captain marvel

[domarzione]

Originally posted on the tumblr, but...

* We’re getting Spectrum/Pulsar/WhateverMonica’sCallingHerselfThisWeek in Phase 4. We have to be. You don’t do what they did to set her up like that without doing it. And I am here for it.

* Also for Maria, who was the heart of this movie. She should come back, too.

* I was so happy to see Kelly Sue DeConnick make a cameo (she’s the magenta-headed lady who gives Vers a look in the LA subway near the beginning) because she’s as important to this movie’s existence as Ed Brubaker was to Captain America: the Winter Soldier and he got a cameo for it there.

* The opening credit tribute to Stan Lee was lovely.

* Brie Larson was really, really good. I was not sold on her casting, even after they said the movie was taking place in the 1990s, but she was fabulous.

* This movie was built on banter and I loved all of it.

* Thank christmas there was no love interest. There was a lot of love in this movie, more than usual for an MCU movie, but it was all of the good kinds that don’t involve eros. Love in this movie deserves a more thorough treatment because it drives everything that happens.

* OMG, Goose.

* I am exactly the right age to desperately want the soundtrack. And to laugh at the aliens being gob-smacked at our computers.



* Annette Bening being Mar-Vell was awesome and terrific. Both for the adaptation of the comics character and for giving Bening a juicy role in a comic book movie. I am all in on giving older actresses meaty roles in these movies because they are still beautiful and still great at what they do and can still work in action blockbusters.

* The Skrulls not being the bad guys was also awesome and terrific. They were great. Turning the Kree into Space HYDRA with Carol as their Bucky is a nice flip of the script.

* There’s more to be said about Carol and Bucky, but I’m still digesting.

Comments

[digitalwave]

A friend treated Lee and me to tickets for opening night and we loved it! The tribute to Stan was wonderful, the movie fun, plus the banter and chemistry between Nick and Carol was great. I especially liked the twist with the Skrulls, too. That was a really neat touch.

I so hope that we get more with Maria and grown up Monica being her glowy hero self in one of the upcoming movies. That would be very nice icing on the cake. You know our favorite Lovecraftian cat will be back, it's one of the things I'm looking forward to. :)

[domarzione]

They HAVE to be giving us Monica -- why else make Carol's friend Maria instead? -- but I wonder about the how.

I am looking forward to our favorite flerkin appearing. Also, Rocket and his very great dislike of said species.

[kiratael]

I flaily-heart loved it. I have a different age context for most of the 90s references than you do, but a good chunk of the movie was still a big ol’ nostalgia bomb.

[domarzione]

The boxy cars, the ancient web browsers, the grunge clothing, the pagers... the nostalgia was high. :)

speaking of boxy cars

[axolotl9]

did you notice that after wrecking the '80s era Caprice (such a typical government car, Chevy sold millions of them to the Feds and to police departments nationwide), Fury's next car was the next-gen Caprice-based Impala SS? I liked that detail. (The Impala SS of the '90s was essentially the police package Caprice with some sporty graphics and a blackout grille.)

Re: speaking of boxy cars

[domarzione]

My first fandom was Homicide: Life on the Street. I got a good giggle out of the Caprices. :)

[ravurian]

I had no particular idea of the canon here, but after watching I shipped Maria & Carol co-parenting Monica and being lowkey together under the radar, which puts a hell of a different spin on Maria's magnificent restraint when they were reunited. And I am very much looking forward to finding out what Monica's story will be. I wonder if she'll be in Endgame?

The only two things that I wished for else were Peggy Carter as Director of Shield and Nick's boss, and fewer men overall. I mean, I see no reason that Fury's boss had to be male, or the Skrull ditto, nor the majority of the Kree. Not that this was a problem per se, but I was thinking in terms of the exquisite and explicit backgrounding of white people in Black Panther, I guess, and wishing that there had been a similar tack here, but with male characters.

I really enjoyed it and will definitely watch it again...

[domarzione]

See, I strongly disagree that there should have been more women characters. Because there wouldn't have been -- I mean, sure, the lead Skrull could have been female, but he did 'play' at least two women on Earth. The odds of Fury's boss being female? Not great, even in an agency founded by Peggy Carter, who would have been too old to still be director -- she'd be in her seventies at least. The various security guards? Likely male. The bar owner? Likely male. You had a key member of the Kree team (Minn-Erva), they gender-flipped Mar-Vell to be Annette Benning, who was actually in a dual role as the Supreme Intelligence, and the most important characters were the Rambeau ladies. Why was that not enough for you? :)

ETA: Also, and this matters: an all-female movie completely defangs the theme of Carol (and Maria) being repeatedly told by men that they weren't enough and couldn't be enough. There had to be men in power to do that.

The lack of white characters in Black Panther was a reflection of Wakanda being an explicitly black country with no contact with the outside. They didn't have to sideline white people because there wouldn't have been any.

I do NOT want to see a movie that explicitly backgrounds any flavor of human to get back at any other flavor of human. That's not how progress is made, that's payback.

[ravurian]

In fairness, I didn't say 'should', and I didn't say 'all-female', either, precisely because of your point about Carol's experience with menfolk having incorrect and irrelevant opinions about her capability and capacity. Surely there has to be some middle-ground, though, where wishing for fewer men in a comic book movie featuring aliens and superpowers and so on doesn't get pooh-poohed because realism and erasure lol.

[Speaking of which, the lack of white people in Wakanda is a valid in-universe point, but the lack of white people in the movie Black Panther, which also went to other locations outside Wakanda (including the US, the UK, and the Far East, which is a location choice that emphasises this decision) reflects an out-universe real-world choice to minimise the number of white faces on screen, and that was a good thing for the film's storytelling. You don't need a lot of white people actively oppressing black people to tell a story in which the history of exploitation and oppression in Africa, the Americas, and the UK, is evoked and discussed. There's a difference between backgrounding - which is about placing emphasis and focus elsewhere - and erasure, which I think is what you're implying I meant? I profoundly disagree that foregrounding other stories is about getting back at groups which are usually and predominantly front and centre. Wishing for stories that significantly foreground other groups is not about erasure or revenge, in my opinion, and that absolutely isn't what I meant with wishing for fewer men overall].

Anyway, don't get me wrong: I enjoyed this movie! I am also, I think, permitted to wish for it to have gone a bit further. I didn't mean to harsh any squee...

[ETA: re: this whole comment, I debated deleting it because even I was exasperated at myself on rereading it. I am not entirely unaware of the irony of me, a man, wishing for anything at all relating to this movie, which is not talking to me, and I do rather wish that I had done what I meant to do, which is listen to people talking about it rather than opining. I'm so sorry <facepalm> ]

[domarzione]

You should absolutely not delete. I'm not a fan of 'you must be this flavor or person to comment on this media' shite, either. ;)

I think my problem is that, to me, you seemed to be disappointed that this wasn't set in Themiscyra. Which could very well have been my misreading.

But I remain content with the level of maleness in the movie because it felt right to me, both for the periodicity and all the casual little ways Carol and Maria and all of the invisible women got shat upon. Including the invisible women who weren't on screen because SHIELD wasn't promoting/retaining enough women and the military in the early-mid 1990s was sexism reified (Tailhook happened right around then) and we were all supposed to just take it.