Perfectly Mediocre

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2019)

There seems to be a lot of controversy around this movie due to Brie Larson's political ideology. If you're one who agrees and supports that ideology, you'll probably give this movie an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10. If you vehemently disagree, then you'll probably give it a 1, 2, or 3. I, for one, am not interested in the controversy around the actor and just wanted to see a movie.
To begin, I would like to mention that this movie doesn't really have any particular style and it seems quite fragmented and directionless in terms of directing. I looked and saw that there were multiple directors and it definitely shows. There are, I think, 3 fight scenes in the movie and it looks like each one was directed and choreographed by a different person. The overall lighting and camera work were not very good and kind of distracted me from enjoying the action. There was one good fight I enjoyed, though, in the beginning part of the movie in a space ship when she has her hands in the things. I thought this fight was kind of chaotic in terms of some of the artistic elements, but the actual choreography was really fun.
Before I move on, I would like to mention that the CGI, especially for the de-aging of Samuel L. Jackson was excellent. I completely forgot the guy is, like, 70 years old. I also really liked the explosions and other effects that were added, but I can see how some people might think they're a bit over-the-top.
In terms of superhero movies, at least to me, storytelling is more important than the plot. The writers can take a generic plot and, through good story telling, make a wonderful movie. That's not what happened here. The plot is quite generic, pulling from Bourne, Alita, Ghost in the Shell, etc., but the storytelling is very lazy. In these other movies, more and more elements of the character's history are revealed to us, the viewers, eventually culminating in a realization of the identity of the character. In Captain Marvel, almost everything is just handed to us and we don't really see this kind of progression. We also don't see the typical superhero tropes that Marvel loves so much in which the hero gains powers which he or she then loses and must then show us what they've learned and how they've developed before they end up getting powered back up. This happened to Iron Man on multiple occasions, Spiderman, Thor, Captain America (In a different way, but still...), Black Panther, and even Hulk. Captain Marvel did not have this kind of opportunity for character development and is pretty much the same person coming out as she was going in, with the slight difference being a power up.
We also did not see any real development of peripheral characters. There are these people who are supposedly important to the main character, but the writers spent absolutely no time developing these people and making the audience emotionally invested in them. They just sort of appear and are suddenly important (but, really, not that important to the plot or progression of the story). There were also several themes, such as Carol's daddy issues, which were somewhat important later on in the film, but were not really introduced beforehand (only a few seconds of some related, but insignificant event).
As far as the performances go, I think they were just OK because the interactions and jokes seemed a little too forced and, sometimes, out of place. Also the music was kind of wonky in some places, but, overall, I loved the 90s throwback.
Now, on to the cat that everyone is talking about. They made a cat a main feature of the film because millennials have some strange obsession with cats and they thought it would earn them points. And it did, so... there's that. I thought it served solely as comic relief and wasn't really that important to the story. Now that I think of it, there were a lot of aspects of the film which were just pandering to millennials, but I think that probably falls under the category of "know your audience".
Other than these basic movie making and story telling details, I have to add that this movie is covered from head to toe in ideology. It's a movie about a woman freeing herself from an oppressive force (probably a metaphor for the patriarchy) and becoming the most powerful being in the known universe while the men are basically just fools running around for comedic value. I, personally, don't care about this, and it would not bother me at all if it did not affect the quality of the movie. But it did. They put so much effort on the ideological implications of the movie that they forgot to focus on the entertainment value. That being said, I did actually enjoy several aspects of the movie, so I guess the writing wasn't too terrible. If you're interest is just a movie with a bunch of flashy explosions and light shows, then this is the movie for you, but if you're looking for great cinematography, then look elsewhere.
I think it's important to note that, although ideology is common in movies, I don't think it should be so in-your-face. Disney very obviously banked on this to sell their movie and it definitely worked out for them, though the relative contributions of that vs. the contributions of this being right before Endgame and it being important for the following movies is unclear since this movie was kind of set up to make a lot of money, which it did. We do have to keep in mind, though, that not everything that makes a lot of money is good (Mark Hamill's example: Transformers).
I am interested to see how the Ruso brothers will handle this character in Endgame. As it stands, she is far too powerful and I would hate to see an Avengers movie go down like Justice League. Toward the end of the movie, I saw everything I hate about superman reflected in Captain Marvel, and I really hope they significantly depower her.