This fall, The Marvels take flight.Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel has reclaimed her identity from the tyrannical Kree and taken revenge on the Supreme Inte…
The entanglement aspect looks like a clever plot device, but I don’t know how they are going to get the audience to care about Captain Marvel. The first movie really undercut our ability to care about this character. She was just a Mary Sue for the entire movie. We never see her struggle or grow. She’s always just perfect at everything. It keeps her character unrelatable.
Anything related to Capt. Marvel I’m having a hard time caring about. Secret Invasion has been a giant flop for me and I particularly think how the Skrulls were brought into the MCU via Capt. Marvel was just kind of dumb and it’s creating this weird jarring effect where we’re supposed to be sympathetic towards them, but they’re the bad guys and it’s just creating this mismatch where I feel nothing towards any of it. I get having sympathetic bad guys, but the way it was handled all felt very clumsy and rushed. Just terrible writing on top of everything.
If anything, the Skrull threat should’ve been unresolved in Capt. Marvel (not make them suddenly our friends), like that movie should have been the set-up for Secret Invasion and they should have been seeding stuff here and there for it throughout Phase 4, letting things come to a head in Secret Invasion. Obviously that still would’ve been weird, given that it took place in-between Infinity War and Endgame, but that was always going to be the case unless they had tied the movie in more with the Infinity saga (apart from her just getting her powers from an infinity stone or whatever happened).
I had avoided Ms. Marvel because I just don’t care about the character, though I’ll probably binge it in the next week before I cancel my D+ subscription after Secret Invasion ends, just to say I’ve watched it. Hopefully going in with low expectations will somehow make it better.
I’ve honestly been enjoying Secret Invasion so far. The plot has some issues, but not enough to pull me out of the enjoyment. I’d call it probably my third or fourth favorite Marvel D+ show so far.
In episode 5, right after an assassination attempt on the President of the United States was foiled, Nick Fury, a disheveled-looking black guy who was just fired by the US govt, pulls a gun on one of the President’s senior aides in the very same hospital where the President is recuperating (probably right outside his room), assaults the aide, then starts walking away. A platoon of Secret Service agents appear out of nowhere (from the same hallway they had just been in), all pointing guns at Fury and… they just let him walk away. Obviously, this is a comic book tv show with shapeshifting aliens and super powers and all that, but I can only suspend my disbelief so much. And why wouldn’t Fury have just shot and/or killed fauxRhodey at that point to reveal him/her as a Skrull? The only leverage they had on him was that video, which they were releasing anyways, wouldn’t revealing a shapeshifting alien help his case that it wasn’t him and that aliens are trying to start WW3? They have Olivia Colman do this EXACT thing when she literally shoots the Director of MI6, this series is just so scatter-brained.
And the goddamned scene in the graveyard. Like Fury purposely hides his stash in different compartments throughout all of these fake graves? “I need to have my eye patch over here, my gun over here, and a cool leather jacket in this one. Can’t put all my eggs in one basket, then I’d be totally screwed out of my dramatic ‘suiting up’ scene.” And what was the point of the eye patch or not having the eye patch the whole series? Literally everybody knows who he is, he’s not hiding from anybody, but oh, he’s got his eye patch on now, so Fury is back! Capt. Marvel even ruined the reason for Fury’s eye patch.
There’s just so much lazy writing in the whole series that’s on par with some of the worst from Game of Thrones, things just happen purely for the convenience of the plot to get characters from point A to point B or to “tell” the audience something, it’s just so transparent and infuriating.
Look y’all, I’m just here to be entertained. On that level I haven’t been disappointed by a Marvel movie yet.
You want something deeper? Maybe comic book movies aren’t for you anymore, and that’s okay.
Look y’all, I’m just here to be entertained. On that level I haven’t been disappointed by a MyLittlePony movie yet.
You want something deeper? Maybe philosophical, highbrow movies about ponies aren’t for you.
Is wanting something deeper whilst also wanting to be entertained not a thing?
Hard pass.
I really tried on the Ms. Marvel series but it was not for me and I knew it by the second episode, and Captain Marvel was one of the most formulaic, underbaked films of that Phase. Maybe it is just because Guardians being done means whatever strong investments I once had in the MCU are fading away because it’s all just too much of the same, but really nothing that screams out to me that this will be enjoyable though I will ultimately see it (a couple friends and I see every MCU movie despite most of us being super burnt out)
I don’t care for the heroes they are making shows and movies about. There’s none of that gritty, high stakes feel or compelling character development.
I thought Ms. Marvel was one of the better things that they’ve done post-Endgame. I liked the Spider-man “neighborhood superhero” vibes in the first half, I liked the themes of a child of diaspora reconnecting with their heritage but still needing to recontextualize it, and Iman Vellani is a god-damn treasure when, as here, she’s properly cast. The “hard-light” powers and visuals were a decent enough riff on the “embiggening” power from the comics without asking the audience to accept Stretch Armstrong as a major superhero (Good luck, Mr. Fantastic).
Still had underbaked villains, needless save-the-universe brinksmanship, and some of the flair from the first couple of episodes eroded into Marvel formulas, but overall I enjoyed it.
I really loved all of the MCU content and was extremely satisfied when Thanos was defeated in Endgame. Since then, I have enjoyed watching the movies that tie up the loose ends from Endgame; I.E. Loki, GOTG 2, and the Spidermans. Everything other than that has made me feel like Marvel is struggling for air.
Beastie boys not at all a good fit for the soundtrack here, but maybe that’s just me.
