average and everybody knows it

Rating: 5/10 (9 March 2019)

This being the next instalment of the MCU juggernaut and nestling between the cheeks of probably my most anticipated movies of the last 5 years infinity war and endgame and considering the post credit scene from infinity war, there was absolutely no way I would miss out on this movie, bad marketing or no bad marketing.
Having said that, this was another franchise like guardians and black panther that I had absolutely no familiarity with. So guardians I openly derided the concept of a talking racoon and tree bloke. Guardians ended up winning me over with one trailer and becoming my top 3 MCU films after seeing it. Black panther turned out to be a solid, almost sci fi concept with one of the best villains from the franchise just because killmonger's motivations were so woven into the premise and made sense in todays society. In other words guardians propped up by some top character interactions, settings, dialogue and character arcs and BP propped up with one of the MCU's best villains tied to a solid concept. In both of those cases I ended up being turned around from either a position of not caring or a position of being biast toward hating to loving those films. Therefore over the past few months I was looking at captain marvel with the same eye, would this be the next unknown marvel franchise to win me over?
Not really. There were a few bits including the buzzword "be the best 'you' you can be" right at the start and some silliness throughout. it was saved in places by sam jackson and some connective tissue to the rest of the mcu. it had a post credit scene that made me slightly less excited if that is possible for endgame.
This film mostly ambles along for most of it. Danvers life is presented in some disconnected flashbacks of photos and stuff. The main thing though is Brie Larson is just not one of those inspired pieces of casting like RDJ as iron man or Ryan Reynolds as deadpool. Its because Captain marvel doesn't have quantifiable character traits to say Brie acted said traits well enough or memorably enough to point to a good performance. Captain marvel is basically on screen for some time and that is about it. Its not a memorable character its not a particularly memorable movie. The story overall is ok. I was interested to see Nick fury's kind of origin movie and to be fair I got that which is where my positive points come from. Cat was good. Nirvana in the soundtrack was good. Like 2 jokes in it.
The parts I liked were that this set up the kree special forces with one familiar face Djimon Hounsou and ronan the accuser. So the skrull were set up to be the antagonists for this film yet we recognise the accusers and the motley character as an antagonist from guardians which leaves us wondering how they're the good guys in CM. The trailers presented an actually quite boring premise of the skrulls being injected into society. CM actually flips this on its head halfway through where the kree are setting CM up. The Skrull are in fact the good guys. Which again I rate as some of the positive points. All this to say though we end up with ronan the accuser and jude law as bad guys.
So here we are at the end of the whole set up. Brie gets the ultimate powers of CM and starts to kick ass. Captain marvel shows that she can basically do anything imaginable and takes out all sorts of nukes from the dark aster looking ships etc etc. but wait what is this CM suddenly stops. Why is this? Kryptonite? Conciensce? Any of the morality touted by the characters? No she stops because in their infinite wisdom, they CAN'T kill ronan, we know he dies in guardians, we know he survives over a kree empire that is down on its luck not in a prequel 90's movie so CM just has to stop and throw out a BS line and let him go. Whats more any sequel is very likely to be set where CM liberates the Kree homeworld from the AI and Ronan (plus plot armour) must survive. In other words the much touted most powerful character in the MCU is defeated by shonky prequel plotting and basically robbing any sense of urgency or stakes from the story. Any sort of significance or coolness from her powers. Why does she not kill Jude law 'I don't have anything to prove to you'. I suppose those 5 minutes that would have been a fight scene are rewarded back to us for sitting through the film.
yeah when all's said and done cpt marvel was like at best a 5/10 film. The critics have said their piece and agreed with that, the audience seems to be saying their piece and agreeing with that. I honestly can't believe people are dying on the hill for this movie based on hype marketing, ripping down review sites defending it. At the end of the day we're not talking about like 12 years a slave or even another black panther.