The Marvels.

 I really enjoyed Captain Marvel. It had a good story, comedy, and the birth of a hero. It had its problems, but I could get behind Carol and believe in her story.

Recently, I've been working my way through the entirety of the Marvel movie catalogue (It took me a whole year). The Marvels was the last movie on the list. I wanted to see it in theatres but had to wait for Disney Plus. Today, I watched it for the second time and I have this to say about it;

The Beginning wasn't very good. If this was Carol's story, I'd want my money back. This was Ms. Marvel's story, but that was part of the problem.

If I hadn't watched the TV series, I'd have no idea who Ms. Marvel was. That lowered the impact of the opening scene. The recap of her powers through the animation was a nice touch and helped define her character. I enjoyed that.

Carol's flashbacks in the dream sequence to the first movie were boring. We didn't need to know that. They did the same thing in the first movie, but we had no idea what was happening, so that teased us. Here it bored us. If they had focused on her destruction of Hala and her guilt over it, that would have been more interesting. 

Monica was just there.

However, once the fight sequence started, the story picked up and became more interesting. Monica gained a bit more experience with her powers and we had some good comedy moments when Kamala's parents fought off the Kree.

However, there was no hook. No personal connection, except for Kamala, to the main bad guy, who is more interesting. She wanted to save her world, no matter the cost. Just like the Avengers. If after finding the bangle, the Inquisitor had been able to sense the other one, drawing her to Earth and Kamala, who would then be saved by Captain Marvel, that would have been a better opening.

The rest of the movie had us go from fight to fight and didn't give us a clear protagonist. Then the bad guy died. Monica sacrificed herself to stop the plan and save the earth. 

Overall I enjoyed the movie but it wasn't Captain Marvel 2. It was a Ms. Marvel movie. I would like to see a story where Carol uses her powers to go to the X-Men universe to find Monica. It would be her journey of redemption, which should have been the focus of this movie.