Wanted to wait to see this a second time before really compiling any thoughts on it, give it a bit of time to breathe and see if second viewing made it shine a little brighter as some movies tend to.
Yeah, I don't know. Very much a mixed bag with this one, and kind of hit me a little harder than stuff like Guardians 2 being a little lesser than the first, or The Dark World or Iron Man 2 or whatever. All in all it's a better movie than The Dark World, but it somehow...ground my nerves a little more, if that makes sense. Rather than just an ambivalent shrug and a "well, that kinda sucked", it was more frustrating than that if only because the directors are more talented than this and there's clearly an awesome movie buried in here somewhere.
Performance-wise, Brie was fine, the people dwelling on her as a problem are just the usual suspect jackasses. She basically did what she could with the material, it's simply that she wasn't exactly given much of substance to chew on. The writing on this really ****ing bugged me, it's all just so...surface level, or something. Cliches abound, sure, but that's not even my major problem with it (nothing wrong with a more straight-down-the-line hero arc story now and then), more just like...if I wasn't familiar with the books I don't think I'd know jack**** about Carol as a person by the end of this movie. "She's...confident & snarky, grew up with crappy parents, is uber-powerful now and with a chip on her shoulder about proving her self-worth? Okay?"
I dunno, the Skrull thing is...yeah, I might not dig it personally, but it kinda works in a vacuum. Mendelsohn's performance is awesome, but it all did seem a little lazy & trope-y too. In a way sorta glad I saw it coming before the movie was out, give a little space to process it and in that sense it didn't rub me the wrong way upon seeing it. That way you can kinda more just take it on the merits and see if it works in context. Which it mostly...does. Only certain other stuff plot-wise kinda...doesn't.
On second viewing I still didn't get what the hell was up with the FTL-engine. The Skrulls are portrayed as pretty much on-par (or at least loosely comparable in a fight, Trek-style ships & laser guns and all) with the Kree in the first part of the movie. They're said to have taken Kree "worlds", plural. Leading to the logical..."Wouldn't that indicate they have faster-than-light travel any-the-****-way?!" They're capable of travelling from system to system, they're capable of defeating the Kree in certain circumstances and clawing away at parts of the empire. Couldn't they have theoretically found other worlds anyway? They sure don't seem any less advanced than the various other races/people in Guardians space, for example. And on top of that they've literally beaten the Kree in various turf war battles, which would seem to put them in a broad sense competitive with the Xandarians or whoever. Who can travel from system to system with ease too.
Just struck me as a little stupid.
As for more positives, the kid playing Monica was damn awesome. So rare you get realistic-seeming kid characters in movies, they're usually all so over-written and on-the-nose quippy and stuff. But she just felt real, in the same way the Iron Man 3 kid did, really cool handling of that character. Bringing some pathos and showing that particular side of Carol, but without it being all forced & blahh. Maria was cool too, that one scene with she & Carol conversing alone was one of the main high points of the flick. Just a shame there's so little of that, for most of the movie I just plain didn't give much of a ****. They also didn't really seem to bother defining Carol's abilities in even a basic sense either, beyond the obvious. Yeah, they didn't really spend any time on it with Steve in TFA either, but you sought of get the jist pretty quickly, "he's just stronger than us and runs fast & jumps high, but can't do any super shiz", for a general audience type I think those people could have used a little more time on that.
Sam's fun, in the way Sam's always fun. All of that more or less worked. The eye thing's a little annoying, but not really a big deal either, whatever, so they played the eye for laughs. Schmeh.
Coulson...really didn't freakin' need to be there. That felt a little forced reference-y wink-wink to me. Was digging those MIB vibes with 90s S.H.I.E.L.D. though.
The Kree crew were...y'know, fine, got the job done. Whatever. Law was okay, kinda felt the same way as with Brie on that: the actors were fine, they brought what they could to proceedings without a whole lot to work with. Law kinda felt like poor-man's Shannon-Zod, not a bad thing. The whole "my mentor's the bad guy, whoaa, evil from within!" stuff is so played out though.
Kinda dug what they were going for with Bening's Supreme Intelligence, in context doesn't bug me we never got the head-in-a-jar, it wasn't necessary with the style here. That being said, she didn't exactly have anything too standout writing-wise as the SI, and all the Mar-Vell stuff fell pretty flat for me.
Liked a lot of the visual design here, Hala looked great, and some of the more understated parts of the earth stuff was nice, the town & desert stuff. The military base screamed 90s movies, which was cool.
Gotta say though, the third act of this just really had me not giving two monkey-****s about anything, both viewings. Huge CG lightshow with no stakes whatsoever, really really disappointing. So many movies are guilty of this now, but usually with the Marvel flicks you at least have something sort of grounding you to care about what's going on. I hated the big digital cluster**** battle in Black Panther too, but at least they'd sowed significant characterization roots to where you were willing to ride it out until the talking started again. Here I was just mentally out of it for 20 minutes, until the Brie/Jude square-off in the desert. And even that wasn't much of a palette cleanser - it was fine, just...ehh. The fight stuff
really wasn't a strong suit with this movie, first second and third act alike.
Really kind of disappointing overall, and in a weird way, because it's certainly not the worst MCU movie. Probably more just that I was expecting it'd be a top-tier offering, and the trailers really made it seem like it'd deliver. I really liked the cast, most of the jokes hit home, they handle the "girl power!" stuff more-or-less fine (it's definitely not as effective as Wonder Woman in that regard though). Cinematography's decent when they're not going all ADD kid waving glowsticks around while watching a fireworks show in the CG-diarrhea finale. Victim-Skrulls works fine in a vacuum, despite being a little eye-rolling simplistic and creating some hurdles if they're going to be brought back.
Overall, and this is the prime problem, majority of the time I just couldn't really seem to give a ****.
It's a 7/10 movie, it's basically competent, I just...yeah, snickering at the wisecracks and a warm smile at the Carol/Monica stuff aside, I really didn't even remotely care. That's probably something I could only say about The Dark World among the other MCU stuff, and while Captain Marvel's a better movie than that, it's a pretty frustrating common point to have.
