Alright, I’ve fallen a bit behind on my movie reviews and there’s been a lot going on, so let’s start with a nice easy one that everyone can agree on.

And feel free to enjoy some of the low-hanging fruit I’ve also gone to absolutely no trouble to prepare.

I went to see this movie with Wump and the Itkoblooms and a half-dozen close friends a couple of weeks ago, and … I … liked it?

Okay Google, “woman surrounded by flames”…

Apparently this has been a very divisive movie, mainly because of stuff going on outside the movie and since this is a movie review I won’t actually bother talking about that stuff. Because what would be the logic in that? Don’t be silly.

I did, however, hear some criticisms actually related to the movie, so let’s start there.

1. The characters were shallow, wooden and uninteresting.

Heh, nice one.

2. The story was boring and thematically bland.

Hahahahahaha, oh that’s gold.

3. There were continuity problems fitting it into the existing MCU.

Bwaahahahahaha oh no, continuity problems! Better watch out!

4. It wasn’t faithful to the comic books.

AAAAHAHAHAHAHA STOP STOP YOU’RE KILLING ME!

Okay, *wipes eyes* but seriously now. Opinions are wonderful things and everybody gets one, and that’s fine. If you didn’t like the movie, that’s unfortunate but it doesn’t make you wrong. I liked it but that doesn’t make me right. I don’t really get how we arrived at a place where that sort of thinking was even a thing, except I guess we’ve always pretty much been that way. Which leaves us with the alternatives of continuing to do that, or … to, to stop. Stop doing that.

This here is the only format in which I will accept criticisms and movie reviews from now on, incidentally. Not entirely invalid in my opinion, and at least entertaining.

But yeah. I’m sorry you wasted your time seeing it. Sincerely. If you wasted significantly more of your time trying to convince everyone else not to like the movie, my sympathy is a little diluted but sure, you do you. I’m a big boy. And if we’re all being oversensitive, “expressing your opinion of movie” and “trying to convince everyone else not to like movie” are going to feel similar, I can dig it.

The movie, incidentally, seems to be doing just fine in terms of box office and viewer response. Which is nice to see.

And if you like numbers, here are some good ones.

I knew nothing about the character and was dubious at first. When Mr. Fahrenheit explained the end-credits scene to Infinity War, it was interesting in an “is this where the whole ‘Marvel’ name comes from?” way. The idea of the character wasn’t immediately convincing or compelling.

But then I saw the whole expanse of the MCU that Captain Marvel represented! The Green Lantern-esque origins, except – you know – without the Green Lantern part. All of it, it was just fun to see. And it coincided perfectly with the back-story expanded-universe style worldbuilding that I was doing in Greyblade. I dug it. I sympathised with the challenge the storytellers faced. And I really enjoyed seeing how it all fitted together.

Because when you take what we learned in Captain Marvel, it changes a lot of things we knew about the Avengers’ world, and especially the Guardians of the Galaxy’s world. I won’t go into it right now, not much time or energy, but wow. Talk about exactly what I wanted to do with my own prequel series and other datapoints. This movie got me back to watching a selection of older Marvel movies in preparation for sitting down with Wump and watching Infinity War and then Endgame, which I’m sure was exactly the point.

For example, the Collector didn’t have a Dark Elf in a display case in Guardians of the Galaxy, it was a Skrull. Which is absolutely cool. And then there’s little stuff like this, although of course it was easier to put in Easter Eggs this late in the game.

Yeah, I thought it was cool. And refreshingly different in terms of character behaviour, motivation, and responses. Some of the comic book tropes they overturned were so big, I didn’t think they could be overturned. How does a universe formed out of the primordial narrativium allow a bad guy to throw away his weapons and demand a ‘fair fight’, and that fight not to happen?

Speaking of fair fights, pretty much all the fight scenes were great. I’m not generally a big fan of the kick-punch-kick-punch-flip hoo-hah-hyah stuff, so this was a nice balance.

And man oh man, the music. The music was absolutely on. It was like being back in high school.

So yeah, with all the great scenes and characters and story, as well as a cat you need to see to believe, I really enjoyed this movie. If you didn’t enjoy it, that’s entirely your call and I’m sorry. I’m not here to tell you it was good – only that I thought it was good. I’ll give it a Flerken out of a possible very slightly cooler Flerken. Sorry but I told you I was out of time here.