to get a Carol icon in her new colors, but I just loved it from beginning to end. It was more character-driven than many of the Marvel movies, at least I felt it was, and I was just so there for her.

In the mid-credits scene, when Carol showed up at the Remnants-of-the-Avengers HQ, the whole audience broke into cheers and applause. What did she actually say to Natasha, please? Because we couldn't hear it. I'll go back and see another showing over spring break when I can go midweek and it'll be quieter, but meanwhile I have no idea.

"Where's Fury?"

Thank you!

Edited 2019-03-10 15:53 (UTC)

No problem! :D

I believe she asked where Fury was, something like that. It was hard to hear over my own glee.

Considering all the blowback I'm still seeing around social media, I was delighted that the audience was so loud I couldn't hear the line!

I went to a 12:30 (daytime) showing and it was packed, and the guy at the window said all the showings were already mostly sold out up through about nine pm, I think he said. They had THIRTY-FIVE showings yesterday across (I think?) five screens, and for context, they're a 17-screen theater. So yeah.

I wrote a longer reaction post here, but in particular:

I love what they did with Mar-Vell. In the comics Mar-Vell is a dude, the first Captain Marvel, and I think he and Carol might have been romantically involved? Having her instead be an older woman Carol looked up to was fantastic.

I also thought the Themes worked well. Carol getting told how she should feel by a man, Carol telling that man that she didn't have anything to prove to him: v good. The big scene where the Supreme Intelligence tells Carol that without the Kree she's only human felt VERY MUCH like it was lifted straight from BtVS Becoming Part 2, and was satisfying for the same reason. And did I get that right, that the thing behind the ear that Jude Law and co said was the source of her powers was actually dampening them? Because if so, I reeeally liked that.

That was the impression that I got -- that it was actually some kind of restraining device. And yes to the Buffy parallel.

"We said we were helping you but actually we were deliberately holding you back." HMMMMMM.

Most #relatable sequence in the whole thing, if you ask me.

aaaah I saw this movie two days ago and I’m still incoherent about how much I love it

Maria/Carol is my new ship forever though. And I’m super here for all of the Carol & Fury buddy cop shenanigans, because I just loved how they played off of each other.

I am 100% here for more of Carol’s intergalactic adventures, Marvel!!!!

ALLLL the intergalactic adventures!! Given them to meeeee.

Linkage to my super-belated Captain Marvel post/review

Yay! :)

CAPTAIN MARVEL REACTION POST

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I'm not feeling too coherent abt how much I liked this movie.

Re: I'm not feeling too coherent abt how much I liked this movie.

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