Captain Marvel is a Marvel installment directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. It stars Brie Larson in her debut as Captain Marvel and is groundbreaking in that it’s Marvel’s first film to star a female superhero. The first thing I want to say is that this movie is good. I’ve been watching reviews since I saw it, and I’ve found myself confused and bewildered by the response to the film and the critiques I’ve seen. So, I just want to go on the record and say that this film is great and the article is going to read more as a rebuttal to some stuff I’ve seen that’s confusing me.

Brie Larson isn’t stoic in this role. Captain Marvel isn’t portrayed as joyless or without emotion. I honestly can’t understand where this critique is coming from unless its from the trailers. I saw the trailers and had a hard time pinning down whether Carol would be serious or funny or what from them and I think they did a disservice to the film. If I were to describe Carol in the film I would say she is headstrong, sarcastic, and takes peculiar joy in the face of danger and these are traits consistent throughout. From the trailers, you can see she struggles with fragmented memories, but I would say at no point in the film does she not have these traits I’ve portrayed.

Another thing I’ve seen is that the fight scenes are hard to follow…they aren’t. I had no trouble seeing what was going on the whole time. People seem to have been a bit confused by the structure of the story, I thought it was laid out in an unorthodox but completely understandable way given they are dealing with fragmented memories. What I’m trying to say here is the movie isn’t hard to follow, and I feel like some people reviewing this just decided not to pay attention to part of the movie.

And coming back to Brie Larson and her portrayal. The character smiles, makes jokes and banter, I just can’t get over how bizarre these reviewers. (I will say it’s primarily been YouTube reviewers.)

The supporting cast was also great. Nick Fury played by Samuel L. Jackson was a particular bright side in the movie. Seeing a more carefree version of Nick Fury was refreshing and apt, I thought. Then also the biggest surprise as Ben Mendelson really bringing to life an alien that I didn’t expect to be such a fun character.

But praises aside I did have some things I didn’t enjoy about the film. I would say the ordering of the last act could’ve been stacked for a bit more impact and the CGI had a couple flickers of quality as they brought Captain Marvel’s full powers to bare. But these are relatively minor complains in the scope of the film. I really loved the character work they did with Carol especially utilizing her flashbacks as a way of showing different aspects of her on her journey to rediscover who she is. I would give this movie a solid 8 out of 10, and take any reviews you see with a grain of salt…except for mine of course. ;P

Jeremiah Trotter is an avid super hero nerd and appreciator of the adaptation. He believes in the power of catharsis and gets more attached to fictional characters than real people. His favorite things by category are: Favorite book series, Harry Potter; Favorite inspirational film, Children of Men; Favorite superhero film, The Dark Knight; Favorite cult film, Donnie Darko; Favorite comedy, Mean Girls; Favorite buddy cop film, Rush Hour; Favorite Netflix show, Jessica Jones; Favorite superhero, Spider-Man; Favorite fruit, Strawberries.