Enjoyable comic hero movie, but lacking an important element.

Rating: 7/10 (9 March 2019)

The movie is great fun to watch, and has some really awesome set pieces and comic moments, but the main thing that struck me as missing as a part of the genre was any sense of peril facing the main character. Captain Marvel is simply too powerful. This isn't the fault of the writing, that's just how the character is. However, that makes it hard to make an engaging plot out of.
Captain Marvel is basically approaching a god. She cannot be beaten, and this is established early on, so she is never really in any tangible danger at any point, or even at risk of losing a battle. Even when she does "lose" her powers during the final confrontation, it's all of a couple of minutes before she just gains them back through what amounts to deus ex machina, and she gains them back and then some.

Part of the thrill of an action movie is the sense that the hero might fail in their mission or be beaten by a bigger threat that they will need to overcome. This is achieved by writing a hero who has weaknesses and limitations that make them vulnerable. Captain Marvel doesn't really have a weakness, or any real limitations. While she isn't literally invulnerable, she is never faced with an enemy in the movie that has a real chance of beating her or posing a real threat to her. She just kind of steamrolls everything that's thrown at her, and it never feels like anything that happens in the story is much more than inconvenient for her.

There were funny moments, and some cool fight sequences with nice effects, but the story felt kind of shallow, like it was just a bunch of supporting characters following her around while she breezed through her mission.
There were also some kind of ham-fisted "girl power" moments and jabs at the male characters that came off as her just being kind of mean for the sake of it, or stereotypical "piggish" guys that seemed to exist solely to give her an excuse to do "morally questionable" things (like stealing a bike). The thing is, it felt weird, because she didn't need an excuse to do these things; we were already on her side and understood her reasoning. It wasn't to anything like the degree that some people seem to want to make out it was, but there were definitely a couple of mildly eye-rolling beats in there that just felt kind of awkward.
Overall, I really had fun with the movie, and would recommend it absolutely as a solid comic hero movie. But the lack of any real peril or threat to the main character made the whole narrative seem a bit low-stakes, and guaranteed a positive outcome for the hero from the outset.