REVIEW: Captain Marvel

This review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Captain Marvel was absolutely brilliant.

It isn’t my favorite Marvel film, nor is it my least favorite Marvel film. It’s somewhere up at the top.

My theater experience was enjoyable. I had a pretty active crowd with me. Lot’s of Marvel fans to talk to beforehand, applause, gasps and laughter at just the right times. The Stan Lee tribute was beautiful (the applause in my theater after made it even more special). His cameo was fitting too, rehearsing his line from Mallrats- which came out the year Captain Marvel is set in.

First of all, let’s just get one thing clear: Brie’s acting was very well done, not stoic or boring at all, and I felt that she played Carol’s character accurately. I loved Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run of the Captain Marvel comics and I can see how this movie reflected those comics. I also loved the little easter eggs like Torfa and “Lieutenant Trouble” from DeConnick’s comic run too.

The overall acting was on point. The writing- especially the humor- was amazing and I feel that the writers made each character perfect. I especially loved the relationships between “Auntie” Carol, Monica, and Maria, they were very touching and beautiful.

One element that stood out to me the most was Ben Mendleson’s character and acting, his performance as Talos was phenomenal and his character was fun. I especially loved him in the scenes with the plot twist of Carol joining the side of the Skrulls, and the scene where he appears in Maria and Monica’s house really showed his character’s depth.

Another character I liked was Goose the cat! He really stole the show around the near-end of the movie. I loved the way that Talos hinted at Goose’s true nature before the big reveal, and I loved the reactions afterward.

One element that I didn’t like were the visual effects in the last battle, especially the part when Carol was falling to Earth. The VFX of that scene did not look too good. It reminds me of the negative reactions to the VFX of the final battle scene of Black Panther.

On the other hand, Marvel has truly perfected the de-aging in their films. Both Fury and Coulson looks great and now I can’t wait to see how it looks in the upcoming Black Widow movie.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones where Carol is finding her way around Earth, or C-53. Her reactions and ways of figuring out things like pay phones and computers were fun and interesting to watch. I also loved the scenes where Carol decides to help the Skrulls and the scene that revealed the Kree warriors Yon-Rogg and Minn-Erva were there when Mar-Vell died and Carol got her powers, not the Skrulls.

But my favorite scene has to be the montage of Carol falling and standing up again, leading to her face-off against the Great Intelligence and then the Kree. It really showed how powerful she is and now I can’t wait to see her in Endgame!

Now, the post-credits scenes... WHEW!

The first one I had expected, thanks to Twitter spoiling it for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It felt like a not-so-gentle reminder of what was happening in the present-day Marvel universe. It showed us where some of the characters were now and that they had Fury’s pager- though we don’t know how they got it. It also had kind of a jump scare with Captain Marvel appearing at the last second asking where Fury was.

The highlight of that scene for me was Natasha and Carol in the same shot. My favorite character with another one of my favorite characters? It’s a hell yes from me, cheif.

The second post-credit scene was more on the humorous side, like the second post-credit scene in Ant-Man and the Wasp. It was just Goose looking like he was going to cough up a hairball, but instead it was the Tesseract. To think of all the characters that held it, and it had cat- sorry, Flerkin- spit all over it. Yuck.

Overall, I give Captain Marvel a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars, and I really want to go see it again soon!