sholio | Captain Marvel

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Captain Marvel

Seen it! I'm cutting my general emotional reaction to avoid spoiling, but you might want to click on that before clicking on the spoilers if you are planning to read them.

I was entertained but not impressed. If you don't want squee-harshing, don't click the spoiler section.

I was definitely entertained. I was never bored, I laughed a lot, I got a fun adrenaline jolt from the thrill stuff. It was a fun way to spend two hours and I certainly don't regret watching it. It also hung together fairly tightly as a movie. It wasn't a bad movie. It was a really fun movie.

But then once I walked out of the theater, it was just ... there was no there there. A lot of the MCU movies leave me full of feelings, full of thoughts, full of fic I want to write, and dying to see it again. This one I found very forgettable. It wasn't the worst movie in the MCU, but it wasn't a favorite. It was just kind of ... there.

I ended up talking a lot with Orion about why it was such a total meh for me, even though I really loved a lot of individual elements of the movie. Because I did! The casting and acting was great, I loved Carol and Fury's buddy-movie act and Brie Larson's delight in her powers and her flat-faced murder walk; the cat was hilarious (and such a cat), the 90s milieu was a lot of fun, the domestic stuff with the Rambeaus was delightful, the twist with the Skrulls was unexpected, and I'm still extremely weak for Jude Law's face.

But there was just no ... depth. The stomach-wrenching feels weren't there. I think the issue I had with the entire movie is summed up by the scene in which Fury loses his eye to ... a cat scratch. It was funny. I laughed. And then, that's it. There's no gravitas there. It's just a throwaway joke.

THE WHOLE MOVIE WAS LIKE THAT. It was full of great jokes and killer action sequences and fun set pieces and an occasional emotionally triumphant moment, all of which went together to create ... not really much of anything. And it should have! The elements were there! But the things in the movie that should have created hugely wrenching emotional resonance were never really allowed to resonate.

I loved that Carol is an adrenaline junkie who delights in using her powers. But at the same time, over the course of the movie she finds out that her whole life was a lie, that she had her humanity stolen from her, that the people she believed were her friends have been lying to her and don't care about her, and that she's been on the wrong side all along and was forced to be complicit in war crimes, and all it really ends up with is "whee, I can fly now!" None of it really affects her all that much.

Similarly, I really liked at the beginning that after the Kree being basically The Evil Empire in the GotG movies, in this movie we got to meet some Kree and see a more sympathetic side to them ... and then all of them turned out to be evil dicks, so ... okay, I guess? Especially for a movie with a lot of military characters, the fact that they were her comrades in arms and brothers/sisters under fire should have meant more, on both sides.

I wanted nuance. I wanted conflictedness. I wanted the final confrontation between Carol and Yon-Rogg to mean something, rather than just kind of being a non-fight and a little triumphant moment for Carol. I felt like the movie wanted so hard to be an empowerment story that it never really allowed Carol to lose, or even to come close to losing.

And I think it bothers me more because Wonder Woman didn't do this. I feel like ... okay, I know it's not fair to compare the two recent female-led superhero movies, I realize that, but here's why I think it's a valid comparison: they both had a similar central problem to deal with. Their protagonist is basically invulnerable, vastly overpowered compared to everyone she's around, she's a generally upbeat person who doesn't really have dark moments of the soul, and the movie itself is built around a female-empowerment theme; people are not going into the movie wanting to see the protagonist smacked down, they're going in wanting to see her win.

And yet, in WW, the emotional gravitas that I felt missing from this movie was there. Diana suffered and hurt and lost. The whole movie was about Diana losing her innocence, in a way; she has to make the terrible decision to go against her people in order to do what's right, she's forced to confront the very worst that humanity can do to each other, she has to deal with the fact that even all her powers aren't enough to save everyone, and then she ultimately loses the person she's closest to. It never felt like Diana skated along the surface of everything without being dirtied. And yet, despite all that (because of all that, even), the movie was incredibly uplifting and empowering.

This movie just never really had those dark moments of the soul that are necessary to make the uplifting parts meaningful. Her triumphant moment telling Yon-Rogg she doesn't need his approval, for example - it doesn't mean a whole lot because we never really saw her struggle with wanting his approval (or anyone else's). Turning her back on the Kree isn't a particularly meaningful choice because she's found out by that point that they lied to her and are basically evil; why wouldn't she? The narrative hands her easy choices instead of hard ones; it gives her convenient allies and friends/family whenever she needs them; it wrenches the floor out from under her feet and then provides her with a nice set of wings so the lack of a floor doesn't matter.

But it didn't have to be this way! All the elements of a much more feelsy, emotionally meaningful movie are there; it's just that the protagonist never really has a chance to be more than lightly dented and bounces back immediately.

I wanted the movie where finding out that her whole life is a lie shatters her and she has to claw her way back but can never quite put things back the way they were before. I wanted the movie where the playful camaraderie we saw between her and Yon-Rogg and the others at the beginning doesn't just flip instantly into "welp, guess they're evil now" once the reveal happens, but instead they all have to deal with the shock and pain of having really come to care about her, on her side the gut-wrenching misery of knowing she was lied to and had her entire life stolen by people she trusted, and on their side the pain of knowing everything is blowing apart and it's their fault.

I wanted a movie that pushed the feels a lot harder than this one did. I wanted a movie that didn't tie up everything in a neat bow, but left a mess that the characters are still having to sort through at the movie's end, like the best MCU movies do.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'm really delighted that the movie has done so well! One thing about the movie being as generally PG-ish and non-challenging in nature as it is, is that it's fairly accessible for kids, and I would love to have this become a bunch of tween girls' favorite-ever movie. I hope it spawns a ton of Carol/Maria femslash ~~while I'm over here wanting 100K of Carol and Yon-Rogg crash-landing on a deserted planet and forced to work together, LOL~~. As a movie, I'm glad it exists in the world. It was two hours entertainingly spent, and then an increasing source of frustration as I've been trying to articulate to myself why I don't really have feelings about it (other than "meh"), so this post is mostly me trying to work out those feelings.

I'm glad people who loved the movie love it and have it in their lives.

And it definitely gave me ideas for applying the Kree, Skrulls, and Carol to the rest of the cosmic MCU, so that'll be fun.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

THANK FUCK SOMEONE SAID IT

before I watched the movie, I saw one too many annoying tumblr posts about how Carol is a lesbian and how people were SO GLAD she's not going to be shipped with a man; and meanwhile I spent the entire movie zinging on the chemistry between Carol and Yon Rogg, between Carol and Nick, and Maria and Carol are wonderful together and I love them but I'm much more likely to ship them in a friend way than in a femslash way; there's nothing wrong with Carol/Maria slash but it's just. too fucking anodyne for my tastes. I want something I can sink my teeth into.

I feel you on needing 100k of Carol and Yon Rogg having to work through their issues and while I can't write 100k, I may be able to do something with your idea, if you're okay with that.

But like. Thanks for writing this post. I needed to hear it from someone else too

THANK YOU, I feel much less alone. :D

On the one hand: I think it's wonderful that there's no canon romance subplot in the movie, and I'm thrilled that the movie set up a femslash pairing with a good, solid canonical basis, that people seem to be taking and running with. The MCU is in desperate need of those. You totally can write both Carol and Maria as lesbians with no need to write around canon love interests, and that's vanishingly rare in the MCU. (Obviously canonical lesbians would be better yet, but, well, here we are in this year 2019 and we still don't have that, so.)

But yeah, the problem is that I know the kind of pairings I go for, and it's generally pairings with some bite and messed-up-ness to them, not the BFF types, so it is absolutely no surprise that my id decided to cheerfully skip past all the nice femslash potential and go straight for the "omg, brain, THIS AGAIN??" pairing, LOL.

I feel you on needing 100k of Carol and Yon Rogg having to work through their issues and while I can't write 100k, I may be able to do something with your idea, if you're okay with that.

OMG PLEASE DO. I'm unlikely to write it for various reasons, so the idea is free to a good home. (If I'm throwing out Captain Marvel plot bunnies anyway, the other rather iddy thing I was thinking about with them was Carol, like 15 or 20 years later, discovering him by total accident in a Kree slave market or on the run or something - sort of a version of how Nebula comes back into GotG2 when the team picks her up as a prisoner, and no one trusts her AT ALL or has any particular inclination to be nice to her, but they're taking her along with them as a prisoner for reasons, and kinda get used to having her around; basically that with Carol and Yon-Rogg.)

right?? I like to think of myself as a ~wlw~ but I skipped straight past Maria and Carol and landed on Jude Law's fucking....jawline.

also the slave market thing is SUCH a good idea but I'm likely to write it as "Yon Rogg finds Carol in a slave market and takes her home and intense guilt-lust-tension follows" because I am...like That. RIP

My main thought at this point is "...what if he sees the supreme intelligence as Carol" I'm SO hung up on this idea but like. I need a lot more handholding to write than most other people so unless I can find a beta/cheerleader soon these very good ideas will languish BUT IM DOING MY BEST WITH THEM!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

My main thought at this point is "...what if he sees the supreme intelligence as Carol"

brb screaming into the void for the next ten minutes or so

:D!!! I just want them to be brilliantly angsty together, and for Yon Rogg to love Carol so much but be unable to be there for her or love her or do things for her in a meaningful way and how much that inability hurts them both like ;_;

Hi I like you, thank you for writing this post. ❤️

Ha, thank you. ♥

I think I'm less satisfied with this movie the more I look back on it; like, I don't think any of the supporting characters actually had arcs of their own, or motivations beyond "this is cool, let's do this". I think one reason why I'm not really interested in writing fic for it is because I don't feel like I know why most of the characters did anything in the movie. They're either inconsistent as people, or the writing was such that it used humor to suck the emotion out of a key scene so the impact isn't really there (e.g. a scene between a mother and her little girl where she's going off to war to maybe die, that was played in a mostly funny way; I laughed at the time and then looking back on it later, it's like - yeah, okay, that needed to be serious, not undercut by humor).

I feel like a lot of the issues I have with this movie specifically are issues that you have with the post-TWS MCU at large (but that haven't really hit me prior to this one) - it's like, the emotional reality doesn't work, the plot reality doesn't really work in a way that breaks things later on. The thing most of the MCU is really good at is convincing me of the reality of the characters as people, and this movie doesn't do that, even with characters who are in other movies, like Fury. (To give it credit, the one it does the best with by far is the protagonist, but it kept pulling punches; it felt like it was never willing to let go and really hammer on her as a character.)

❤️ honestly this post has helped to ease my (totally irrational, entirely based on my crazy being harder to wrangle right now due to job searching) sense of being Wrong and Stupid and Bad for being so underwhelmed? So honestly thank you for making it.

Like you I'm really happy that the people who liked it liked it so much! Yay for them! Yay for the precedent setting/reinforcement! But....yeah. So. ❤️

There's been some analysis on how Iron Man and Jon Favreau/RDJ set the tone for the MCU, how a lot of the writers and directors took the wrong lessons from the success of that movie and thought that 24/7 bathos was what made it work. There's bathos in Iron Man, but Favreau, the writers and RDJ worked together to add nuance to it, to make it clear that Tony Stark's jokes and banter were covering up deeper and darker issues.

I don't think any of the supporting characters actually had arcs of their own, or motivations beyond "this is cool, let's do this".

I need an entire prequel movie about Maria Rambeau, the monumental obstacles she defied to make it through the Air Force, the shenanigans she got up to with Carol, and literally anything about her background at all. The actors did a fantastic job of selling the passionate platonic love relationship with zero establishing scenes or setup, but wouldn't it be great if they could get their teeth into some actual scenes from the characters' pasts together?

I need an entire prequel movie about Maria Rambeau, the monumental obstacles she defied to make it through the Air Force, the shenanigans she got up to with Carol, and literally anything about her background at all. The actors did a fantastic job of selling the passionate platonic love relationship with zero establishing scenes or setup, but wouldn't it be great if they could get their teeth into some actual scenes from the characters' pasts together?

Oh my god, THIS. I think one reason why I keep going over this in my head is because the actors were all so talented and did so much with what they had, and could have done so much more if they'd had more to work with!

In retrospect, even though at the time I enjoyed the movie's out-of-order pacing, I think it would've been a better move to do what every other MCU origin story does, and begin with the status quo scene-setting, then move on to her life being invaded by the weirdness. It would've had to be a different story that way, but it also would've meant we'd have gotten a third of the movie and its establishing characterization baseline as Carol with her female best friend and mentor, rather than Carol with the Kree.

It's not that I can't see why they did it the way they did it, not just because of the various reveals, but also because since so much of Carol's storyline is outer space related, I can see why they set it mostly in space. Also, more cynically, opening with CAROL FIGHTING ALIENS was probably a much easier sell for the elements that were skeptical about this movie, both within and outside Marvel, rather than opening with a slow Iron Man 1/TFA scene-setting sequence with Carol, Maria, and Mar-Vell. And as someone who's thoroughly into the outer-space side of this universe, I loved the Kree stuff and that we got to see Hala. But a more conventionally paced movie that opened with Carol's life in the Air Force, while it would have been a very different movie, might quite possibly have been a movie that felt more grounded and less glib.

I felt basically the same way. I was entertained, but it didn't capture my imagination the same way that, say, Winter Soldier did. I hadn't really thought of it in the same way you articulated, but you're right about the lack of soul searching and emotional depth.

Yeah, it's not that I hated the movie as-is; I was highly entertained! It's just that there was nothing to stick with me afterwards, and I wanted there to be. It's nice to not be the only one.

My feelings about the movie come down to, "I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think it was very good." There were enough space battles and hot women in it to keep me going, and to me the feelsy heart of the movie was actually Talos's reunion with his family. Honestly I felt like Talos was the one character out of everyone who was in that harder-hitting, more emotional movie I wanted, and also Ben Mendelsohn was somehow charismatic as hell under all the makeup.

So now I have a ton of things I want to write, but they're taking a little more work to get started on, I think, because it's hard to find an in. I really want fic that will dig into Carol's trauma resulting from the events of the movie, because I know she HAS some, probably tons; she's just a very interior character, and we didn't get to see it. And it's the trauma and suffering that I am here for. >.>

Also:
But yeah, the problem is that I know the kind of pairings I go for, and it's generally pairings with some bite and messed-up-ness to them, not the BFF types, so it is absolutely no surprise that my id decided to cheerfully skip past all the nice femslash potential and go straight for the "omg, brain, THIS AGAIN??" pairing, LOL.

LOL YEP. I'm not yet entirely sold on Carol/Yon-Rogg, but there are a lot of other possible ships with conflict that I'm more excited about than Carol/Maria. Like, I'd even be more interested in Maria/Minn-Erva.

I gotta say the comments have been very reassuring, because I had been feeling like a total outlier. And I agree about Talos's storyline being the emotional standout of the movie. The reunion with his family was really a fantastic scene. (Also really loved the families getting to bond later on at Maria's house. Actually, if there's one thing I currently want to write, it's Monica Rambeau showing Earth-kid stuff circa 1995 to a little alien girl.)

My feelings about the movie come down to, "I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think it was very good."

Yeah, I think that sums up my feelings as well. I was highly entertained, much more so than with some of the other movies in the MCU (I was bored out of my skull watching the first Captain American movie, for example, though I enjoyed it much more on a rewatch, but that was after other movies had gotten me interested in the characters). It was a really fun movie and a delightful way to spend two hours! It's just not a movie that felt like it gave me much to dig into; "hard to find an in" is exactly the problem I'm having.

I almost feel like, in order to write fic about this movie, you basically have to make OCs out of the characters - which admittedly is what we're usually doing when we write fic, but ... more so than usual in this case, I think. Like, you could walk out of Ragnarok feeling like "yes, I could write Valkyrie, I could write Loki, I could write Thor" because you know what motivates them and what they want and what their damage is and how they relate to it. You can put them in a bunch of new situations and know how they'd react and how they'd feel about it. This movie ... I just didn't walk out with that feeling; you basically have to take the characters and work backwards from this movie and just decide what motivation and damage you're gonna go with.

I know exactly what you mean, re: that last paragraph. More so than usual, I feel like learning what these characters are like, especially Carol, would involve basically inventing her. And I don't mind that, necessarily, and would like to see fandom kind of fill in those blanks in a way that felt consistent to me, but also it sounds like a lot of work. XD But an interesting challenge, maybe.

Maybe Monica can send the Skrull girl to space with the beginnings of a Lisa Frank collection. :D

Maybe Monica can send the Skrull girl to space with the beginnings of a Lisa Frank collection. :D

... and then 20 years later, Peter Quill is just chilling on Xandar or Knowhere or someplace, and he runs across the galaxy's only non-Earth-based Lisa Frank outlet, run by a pretty Skrull lady. He is SO DELIGHTED (it's not precisely familiar to him, but he can tell it's got Earth written all over it) and he buys like half her inventory, to the intense annoyance of everyone who has to share a spaceship with him. :D

Little rainbow unicorns and pink-tinged dolphins EVERYWHERE. :D :D :D

Gamora wonders what she did to deserve Peter wearing an endless series of T-shirts covered with smiling candy-colored baby flerkens with wings. It's the galaxy's most dangerous predator, SHOW SOME RESPECT, PETER.

Okay, now I feel like I really need here is ART. Who do we talk to to get Lisa Frankified versions of Goose, Carol, Fury, et al??

I think Black Panther skewed all our expectations. Both Captain America and Thor's intro movies are considered somewhat "meh" in comparison to other films. And pretty much every superhero intro movie other than Iron Man 1 has come to be considered a mediocre-but-necessary evil. X1, Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man 1, Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man 1, X-Men First Class, Ang Lee's Hulk...

So for me, I was okay with Captain Marvel's intro not being a Black Panther-level tour de force, and just being an excellently entertaining film, because that's still an improvement over most of the sins committed by the superhero movie genre over the years.

I will say I'm totally with you on the Yon-Rogg/Kree strike group storyline. They spent several lengthy scenes setting up a fairly close, trusting relationship between Carol and Yon-Rogg - the kind where she feels totally comfortable waking him up at ass o'clock in the morning to seek out comfort after a nightmare. Their vibe clearly went beyond strictly soldier and CO or student and teacher - it went beyond a purely professional bond. I think it'd be reasonable to extrapolate that they've spent almost every day, maybe literally every single day, of the last six years in each other's presence for one reason or another.

Even if that closeness was intended to facilitate Yon-Rogg and the Supreme Intelligence's manipulation of Carol, unless we're going to declare by fiat that Yon-Rogg is a pure sociopath, there's no way he didn't develop genuine affection/regard/friendship for Carol in those six years from sheer familiarity. The best lies always have a grain of truth in them, right? What better way to con someone than to make the con mostly true? Maybe the Supreme Intelligence even ran their own manipulation on Yon-Rogg, or picked him for this role, because they determined he was temperamentally compatible with Carol for developing a positive emotional bond with her.

And then working with the strike group for five to six years - you *have* to be bonded with your teammates to be successful at that, to trust them to have your back and to know them well enough that you can improvise around each other on complicated, dangerous missions. The scene in the Kree ship at the beginning was classic teammates banter, of people who were at ease with each other and confident in each other's skills. They were clearly battle-tested. It *does* feel disingenuous for them to feel nothing for Carol at the end, that there was no reckoning for the betrayal and severance of those friendships on either side.

YES, that is EXACTLY my problem with the Kree storyline! I feel as if, just going off what we actually see onscreen, the only way to reconcile the last third of the movie with the first third is if they're just straight-up sociopaths and all the warmth and camaraderie and bonding that we saw in the beginning is completely fake; that they've been faking it for five years.

But that doesn't really seem to jibe with the camaraderie-under-fire that we actually saw from the group or with Yon-Rogg doing things like letting her wake him up in the middle of the night for comfort or lying to the Accusers about what planet she's on.

And the idea that it's all just total lies doesn't even make sense from a psychological standpoint, at least if Kree are anything at all like humans and not just born sociopaths (which doesn't really mesh well with the movie's overall theme of tolerance and getting along), because even if they were ordered to take in the human and train her -- which I gather was basically the case -- you can't even have a PET for five years without getting attached to it! Mutual conflictedness on both sides would have felt so much more psychologically true and given more to dig into for a writer. As it is, I don't even know where I'd start because I don't think I can write it without either ditching the characterization at the beginning of the movie or the end.

And it doesn't help that -- okay, in that final scene, he's clearly being an utter prick of a certain familiar kind. But in the first training scene, like, the advice he's giving her -- it's not actually bad advice? Clearly in the final scene when he's telling her she'll never win because she's too emotional, he's coming across as That Guy. And the reveal that the Kree have been damping down her powers is obviously bad.

But in the early sparring scene, it's not coming across that way, at least not to me; "learn to control your emotions and control your powers" is basically just standard superhero-training-montage advice. And it also reads, to me, somewhat as simply different social conventions; I got the impression that the Kree are really buttoned-down and pursue an ideal of an emotionless soldier (which none of them really achieve), but the fact that he's trying to mold her into a good Kree soldier doesn't make him evil, it just makes him someone who's trying to do right by her according to his society. So the idea that it was supposed to be lies and gaslighting all along didn't sit well with me because the early training scene doesn't seem to support that.

SIGH.

Anyway, though, I agree with you about origin stories. They're usually pretty "meh" and I enjoyed the actual experience of watching this a whole lot more than than I've enjoyed many origin movies, even if it doesn't hold up for me on the "fridge logic" end of things.

Edited 2019-03-18 19:08 (UTC)

but the fact that he's trying to mold her into a good Kree soldier doesn't make him evil, it just makes him someone who's trying to do right by her according to his society. So the idea that it was supposed to be lies and gaslighting all along didn't sit well with me because the early training scene doesn't seem to support that.

That's one way to take the glib off this movie - I was initially super enthused about the fact that a mainstream blockbuster movie got into the topic of imperialistic powers inventing enemies for their citizens in order to make them conform through patriotism. (Not to mention an asylum-seeker storyline that was verging on ham-fisted with its blatant "fuck you" to the current administration.) And I'm still happy they went there, but they missed a huge opportunity to show the impact that the Supreme Intelligence's Matrix-like brainwashing has on Kree citizens.

What if they followed through on the implied nuances in Carol and Yon-Rogg's relationship? He's the one who kidnaps her in the first place, but he's clearly come to care for her, and they missed a huge opportunity to explore what might happen when that affection clashes with his orders and he *doesn't* immediately fall in line like a good little soldier.

Or -- maybe he does, but he's framing it to himself like she's just gone temporarily astray. Like he's hoping he'll be able to salvage something out of the disaster of her finding out about her true origins, that he can bring her back to the side of what's good and right. Bring her back to *safety*. He genuinely doesn't want her hurt, whether it's by the Skrulls or by the Kree. Instead of sticking her into the Supreme Intelligent interface as soon as they capture her, he tries to reason with her himself, because he *knows* the SI is going to punish her and break her, and he desperately does not want that to happen to someone he cares about.

And that confrontation would be such a deliciously twisty labyrinth of emotion. Carol's justifiably reeling from massive betrayal, while Yon-Rogg's under the delusion that everything he's done was for her own good (after all, who wouldn't want to be elevated from puny Terran to glorious Kree?). What hurts Carol the most is that once she's proven unmoved by the jingoistic rhetoric he's spouting, he switches to leaning on their personal connection - and he seems so genuinely upset, seems so sincere when he says he really does just want her back, wants her on his team and by his side. Putting her into the SI interface is his absolute last resort out of desperation when she just won't listen to him and he can't see any other way to save his friend.

And if the writer has set that up properly, us readers/viewers would know that he *is* being genuine, which would just make the entire thing suck that much more. Would make us see the full insidious extent of what lifelong conditioning does to good, even admirable people. How easy it is to commit monstrous actions from a place of "love." Jude Law has the chops to pull that kind of complexity off, and I bet he would've enjoyed doing it, too.

Ohhhh man, I would have LOVED that. It not only would've been more emotionally satisfying to watch, but it would've been a much more impactful way to underscore the movie's themes, if it wasn't just a binary flip of sympathy from the Kree to the Skrulls (one's evil and the other's not! No wait, it's the other way around!), but if it'd actually gotten into the corrosive and toxic effects that evil governments, xenophobia and paranoia have on genuinely good, well-intentioned people. I mean, hell, Winter Soldier and Black Panther both went there, and did it well.

I did really appreciate that the movie was willing to lop off jingoistic rhetoric at the knees the way it did, but it could have done it in so much less of a simplistic way than it did.

YES. And on the feminism axis, it would've been an excellent takedown of the way so many, many, many white men see themselves. Yon-Rogg goes cartoonishly sexist in their final scene, which enables white men to say, "I'm not like that." Whereas if you go with the complex route, what you've got is someone who thinks of himself as the righteous defender of a shining city on a hill. From his point of view, he's Captain America.

(If this movie was being produced by Kree!Marvel Studios, he would be Captain America, because in the established reality of that fictional universe, the Skrulls would be terrorists in truth, and Carol would genuinely be the River Tam/Leeloo Dallas Multipass/Born Sexy Yesterday/MPDG character. And us Kree viewers would be rooting for him and accepting any actions he takes no matter how violent or shady they are, because we've accepted that he's Captain America and that his ends are automatically the right ends, which justify his means.)

If the story had gone with the complex route, then it would've given those white men a glimpse into what it's like to be a woman interacting with them: the reality of their actions are completely different from what they think it is.

Edited 2019-03-19 06:07 (UTC)

As it is, I don't even know where I'd start because I don't think I can write it without either ditching the characterization at the beginning of the movie or the end.

Yeah, I feel the same. The only thing I can lean on is the fact that she doesn't seem to have had any friends with the Kree, really, besides Yon-Rogg? That doesn't solve the "getting attached" problem entirely, but I didn't get the sense in those early scenes that the other members of the team were pretending any personal warmth towards Carol (and we know that Minn-Erva in particular definitely wasn't). I feel like you can fanwank it some that they see her as almost a threat because of her powers and therefore don't get cozy with her, and that maybe she's spent the last six years with no companionship except Yon-Rogg. Like, I feel like that's what the movie is intending? But it's all very muddled, and like you say, it feels really difficult to reconcile these two pieces.

(Incidentally, would you be okay with me linking this on the comm? It's fine if not, but I liked the movie and also have found a lot of value in your review and the comments, so maybe some other folks would, too!)

Oh sure, go ahead! I feel like it's an interesting discussion that's not really about hating on the movie, at least I don't feel that way - I mean, I DID like it, and I think most people in the discussion liked it too! I was worried that this would be taken as haterade but I really don't think it's coming across that way, and the discussion has been interesting and respectful even while analyzing the movie's flaws - at least that's how it feels to me.

The discussion has been interesting and respectful even while analyzing the movie's flaws - at least that's how it feels to me.

I totally agree. :)

I wonder if there were any scenes not filmed or scenes that didn’t make the final cut, of Carol interacting with the other members of the strike team. I just saw it again tonight and I noticed that they all *did* have varying reactions to her. Most notably, Atlas took her side in the banter, and in the later battle over the Tesseract, he’s the only one who yells, “Don’t make me do this.” Carol responds by shrugging and blasting him into the wall, which *does* seem awfully cavalier if we imagine that she and Atlas were friends before.

You are so right - this movie should have been gut wrenching, and about identity and loyalty and taking care of people who don't remember you but need you anyways.

I'm going out on a limb here: I feel like someone saw the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and noticed it was funny but didn't notice they were also about, like, dealing with abusive and PTSD and fathers who killed their children and sisters who had good reason to hate each other coming to terms and grief and scary thing of being saved by people who also hurt you in the past, and just noticed, hey, there's a talking raccoon and guns and a tree that has tentacles - we should put those things in the Captain Marvel! Because it's in space!

My eyes hurt from rolling now, but I did find it entertaining and I think the fic will be awesome.

Yeah, a commenter above mentioned bathos, and I think that's exactly the issue here - that the movie got the glibness and jokes, but it didn't recognize the underlying seriousness that gave the jokes, and the movie, a harder punch. It's sort of like it's almost there, but not quite; the elements of that underlying seriousness ARE there in the movie, but they aren't given the serious treatment they should have, so it all comes across too glib and shallow.

it was a very entertaining movie, and I really enjoyed watching it! It just didn't have the emotional solidity and punch that I've come to expect from the MCU.

I agree with you, but part of why I loved it WAS that it was light...I think I would have been happy with whatever I got, which is kind of sad, but true.

Oh yeah, totally fair!

I've been trying to figure out exactly how to talk about this in my own dw, because the past few days I've been mostly seeing super high WS and BP levels of squee, and I just...felt kinda meh. I mean, I wished in a way I was still reviewing movies back in the day, because it would have been interesting to dissect my feelings in an actual review. It was always easier to write reviews for movies I either hated or was just kind bleh about than things I liked. So this is helpful because it's largely how I felt, although I didn't have the interest in Yon-Rogg--but I honestly wasn't that interested in many of the characters themselves. I had...expected a lot more with Maria and Monica than I actually got (because I love spoilers, especially when I can't get to a movie right away), and as much as I loved the Fury-Carol road trip, stuff like you mentioned with his eye just left me cold. (Also, I have serious visual ick with the de-aging stuff, and while Sam Jackson's is by far the best I've seen, Coulson was just effing creepy to me, like most of the times I've seen it.)

Anyways, yes, tl;dr this is pretty much my reaction for the most part.

I've seen it twice so far. I really enjoyed it - and I agree - a fun movie and a good time. I think it holds up well on repeat viewings.

I do see your point in the depth of some of the reactions missing... and I kind of agree. I would have liked more depth on the betrayal on Yon-Rogg - his lies and killing of her mentor. But also, I don't see how it would have worked in with what was set up for the back half of the movie? We need the sequel now with the Kree confrontation. I think Carol was so muted on her reaction - because she just learned/remembered it all. It hadn't sunk in yet.

I did like the switcheroo on the Skrulls being persecuted and Ben Mendelsohn was totally awesome.

And Goose!! I want more Goose! :)

So basically, I've been reading everyones comments and nodding, that yea, it needed something more (and I'll probably search out fic - surprisingly for me - GEN fic). Because THANK GOD there was no "love interest" this time. I'm so sick of that. Along with 'kill the love Interest for pathos' - points fingers at WW. I was really expecting Yon-Rogg to be a love interest and DIE at the end. I wasn't expecting the betrayal. So that was new.

Her triumphant moment telling Yon-Rogg she doesn't need his approval, for example - it doesn't mean a whole lot because we never really saw her struggle with wanting his approval (or anyone else's).

That's a very good example of things that could have so very easily been done a lot better and then had a lot more impact; there's a little of it but it feels like the movie doesn't really commit. Same for example with Carol saying not even she knows who she is and then Maria talks to her - that was one short moment and it could have been a lot stronger. It felt a bit like as I was watching the movie I had to add some of the emotional depth in my head instead of seeing it on screen (which I'm used to doing for TV shows etc. but should not be the case in a good movie, especially since I liked the actors.) So there's two versions of the movie in my head: the one I actually watched and the more emotional one that I built for myself. (I did enjoy both a lot! Just in different ways.)

Oh hey, I think we're pretty close on our feelings for the movie. I enjoyed it, but there wasn't a lot of moments where I felt my chest clench up out of sheer exhilaration, which the best Marvel movies can do to me. I'm happy for it, and specifically delighted by many things it did that I will probably go back to, but it's not something that left me with a lot of stuff to chew on.

I felt that same lack of depth and deep connection when I was watching. I wanted to love it and I definitely felt, "That was fine and I don't regret paying to see it," when I left the cinema, but I've felt like all the people squeeing about it watched a much better movie than I did.

I also wanted the reveal to have more emotional impact than it did. I also wanted more complexity from the Kree. I mean it looks like they have a civilization they can't all be heartless because they are warriors. Yon-Rogg could have started out as an enemy and then began to like Carol once he got to know her and he could have felt conflicted in his part in kidnapping her from Earth.

I like the alternate movie you describe: It would have been great to see Carol break and rebuild herself. But I had no problem with the movie as it was; it didn't need to be a groundbreaking story for me as long as it was groundbreaking outside the movie in our world. Not everyone needs to love it. I look forward to seeing whatever stories you write :)

#noliesdetected

It's a fun movie, but that is pretty much all it is for me. I am glad we have a female-led movie and inspiration for girls and so forth, but I want some teeth. We know MCU can do it, wrt BP and WS and Iron Man (I am partial to the Iron Man movies, I know I know). On the second viewing the epic "she gets up again" scene didn't even grab me as much and now I know why.

Like people mentioned above, the family reunion scene was probably one of the few where you actually felt it. Is it because Ben is Just That Good or is it because it was one of the few moments where it wasn't overtaken by gags and jokes? Maybe both. It's odd since the Guardians movies did so well with the jokes but also the dark dynamics beneath (especially the second movie).

As to ships - I am firmly in the Carol/Yon-Rogg camp because Carol/Maria is fluff to me (and I am not at all informed enough to write about how a black woman navigated such a job in the end of the 80s), and I know that already makes me problematic for some people. Which I don't care about. :P

Anyways, all of this has been amazing discussion and I think I agree with all of it!

(I am partial to the Iron Man movies, I know I know)

I'm right here with you! We can feel vaguely guilty but not really together :P

I'm so so thankful to read this- I found the film solidly OK but with little lasting impact (other than me adding a lot more No Doubt to my playlists). I've seen so many very positive, happy reviews of it that I was feeling like a bad feminist for not adoring it an buying a ton of merch. Now I see I'm not the only one.

For me, one of the sticking points was the extensive use of Fury (and to a lesser extent, Coulson). It almost felt like the authors didn't trust the audience to stick with a film just about Carol, or just about a female superhero. That they had to still pack the frame with guys. This isn't a slight on Samuel L Jackson at all, and I've always enjoyed his Nick. It just did feel rather a wasted opportunity though- think about what fun it would have been if the Shield agent had been a young Melinda May?

But then once I walked out of the theater, it was just ... there was no there there.

Yeah, that was my feeling exactly.

None of it really affects her all that much.

This! OMG, I wanted her to be affected more, SO badly. I mean, I understand that that's exactly the draw for a lot of people - awful things happen to her, and people keep telling her she can't do this or has to change that, but it all bounces off her because yes, she IS just fine exactly as she is! And the bad things can't really touch her inner self, can't get her down no matter how much they try. I understand what they're going for. I get why it works for lots of people. But it still falls flat for me.

I wanted the movie where finding out that her whole life is a lie shatters her and she has to claw her way back but can never quite put things back the way they were before. I wanted the movie where the playful camaraderie we saw between her and Yon-Rogg and the others at the beginning doesn't just flip instantly into "welp, guess they're evil now" once the reveal happens, but instead they all have to deal with the shock and pain of having really come to care about her, on her side the gut-wrenching misery of knowing she was lied to and had her entire life stolen by people she trusted, and on their side the pain of knowing everything is blowing apart and it's their fault.

You and me both. *sighs*

Yes! You've put your finger on it when I couldn't! I enjoyed it, I liked the cast and a lot of the things they did with the writing, the music, the directing—and yet I didn't leave feeling exhilarated, as I did after Black Panther and Wonder Woman, or gut-punched, as I did after Winter Soldier or Avengers: Half the Cast Dies (which I feel like I shouldn't include). And I couldn't quite understand why. I thought it was that the stakes weren't quite right, but then, it's Carol Danvers' whole identity, her life, her memory, the survival of earth—the stakes should be right!

I did notice that we don't even know if she has any biological family left on earth. And she didn't express any real sorrow at having to leave Maria and Monica just after finding them again, retrieving some memories with them, and making new ones.

But yes: she didn't really have to sort through her feelings much. I enjoyed it, but it didn't grab me.

I'm looking forward to seeing her in Avengers: Maybe They Didn't ALL Die.

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