Depending on who you ask, Captain Marvel was either a perfectly fine movie, or the work of evil social justice warriors trying to ruin everything for real comic fans. This film, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor: The Dark World all have have a 6.9 rating on IMDB (at time of writing)(nice), but only one of these films has 6.2% of its ratings 1 out of 10. The other two have 1/10 ratings being 1.2% and 1.1%, respectively, for those keeping track at home. But what separates Captain Marvel from the other two? What about this titular character is different? Hm, I wonder, he says sarcastically.

Set in 1995, the film tells the story of Vers (Ms. Brie Larson, AKA Envy Adams from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and yes, that was actually her singing “Black Sheep”), a Kree warrior with energy powers. She works as part of a strike force involving other Kree like Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) and Korath (Djimon Honsou because this is a flashback and he hasn’t died in Guardians of the Galaxy yet). They fight against the Skrulls, insidious shapeshifters who want to take over the galaxy. A skirmish with some Skrulls sees Vers land on Earth, where she simultaneously investigates her mysterious past–why would a Kree have memories of Earth?–and hunts the Skrull leader, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn). Along for the ride is a de-aged Nick Fury and rookie Coulson, because again, flashback. She runs into Maria Rambeau and her young daughter Monica (who was a main character in WandaVision), and that’s around the time the truth comes out. Turns out Vers is actually a human named Carol Danvers–Vers being taken from a broken military dog tag, like how Zardoz was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She worked with undercover Kree operative Mar-Vell, who was working on a new starship engine powered by the Tesseract to help the poor Skrull refugees escape from the fanatical Kree. Carol’s exposure to the engine and its energy is what gave her powers, and Yon-Rogg knew all this and lied to her about it. She ends up saving the Skrulls, fighting off the forces of Ronan the Accuser (again, flashback), punching Yon-Rogg because fighting fair is stupid when you have cosmic powers (also she had nothing to prove to him, a theme in the movie), and passing onto Fury the idea that Earth needs superpowered people to protect it. Something like… the Avengers, maybe?

The mid-credits scene has Carol showing up at the Avengers’ base some time after Avengers: Infinity War, asking what happened to Fury and setting up Avengers: Endgame. The post-credits scene is the flerkin/cat Goose vomiting up the Tesseract, because sure, why not.

Man, female led superhero movies sure don’t happen that often, do they? It was a big deal when Ant-Man and the Wasp came out because the title directly referenced one of Marvel’s female characters. That’s… sad. That’s not something to be proud of. Like, absolutely good for her, but it’s like that unnamed gay character from Avengers: Endgame–it’s treated as a big deal because you’ve intentionally avoided the subject for a decade and certain fans are starved for representation. Dozens of lame-ass superhero movies starring men have flopped, but no one has suggested that yet another male-led superhero film would be too big a risk! Yeah, Marvel had Elektra and that was… not good, but neither was Daredevil! And to not even begin serious work on this film until DC and Warner Bros. had already tested the waters with Wonder Woman is a lame move. Y’all are cowards and using toxic fanboys as an excuse.

COMIC BOOK FUN FACT! The Kree and the Skrulls have a long, long history in the comics. Avengers #133 (1975) tells that a million years ago, the Skrulls found the planet Hala and its two races: the Kree and the Cotati (plant people). A test was given in which the winner would get the technology needed to become a presence in the universe, and the Skrulls found the Cotati to be the winner. The Kree were infuriated by this. They killed the Cotati and Skrulls involved, stole Skrull tech, reverse engineereed it, and then attacked the Skrulls the next time the two races met. The Kree-Skrull War happening should be no surprise. The war had cooled down by Fantastic Four #257 (1983) when Galactus ate the Skrull throneworld, fragmenting their empire. This led to the Skrulls declaring Earth their new homeworld and almost succeeding in taking it over in the Secret Invasion event (2008), which is interesting because the Skrulls of the MCU are friendly but we still have the upcoming Secret Invasion Disney+ show… Hm. Anyway, the two races are currently united in an alliance led by Emperor Dorrek VIII, the son of Mar-Vell of the Kree (who was a white guy and the original Captain Marvel in the comics) and Princess Anelle of the Skrulls. Dorrek is better known on Earth as Teddy Altman, AKA Hulkling of the Young Avengers, and husband to Billy Kaplan, AKA Wiccan. Yup, the child born out of the Kree-Skrull War got gay married to one of Scarlet Witch’s reincarnated sons (it’s a whole thing I went over during WandaVision)! Comics are dumb and sometimes magnificent!

MCU
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