Painfully mediocre when there was so much potential for being a fun '90s themes superhero movie

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2019)

So I just watched Captain Marvel (I was the only person in the theater besides this creepy bearded guy with a ponytail slobbering away at popcorn) and wow.. was it an abysmally mediocre film. I wish it were leaning more on the so-bad-it's-good territory, if only to get more entertainment value . Hell, I would even rate Aquaman and Venom above this tepid mess in this regard.
They had two plot points where they definitely could have been more creative : the '90s nostalgia ( as was promised in the trailer) and the buddy cop relationship between Fury and Marvel. But they did an extremely mediocre job over both of these. The '90s showcase just lasted about 10-15 minutes max onscreen.
The plot itself felt something from a cheap '90s sci fi show, very lazily written. Also, the theme of women empowerment was so blatant and on your nose. I mean, you have Wonder Woman as a good successful reference and they could have easily taken pointers from there. But no, their vision of women empowerment is simply just one specific montage in the third act of Brie Larson courageously standing up from the ground at different instances of her life as "symbolism" for women rising up after being pushed to the ground by the establishment. I mean, that's literally it. Oh, and at one point, a lousy child actor tells her mom that she should do a courageous duty to set an example. It was just cringey.
Speaking of lousy acting and cringe-worthy moments, Brie Larson had a lot to showcase in this regard. She either couldn't act at all in certain scenes while in others, her efforts to emote either despair or satisfaction resulted in a mix of absolute cringe and lots of yawns from the audience.
The main issue that arises from the bad writing and the bad acting is that we as an audience simply don't get to care about Captain Marvel. I never got a sense of her character, her motivations and reasons enough to like her. She was just a blank slate.
The only reason I didn't rate this lower was because the CGI for some particular scenes was pretty well done. Also, Samuel L Jackson was pretty likable as a younger Nick Fury.
Just take my advice and leave this film alone. You won't be missing any plot points for the later MCU movies.