This is my hope as well - let it be somewhat like the comics, and keep him around for when they get another heavy hitter villain and we can have the inevitable reluctant team-up.

I mean, now that we have all the licenses in one place, it could be Galactus. This would be wicked.

 

Anyone seen the new animated Spider-Man film? I recall seeing it mentioned in this sub-forum, and hope I'm posting in the right thread.

[minor spoilers ahead]

The animation and colours are great. It makes me feel a little nostalgic for those days when seemingly every new release was cel-shaded. The film feels like an animated comic book, similar to how Sin City feels at times, but not quite as dark. In particular is the bit where Miles discovers his spider-sense.

Jake Johnson (Nick Miller from New Girl) does a pretty good Parker. Reckon he took a few cues from Reynold's Deadpool. The cast was pretty great, in general. Mahershala Ali and Bryan Tyree Henry were nice surprises.

I never had a problem with Miles Morales as the new ultimate Spidey some ten years ago, and as it was, the comics had already been stale for a while. This film could have really gone either way, but I was very pleased. I was laughing throughout, and the action scenes were great fun.

There could have been more of a payoff near the end, and some poignant moments felt like they lacked punch, but I did expect that, considering the sheer number of Spider-people. The Spider-verse series in the comics fell flat too, and one of the reasons was that there simply were too many Spiders, and more of a focus on flashy stuff rather than substance. I don't think the movie needed this many Spideys, and had that been the case, there'd have been more space to expand upon Mile's journey into becoming ready to take his leap of faith. I'd have also liked to see more of Other Peter's struggles in that AU, where his counterpart was essentially living his life, only a lot better.

Solid 4/5. Want more, would watch again.

 

Captain Marvel sitting at 82% on Rottentomatoes right now.

I'd forgotten it was coming out tomorrow.

 

Looking up Captain Marvel reviews is hilarious. The majority are saying it's one of those films that's just alright. Nothing majorly wrong, just not a great film.

Then every now and again there's a review that is essentially "OMFG THIS FILM IS GROUNDBREAKING. I'M SO HAPPY THIS PISSES OFF SEXIST COMIC BOOK NERDS LIVING IN A BASEMENT."

I'm just here like, okay, hold on. I don't live in a basement.

 

Spoilers from early screenings are available on Reddit. I won't post them here, but I'll say that from opinions circulating, it looks like Carol Danvers is uncompelling as a character, which, if true, would be MCU's first stumble in introducing a protagonist since... gotta be Incredible Hulk.

Score aggregators mean little to me, but I have to admit that I have little interest in CM beyond how it ties into IW/Endgame (and it doesn't look to be terribly important beyond Carol herself).

 

Man, I like Marvel Studios, but Captain Marvel has just made it abundantly clear how much money they are receiving from the military industrial complex. The entire thing is a commercial for the Air Force, and they're using it to recruit impressionable young girls to bomb weddings and assert violent US hegemony. Sad stuff. Woke feminist capitalism sucks.

Also, the mysoginist backlash to this movie is half the advertisement. It's something Nike, Gillette, and Disney have all realized. When you get a dumb reactionary boycott about SJWs, sales go up.

 

Carol should have been hinted at near the end of the next avengers movie rather than trying to put her in now imo.

I think we should have had either a Captain America or Black widow movie dealing with the fallout of the snap.

 

@BitMyFinger never disappoints with fitting everything into a nice package of "America bad".

 

Just watched Chris Stuckmann‘s spoiler-free Captain Marvel review, he also found the film somewhat middling, especially the direction, visual style and Brie Larson‘s performance. He‘s my go-to guy when it comes to film reviews in video format, and I trust and agree with his scores and talking points more often than not.

I‘m going to see it tomorrow. Should be interesting.

 

Regarding the Rotten Tomatoes stuff:

I read an industry article a couple of weeks back talking about this. They said projections indicated that CM was expected to make money and audience attendance on par with Black Panther, at first.

As with BP, dorks came out and rated it down on Rotten Tomatoes in protest for one reason or another.

So, numbers dropped a little. Then Brie Larson started doing talk shows touting CM as a feminist movie, etc.. The numbers tanked on par with some of the lower ranking Marvel movies, but still good enough to make the studio money.

When will Hollywood learn that people are tired of actors inserting their politics into people's entertainment? We don't care about your agenda. We just want to be entertained for a couple of hours, away from the political shit that runs 24/7 in all other aspects of our lives.

I'm so freaking sick of politics.

tl;dr: Trust individual reviewers whose tastes are on par with your own more than RT in this case.

 

Saw it today. Spoiler free reveiw:

The first 20-30 minutes were not well done, it was almost jarring in the way the story flowed.

Over all I think it was what everyone said, a really really OK movie, for me its on par with the first Captain America movie, slow start, ok story, ok development, ok movie, not one I will rewatch in general apart from when I redo everything once MCU is done.

I will say I think the girl power was just a tad over done but only a tad. Like the Armoured rhinos in BP, I get what they are doing, but they could of been more clever and less GIRL POWER.

Also I won a $50 bet with my mate over the fact the No Doubt song would be featured.

 

Learn?

I seriously doubt what happened in case of this Marvel movie was an accident either. These AAA movie PR interviews/discussions are highly controlled on both sides to deliver exactly the message the PR department wanted to deliver.

 

Have you guys heard those rumors that Disney has two cuts of Endgame? One if CM does well, one for if it doesn't, limiting Carol's presence in the film.

I don't think it's even that crazy of a theory.

 

Don't give me hope, Scott.

 

I get that Marvel is trying really hard promote a superhero called Captain Marvel and make her super special in MCU, but if one spoiler is true, they are trying too hard.

Spoiler

I heard that Nick Fury called the Avengers Initiative after her callsign.

It's annoying when comics do these retcon reveals, it's going to be annoying when films start do the same.

 

It wasn't that people were posting bad reviews or rating it down. It was an RT-posted poll basically "yes or no are you interested in seeing it," and "no" was overwhelmingly winning. RT then deleted the poll. It was just media spin saying they were bad reviews that were being deleted to push the typical MSM "white man bad" narrative.

 

@Celestin if you care to know about your spoiler:

Spoiler

It's true. At the end of the movie Fury tells Caulson about the initiative, sees a picture of Carol with her callsign "Avenger" and changes the name to Avenger Initiative.

 

Did you miss an /s ?

 

I‘ve just come back from my screening. Here are some thoughts:

Direction:
Bland. I know most introductory Marvel movies aren‘t known for their outstanding direction, but there was really nothing to be excited about here. It‘s competently shot, but nothing special, and the action set pieces were a bit all over the place. Particularly the first one.

Performances:
I actually liked Brie Larson a lot more than I thought I would. She had genuine chemistry with all the important characters except for, weirdly, Jude Law. I’d actually name him as the weakest link, as I thought the screenplay gave him next to nothing challenging to do. Larson also hit the emotional beats quite well, or at least as well as Danvers believably could have. Samuel L. Jackson was very good as well. I don’t know whether this will be the Fury performance we’ll remember 20 years down the line, but it certainly deserves to be in the conversation. Is it bad that I was was pretty sure as to how exactly he was going to get his eyepatch half an hour into the film? Lastly, the supporting characters were well-cast and gave very good performances as well, and Ben Mendelsohn was, as always, a delight. Goose was, as the kids say, totes adorbs.

Music:
Excellent song choices that captured the mid-90s vibe very well. The regular score was nice, had some interesting theme variations, and was indeed somewhat reminiscent of Ragnarok.



And now for the spoilery stuff.

Spoiler

Plot:
Interesting. Didn’t fully go in the direction I thought it was going to go. The villain bait-and-switch between Yon-Rogg and Talos was well-executed, and the addition of Ronan was a nice touch. Furthermore, I think there’s a somewhat valuable point to be made about the initial representation of the Skrulls as the evil Other in the film, and the audience rooting (unknowingly) with “Vers,” who is, in a similar dilemma as the viewer, unknowingly left fighting for and with the bad guys against the weird, green aliens for the first part of the story before the big reveal.
A note on the humour: I think it was important that the film did not take itself too seriously. The fish-out-of-water scenario works well – for both Danvers and Fury, interestingly enough, and there were some genuine laugh-out-loud moments during this period. In the latter parts of the film, the humour came mainly via some nicely executed put-downs (Science Guy, RIP) and surprises (Goose!), which I thought was a good decision.
Other than that, I don’t think there’s much more to say. It’s a Marvel (literally, in this case) origin story, there’s not really much left that hasn’t been done with this scenario before. I would argue that the final act was actually the weakest one due to the sudden escalation of Captain Marvel’s power level and the somewhat toothless resolution to her arc with Yon-Rogg. By contrast, the first act’s expected disjointedness didn’t really bother me as much as I thought it would, it actually set up a decent mystery that the second act resolved nicely.
Lastly, in line with others here I would also classify the callsign stuff as overly gratuitous fanservice. There are some things that don’t really need an explanation. As for an example of how to do fanservice and retcons right, look no further than how Captain Marvel’s suit colours came to be.

Captain Marvel’s Powers:
There was some slight hope inside of me that they wouldn’t go all-out with this prior to, and even for a little bit after the final meeting with the AI. Boy, was I wrong. The film went to great lengths, throughout almost its entire runtime, to establish that Danvers’ powers, while extraordinarily helpful and certainly deus-ex-machina-like in mundane circumstances, aren’t some kind of insta-kill switch, only to blow all of that up (once again, literally) in the final fifteen minutes. Even a supposedly fully unleashed Danvers struggles to bring her old crew to heel, only to make one of Ronan’s ships look like it is nothing more than wet tissue paper five minutes later. If this is supposed to represent character growth, then it is very badly executed, particularly once we see how she handles Yon-Rogg. Her ability to get into the Avengers complex undetected and sneak up on Black Widow of all people also has me somewhat worried.

Marvel’s Opening Sequence:
Brilliant. Excelsior! Also happy to report a solid fifteen seconds of applause.

Stan Lee’s Cameo:
A very sweet moment, set at the perfect point in the film.

Final Grade: 7.5/10. Would watch again if nothing else was on.

That should cover my most important impressions. Will edit if I remember anything else of equal or greater importance.

 

No? The Air Force is throwing money at this movie to recruit the girls who see Captain Marvel.

https://www.airforce.com/originstory

They've got ads before the movie, and ads inside the movie. They want young girls and women to continue wars that have been going on for longer than they've been alive. US missles have killed over 700 middle eastern children in the last 5 years, and for the next 5 years they want fans of Carol Danvers dropping those bombs.