So, I saw it... and I didn't like it. Thought it was easily the least interesting Marvel movie of the last few years.
The first 90-100 minutes absolutely nothing interesting happened. People keep saying Carol's friendships were so well done, but honestly I don't see it. The movie has a serious issue with "Show, don't tell". You don't see Carol bond with anybody, it just shows you a flashback and tells you "Okay, these were best friends, just trust us on this" and just assumes the audience en masse will buy this.
Same with the relation between her and Fury. You don't see them become friends. Fury sees an alien, immediately believes Carol and Carol is immediately completely trustworthy of Fury (and has a suspicious amount of knowledge about earthly things for someone who claims to remember nothing).
The Skrulls as a threat aren't threatening at all, which makes sense with the twist, but it does leave a huge part of the movie without a real feeling of conflict. Oooh, four Skrulls landed on earth, what are they going to do? I guess they were banking on the audience being completely mesmerized by Carol discovering her past, but we already know most of that past through the Skrull-induced memory flashes, so the audience doesn't share any of her discoveries.
The twist is also very weirdly placed in the MCU. I mean, I guess the Skrull-twist could be neat for fans of the comics? But really, the Kree stuff is super obvious for anybody who has seen Guardians of the Galaxy where the Kree Empire is literally called an 'evil Empire' and the Accusers are literally called terrorists. Gee, I wonder if they turn out to be not as heroic as they claim they are? Hmmm...
But the worst I found the actual climactic battle. First off, how Carol unlocks her powers is just the most cliché thing ever. The "You're just a human"-stuff is so played out that I think it was already used as a joke in actual movies from the 90's. Like, come on man, are you really going to do a scene like that in freaking 2019? And then you have Carol battling everybody while the song that every single movie from the 90's and early 00's played when a woman is kicking ass plays.
And then finally, of course, what we've all been waiting for, the big supersaiyan moment of Carol and it's just a very obvious, fully CGI render of Carol flying around smashing spaceships for 30 seconds. Yay?
Wonder Woman was miles ahead of this stuff.
It's such a shame, too because last year Marvel showed that it actually knows how to do good, empowering movies. While I might have had some issues with Black Panther, at least it was a very powerful statement and in showing black exceptionalism as the most normal thing in the world it sent a powerful message. Captain Marvel seems to constantly try to reaffirm it's message. I lost count of how many times somebody says "Carol has always been strong" "You are stronger than you think" etc. or how many times she shut down a man for telling her what to do (or the "subtle" jab at Hollywood's treatment of women with her blasting a poster of True Lies).
I mean, points for trying, but why do you have to tell us Carol is awesome so many times? Just show it! Don't wait for the final ten minutes of the movie to finally show what she can do.