No spoilers in the article, although there may be in the comments. Just don’t scroll down that far if you don’t want to see them.
Last night was the opening of Captain Marvel, opening the way for the last Marvel movie of 2019, Avengers: Endgame in April. There is a Spider-man movie, and a couple of X-men movies coming out in 2019, but they aren’t being created at Marvel Studios.
Captain Marvel is a competent super-hero movie, but origin stories are getting to be a by the numbers affair. At least in this one the audience is joined by Captain Marvel’s alter-ego Vers in not know anything about herself. Brie Larson nails the role and is backed up by an amazing cast, but in the end, it’s an origin story. We see her get powers, overcome diversity, and learn where she fits in. When watching a super hero movie I have a simple way of grading how good the movie is. Am I engrossed in the movie or am I just waiting for the hero to use their powers? Walking out of the 2008 Iron Man it was definitely the former. I wasn’t waiting for Iron Man because the movie was so good. Captain Marvel falls into the latter, I was waiting for her to use her powers.
There are a ton of fun little Easter Eggs through out the movie, and the youngification of Samuel L. Jackson is amazing. The interesting part to me is that ’95 isn’t that much different from ’19, except for the lack of cellphones. The opening Marvel movie credits were touching.
The jokes were pretty good, although I felt that a bunch of them seemed to be out of place. I don’t know if scenes were re-shot to make them funnier or if they added the jokes while filming, but it hurt the pacing of the movie.
I rate Captain Marvel an Evening Showing, not quite a must see opening nighter. And if you were wondering, there are two after credits scenes.