Captain Marvel (2019)

The B-2 “Spirit” stealth bomber was not introduced to the public until 1997.
In Marvel’s latest blockbuster “Captain Marvel,” a 1991-era Carol Danvers enters a secret military base, and there is a B-2, sitting proud, taking up a large plot of runway for multiple scenes. 
We never get to see it fly, but that’s not the point. 
The point is the attention to detail: 
A B-2 was snookered away. A split-second scene showed a bunch of Air Force pilots playing “Crud.” A character wore a shirt proudly displaying the Air Force’s ‘Hap Arnold’ wings (which wouldn’t be officially replaced by the current blue space wings until 2004). And even though I didn’t go to the Academy, Carol Danvers proudly sported the USAFA PT gear.
Directors Anna Biden and Ryan Fleck did an outstanding job working with the USAF’s Public Affairs office to capture so many little details; this movie could have been called “Captain U.S. Air Force.”
And kudos to the team at Edwards AFB for helping put all the right things in all the right scenes.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of Industrial Light & Magic studios, Disney has perfected age-regression CGI. Real-life Samuel L. Jackson is 70, and it shows. His ‘Nick Fury’ character is still bad-ass in the present-day Marvel films, but Disney was able to scrub 30 years of age from his face, without making it look creepy or crossing into any kind of uncanny valley, for an entire movie.

They tried something similar in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” with Robert Downey Jr. and failed horrifically, and that was only for five minutes.
They de-aged Clark Gregg’s ‘Phil Coulson’ too, but to a much less dramatic effect, as Gregg doesn’t look particularly old during any point in any of Marvel’s movies or shows.

For the first time, I think ever, Ben Mendelsohn played someone that I didn’t immediately write off as a failure of a character. Maybe because he wasn’t a villain, or maybe he just needed a director who could actually point him to act better. Either way, I liked his role. 

With this 2019 movie, Disney/Marvel managed to succeed where both George Lucas and Disney/StarWars failed: they made a prequel movie to a beloved series without shoving every little “this is where that other thing came from!” detail down your throat. 
There were nods and Easter eggs and all sorts of things throughout, but none of it felt forced the way other prequel movies do.
The MCU has spent the last 11 years building up to their phase-3 conclusion with “Avengers: End Game” next month, but with “Captain Marvel” they managed to precede every single other movie (except 2011’s “Captain America”), tell a complete and self-contained story, and retroactively set the building blocks for every other movie we’ve seen, all without feeling forced. 
That’s a very impressive feat. 

Unlike Steve Rogers, who was a Private in the Army, and “promoted” to captain to promote his USO role of ‘Captain America’ at the beginning of his own film, Carol Danvers was actually a Captain. 
And there was a cat named “Goose” - obviously a “Top Gun” (1986) reference.
Even though that was a Navy-centric movie, I’ll let it fly.

I have do two complaints with this movie, but they’re relatively small:
First: At the beginning, Danvers (Brie Larson) and Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) spend a few scenes spouting quippy dialogue at each other, which, as I’ve identified before, often ends up feeling like two people reading from completely separate scripts instead of trying to communicate with each other.

Second is that there is no theme song. 
This is actually a larger issue with the MCU in general: with the exception of the “Avengers”-titled movies, the MCU flicks don’t have theme songs or running tunes, and it irks me.

I would like to point out that I was born in 1992, which means that I wasn’t particularly aware of pop-culture until 2000 at the earliest. So if you’re older than me, I’m sure you’ll be able to pick out many more references and cultural touchstones than I could, and I’m okay with that.

I was expecting great things out of this movie and I was not let down.
The MCU has made some incredible strides in film successes, including an African-American lead film in 2018’s “Black Panther,” and now a female-lead girl-power movie with 2019’s “Captain Marvel.”
The key is not that they made movies with leads who aren’t white men - any studio can do that - it’s that they made critically acclaimed blockbusters with leads who aren’t white men.

Call it whatever you want, but the ability to put people in seats with non-standard lead characters is outstanding, and speaks to a certain amount of very positive cultural influence.

Absolutely go see this movie.
You could definitely enjoy it without having seen any other MCU film, but then you’d miss out on the references.
Seriously. Go see it. In theaters. Now.