Does naming the Captain Marvel sequel... ?

I see what you're saying, but at the same time, I think they're just being cute with the title. It could be named anything, and people will still be pissed that Brie Larson is still playing the lead.  

A bit. But that’s not a bad thing. Feige has a good sense of when his franchises need a mix up or an extra boost. Thor 3 was a big shake up, even including Hulk as a supporting character, but now Thor is a beloved centerpiece of the MCU. Captain Marvel desperately needed a course correction and this is it. The character will benefit from it. 

What he said. ^^^

I don't think Marvel Studios has a lack of confidence in Captain Marvel. I believe they are in for a surprise, though, in that I predict that The Marvels isn't going to do nearly the same business as the first film.

It's not like CM made a billion dollars on its opening weekend.  CBM movies make a lot of their money off of repeat viewings.  If people hated CM as much as you think they did, it never would've made a billion dollars, I don't care if it had come out a week before Endgame.  (And by the way, as I've mentioned in the past, the timing of its release was actually detrimental to the film's reception and legacy.  It feels like a phase one movie and it should've been one.  Instead they crammed a solo film introducing a new character into the center of this enormously complex crossover event; I'm surprised it didn't flop.  I understand why people think it's not great.  How can a self-contained origin story compare to Infinity War?) 

You're really reaching with your argument here.  Ant-Man literally shared the title of his film with another character, how is that not the same thing?  Civil War was the ultimate ensemble movie, well at least until IW and Endgame.  How are the plans changing for CM2 different from massive rewrites to include Loki in the plot of Thor 2?  You were just complaining about Marvel force feeding CM to the audience in What If; now you're saying they aren't promoting her at all?  Her movie cones out in just over a year, they're more focused on promoting everything that comes out before that.  Eternals, Hawkeye, DS2, Black Panther 2, Ms. Marvel.  They have more chapters to the MCU story than ever before now that they have Disney+ as a playground, as well as more films per year on a slate clogged by covid for over a year.  I don't know why you think they should be talking about CM2 alone to try to prove they're still invested in the character. 

It's called the Marvels because it features several characters who have used the name in the comics.  They're promoting all of those characters equally for the same reason they called it Falcon & The Winter Soldier-- they want to cast as large a marketing net as possible.  The Ms. Marvel show will have debuted by then.  "Are you a fan of the Ms. Marvel show?  Are you a fan of Captain Marvel?  They're both in this film.  Buy your tickets now."  It's all marketing.  They hope to have several prominent female characters to promote going forward.  It isn't that complicated, and it doesn't require some conspiracy theory to avoid backlash to a character who headlined a billion dollar grossing film. 

We've had the overpowered conversation before and I still think you're wrong (What If notwithstanding, as it's hard to gauge proper power levels in a cartoon where Nick Fury is launched 50 feet into the air and survives).  She doesn't do anything in her own film until the very end, and even then she doesn't do anything more impressive than some of Thor or Hulk's feats, and nobody ever complained about them.  The one mistake Feige made were his comments on Carol being, "The most powerful character by far," before her film debuted.  If he hadn't said that, nobody would blink when she blew up a spaceship, as if that's some incredible feat. 

The bottom line is most people don't hate the character the way you do.  I can find youtube videos of people bitching about any movie or movie character you can imagine, that doesn't mean they represent the majority.  They sure as hell aren't trying to make people forget about the character by giving her a sequel.             

Carol isn't divisive you're confusing Brie with her character.

Ok, forget about the title and let's focus on power levels. We can discuss the title more once we reach some kind of agreement on power levels. 

Thor takes out a bunch of frost giants and lays waste to their iceland. Does he win that match? No, he actually needs to get saved by Odin. What happens after that? He gets stripped of his powers and gets treated like a loon by the people of earth. Gets electrocuted multiple times and knocked out on Earth. He's led to believe he caused his father's death and he's forced to apologize to his brother. He needs to completely change his attitude in order to get his powers back, even sacrifices himself. And even once he gets his powers back and faces off against Loki, he needs to make a sacrifice: Save the frost giants or go back to the woman he loves? In the end, he sacrifices love for his duty. 

Does Captain Marvel go through any of that? Did she ever need any sort of saving in her movie? Did she ever apologize for anything she did? Did she ever need to be humbled or face a challenge that she didn't just blast her way through? Did she ever even lose a fight? And in the end, did she need to make any personal sacrifice in order to gain her full powers? 

Nope. None at all. 

And no, blowing up a spaceship is not the most impressive thing she did. She caught a rocket ship about the size of a small skyscraper and threw it back at the Kree. She made Ronan retreat. Later on in Endgame she's beating up Thanos in hand to hand combat and Thanos needed to use the power stone just to get her off him. This is the same Thanos that casually demolished Hulk in hand to hand combat. So no, Hulk is obviously nowhere near Carol's league. Yeah he punched a leviathan (with added assistance from Ironman) but that was one leviathan. Carol took down the entire mothership of Thanos, a ship that could house hundreds of leviathans. 

Thor is obviously stronger and more potent than Hulk, and at his strongest I actually think he's more powerful than Captain Marvel. But he struggles to get to that point. He's lost his mother, father, brother and people. He lost an eye and his favored weapon and gets stabbed and bruised multiple times. He's lost multiple fights along the way and had to resort to either trickery or flat out depending on other people to save the day. Heck he even struggles in a fight against Ironman or Hulk. Lost to Hela and Kurse. Got beat up by Thanos and his goons. Took around 5 movies to unlock his full powers. He suffered PTSD and became a shell of his former self. In fact, we only ever see Thor at full power for a very brief period, at the end of Infinity War. After that he becomes a joke of himself. 


Carol went through none of that to get to her current power levels. She's lost no fair fights, doesn't get injured, doesn't overcome any challenges, doesn't go through any character changes, is never humiliated in any way, etc. Now granted she's only had 1 movie and a brief outing in Endgame, but that just proves my point. If she's already this powerful at such an early stage of her MCU appearance without really needing to do much, there's not a lot of room for her to grow. 

I don't know that Thor needed saving.  Odin shows up to put an end to the fight.  He was pissed at Thor for starting it.  Thor was wiping the floor with the frost giants, literally demolishing their entire realm with hammer blows.  That big bad creature looked like a game changer, and Thor just blew a hole in its head. 

And yes, CM went through that.  She sacrificed herself before her movie even started, we just didn't find out it happened until the end (which is when her full power is unlocked, just like Thor).  She got her ass handed to her in training by Yon-Rogg.  Hell, she even got duped and sucker punched by Talos.  She's captured and helpless as she's being interrogated by the skrulls.  Her flashbacks show how she was underestimated and told she couldn't do it time and time again, but she kept getting up.  From what I understand, this stuff resonates much more with women than it does with us, so I get why this type of hero's journey isn't as compelling to you.  But it's a struggle nonetheless.  I personally don't like the way this story was put together, but I still recognize the story arc here, and I don't see her falling into her powers the way you do. 

The stuff from the end of her movie.  She's a walking infinity stone, she should be able to overpower a kree rocket ship.  I think Thor or even Iron Man would've done the same thing, had it been their film.  This is younger, less powerful Ronan.  He even looks different. he's clearly not at the same level he's at in GOTG.  For that matter, he doesn't seem particularly afraid of her.  He says they'll come back to get her when they're more prepared.

I'm not going to argue anything from Endgame, we both agree that movie is all over the place with powersets and disappointing character arcs (or lack thereof). 

At the end of the day, Carol doesn't take on a formidable opponent until the end of her film.  She gets taken down several times at the beginning and spends the rest of the time doing pretty much nothing (that's the real problem with this film).  At the end she unlocks her potential, just like Thor, and Hulk, and the entire Avengers team before her.  And even then she only fights her opponent to a standstill before he decides discretion is the better part of valor.  Hulk, Thor and Iron Man beat their opponents into submission; hell Tony killed his. 

We've had this discussion multiple times, neither of us are going to budge and I'm just glad we can still do this without getting annoyed with each other.                  

Yes, Thor needed saving. His team was in full retreat. Yes, he was making a fight of it but they were still trying to run away. They were cornered, heavily outnumbered and even Thor had a heavy look of worry on his face before Odin came down and broke up the fight. Carol never needed saving like that before. That's not even bringing into account scenes like Loki saving Thor from his horrible beat down from Kurse, Thor needing Surtur's help to beat Hela, Thor needing Vision's help against Ultron, Thor getting absolutely stomped by Thanos, etc. 

Carol didn't exactly make a sacrifice prior to her movie. She tried to destroy her ship's power core so that Yon Rogg couldn't take it, but there's no indication that she actually knew it was going to explode the way it did. She was initially losing her training session against Yon Rogg but that fight still ended up with Yon Rogg being the one knocked down and hurt. Yes, she got sucker punched by Talos... again supporting my point that she has never lost a fair fight. She gets captured (again due to said sucker punch) but was easily able to free herself without much issues.

If the most challenging things she faces are shown in flashbacks, then this is horrible writing. Flashbacks are used to flesh out the background of a character, not as the main obstacle they need to overcome to develop their arc. To use it as such is just plain horrible (and lazy) writing. It's pretty much the opposite of show don't tell. 

At the end of her movie, she's not a walking infinity stone. At least she should be. If it was Vision or Dr. Strange, two characters who actually have infinity stones, then that would be understandable. She got her powers from an infinity stone but then so did Wanda and Pietro. They weren't anywhere near her power levels in their first movie. Wanda took far, far longer to get to that power level... which is probably why most people don't complain about Wanda being OP the same way they complain about Carol being OP. Thor or Ironman would have destroyed that Kree rocket ship but I don't believe either of them have ever shown any feat where they outright just throw a rocket ship back, or anything approaching the size of that rocket ship. 

At the end of the day, it's not Carol's power levels that are problematic, it's the way it's shown and developed on screen. Wanda, Thor and Dr. Strange are all just as powerful if not moreso, but their power levels were carefully paced and developed throughout multiple shows. They were given challenges that they actually struggled with instead of only seeming to struggle with. Carol gets none of that. 

I do hope they fix it in the next movie. You might be surprised to know that Carol Danvers is in my top 5 favorite comicbook characters (Miss Marvel version, not Captain Marvel version). So it pains me to see her treated like this and hope they do better with the next movie. But so far with the way they're handling her and if the Black Widow movie was any indication, I'm not hopeful. For her character to get proper development the MCU must be willing to break her character and drag her through the mud if necessary (the way they do to all their other solo-movie characters other than Black Widow). I just can't see them doing that with her.