silversandbea

Spoilers under the cut. If you're reading this in a format that doesn't acknowledge cuts, be warned.

I went to see Captain Marvel with a group of twelve other comics nerds last night, mostly women or woman-adjacent folks. Which was a great idea! I liked it, and I definitely liked seeing it with a group of like-minded individuals. If it's 4 out of 5 for the last Marvel Superhero movies I've watched, it's only because three of them were Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Black Panther, and Thor: Ragnarok. And visually, it's nowhere near any of those films, nor is it trying to be.

I still find it weird to be epicenter of the target demographic for this movie, give or take a few years. And it still feels odd, like I'm so used to the idea that if we (for a couple different versions of we) have to Make Our Own Thing to have any content that's supposed to appeal to us. And now there's a big budget option for me at least, even if the big budget option is also partially funded by the military.

Though really, the skrulls as refugees twist was something I was not expecting and really did help put a damper on the pro-military feel of it. I was worried where they were going with it during the Obvious Iraq Allegory planet . . and just in general, the idea that you can't tell who is the secret commie/terrorist is because they look just like us! (or this other 'friendly but other' alien race) feels downright irresponsible in this climate. So yeah, the anti-imperialist imbalanced war where the skrulls are the good (or at least better) guys and the main character has to deal with being an unwitting part in an imperialist plot and make amends works a lot better and is a lot more interesting.

And yeah, everything involving emotions - Carol being told that the reason why she's failing is because she's too emotional, that she needs to succeed by a set of rules that aren't designed for people like her, that she's not funny - all of that rang so true and connected so well for me. And she was allowed to be angry and funny and not smile! I loved all of the buddy cop moments with Fury, and I'm just imagining her telling Natasha a couple of dipshit Fury stories and loving it.

I also loved that she was responsible for her getting her powers. During the 2012 Captain Marvel run, Kelly Sue DeConnick talked about how she'd originally wanted to change Carol's origin story so that she got her powers from herself, but was unable to (she got a female mentor instead). And while she doesn't get her powers from herself as a time traveler - she gets her powers as a response to her own actions. Plus she gets a female mentor!

The soundtrack definitely fed into the 'being pandered to' part of it. My husband tried to claim that the music cues were shoddy in the second half of the film, and I shot him down (my friend and I started chair dancing when waterfalls came on, and there was a singalong to Celebrity Skin at the end). But really, even at least some of those tracks weren't quite what I listened to - they're the more radio friendly version of my musical tastes - it was still closer than I thought I'd ever get in a tentpole blockbuster action movie.

I'm not sure how I feel about Maria acting as the love interest in every way except for the fact that they don't kiss. On one hand, I never expected that Marvel's first female superhero movie would involve an explicitly stated wlw relationship. On the other hand, I don't know if it's unreasonable to think that it could happen. It's a brave new world where I get shamelessly pandered to, after all. And cry 'Overseas Markets' all you want, if it really was an issue, they could easily frame something so it could be removed from whatever foreign country we're blaming for Hollywood's homophobia today.

At least they didn't feel like they needed to No Homo it the way that they did with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes (and Sam Wilson) in Civil War. Steve making out with Sharon Carter while Bucky and Sam watch approvingly from the car might very well be the most awkward scene in the MCU.

During the credits, I was joking to one of my friends about Goose coughing up the tesseract like a hairball right before the credits ended to show. . . Goose coughing up the tesseract like a hairball. Which a) I'm glad that Marvel and I like the same cheap jokes and b) the animation on that was really well done - my friend commented on the fake stop before starting up again being very realistic.

And then got home around midnight, and had to get out the door by 7am this morning. This was not an easy morning.