Schlock Mercenary

Cutting straight to the chase here, I love this movie. Captain Marvel clears my Threshold of Awesome with room to spare. I’ve wanted more genre-movie Brie Larsen since seeing her in Kong: Skull Island, and Captain Marvel is better than any such thing I could have imagined. She was perfect as Carol Danvers, and the story is exactly what we needed as an introduction to her—with the added bonus of origin stories for Coulson and Fury. In my review of Doctor Strange I expressed how happy I was that the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally had a proper grown-up on stage. I’m excited to see how Carol Danvers interacts with the rest of the heroes in Avengers: Endgame this spring, because Captain Marvel gives us another proper grown-up, and this one didn’t start out as a self centered man-child. There are two post-credits scenes. Beyond that I won’t say anything, except of course there are two post-credits scenes. This is an MCU film.

I’m having difficulty summing up my feelings about Alita: Battle Angel. In part this is because the family trip to the movies ended up in an argument about whether or not it was a good movie, and the argument was not one of those pleasant “discuss the film things,” so on that level the film was an utter disaster. I had nothing but regret for the time and money spent on it. But that’s hardly a fair measure. My 16yo son’s opinion of the film is probably a better metric: SON: “We need to own this.”