I vividly remember when this film was first announced, back in October 2014. I was an insecure, withdrawn young teenager who was grappling with severe anxiety, and like many teenagers I had retreated into fictional worlds of superheroes and magic and galaxies far far away. I remember sitting on the wooden floor of the drama classroom at school, scrolling through the list of newly announced Marvel Phase 3 films, and I remember how excited I was that finally, finally, there would be a female-led superhero film. The announcement of the Captain Marvel film led me to the Carol Danvers of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s original run, in which the character who had previously been known as Ms. Marvel first took on the title of Captain. Vol. 1, In Pursuit of Flight, was the first comic book I ever read, and I didn’t fully understand the story, but I was hooked. The very first panels of issue one depict Carol taking down The Absorbing Man outside the Museum of Natural History in New York, with Captain America hovering on the periphery. Dexter Soy’s art is dynamic and fluid, his expressive and almost abstracted linework coloured with a muted, edgy palette. In the later issues of the first volume, both Emma Rios’ and Filipe Andrade’s art was equally beguiling and unique. This was nothing like the flat, bright, corniness of superhero comics, and neither was Carol. She was powerful, incredibly powerful, but also kind, and she didn’t take any shit, and she was an unapologetic Star Wars nerd and she cared for her friends fiercely. She was the hero I needed when I was a confused, lost 14 year old.

I read all the trade paperbacks, went back in time and fought Kree Prowlers with Carol and the Banshee Squadron during World War Two, watched with her as she saw the past version of herself caught in the explosion that gave her her powers, and I was with her when she led the Avengers, and when she couldn’t use her powers because she had a brain lesion, and when she helped an alien girl find her way back home. I read until I was up to date, and then I started buying the issues when they were released once a month, and I started reading other comics too - Ms Marvel and Black Widow and Star Wars and Spider-Woman. Every week on my way home from school I would stop in the city and visit the comic book shop to collect that week’s releases, and it was Carol who I looked forward to catching up with the most.

During this time, I moved to a new school, I started taking medication for my anxiety, and I slowly started becoming more outgoing and confident in myself. I started trying to be brave like Carol - I’d ask myself what Carol would do if I found myself in an anxiety-provoking situation, and I’d follow her lead. I ordered a Captain Marvel jumper online, and wore it obsessively. It’s not like Captain Marvel comics became my whole life, rather that they were a constant companion throughout the hardest years of my adolescence, a reassuring regularity as I tried to work through episodes of numbing depression and anxious breakdowns. Equally comforting was the discovery of the Carol Corps, an inclusive online community of mostly female comic fans who rallied around DeConnick’s Captain Marvel. I never actively engaged in the fandom, but I read articles about feminist storytelling and blog posts about the gay subtext of Carol’s relationship with Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) and her cropped haircut, and the knowledge that this community existed was enough.

It feels like I’ve been waiting for this movie for a very long time, because of the distance between the girl who needed the strength of Carol’s photon blasts to expose herself to the possibility of rejection or failure, and who I am now. I wonder how that past version of myself would have felt about this cinematic version of Carol Danvers, who spends the entire movie trying to piece together the person she didn’t know she was, and the past she didn’t know she had. She’s a different character to the Carol of my beloved comics - at the beginning of the film she’s barely a character at all, more of a transparent illusion of a superhero who can shoot fire from her fists and is quick with a requisite one-liner, set against the backdrop of interstellar warfare that is supposed to be alien but feels all too familiar in the poorly lit monotony of its action scenes. Captain Marvel is far from a perfect movie - like Carol herself, it’s going through an identity crisis, except one that never quite gets resolved. In some sparse but precious scenes, like those between Carol and Maria, the movie it could have been is visible for a moment - an intimate exploration of identity and memory and love and heroism. In those moments, the screenplay’s decision to make Carol an amnesiac as a shortcut to telling the now all too recognisable superhero origin story nearly makes sense.

But ultimately, despite Brie Larson’s valiant attempts, the film suffers from the cinematic homogeneity that the producers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so love to inflict on their viewers. Any unique directorial vision that Boden and Fleck may have had for the film is stifled by the obligatory bombastic special effects, quippy one-liners and mostly bland visual style calculated by studio executives to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

The film’s theme of ~feminist empowerment~ mostly rings false, because aside from a few token misogynistic comments, Carol’s gender never presents any real obstacle to her heroism. This wouldn’t be a problem if her character arc earned its emotional beats through genuine development, but instead the film mostly relies on expository montages. Through these, we see snippets of Carol’s childhood, friendship with Maria and early career with the airforce. The actual content of these flashbacks is engaging and warm, and do a better job of communicating who Carol Danvers is than the rest of the movie. I wanted to see more of this version of the character, but the way the montages were integrated into the movie as a whole felt a bit lazy. The whole film is small and contained in its scope, and the stakes are never quite high enough to warrant genuine engagement.

From the above you could infer that I hated the film, but I don’t. I certainly enjoyed it while I was watching it, because one thing Marvel can do is make entertaining movies. Goose the cat is very cute, Ben Mendelsohn’s Aussie accent is a nice touch, Nick Fury has some great comedic moments, the action scene on the train is exciting, and the 90s nostalgia and soundtrack is lots of fun. I also really appreciated the choice to write Mar-Vell as a woman, a ~feminist~ moment that doesn’t feel contrived. And even though it hadn’t quite been earned, I still took a lot of satisfaction in watching Carol tell Yon-Rogg that she didn’t have to prove anything to him and then punch his lights out. Maybe upon rewatch, I’ll find more things to like about it.

It’s unfortunate that this is the first female-led Marvel film, because female comic book fans deserve more after waiting for this long, and misogynist internet dudebros will no doubt seize upon any negative reviews as justification for never letting a woman lead a superhero film ever again. I hope it gets a sequel, because Carol Danvers deserves a film that’s worthy of her, and so do we.

I think if I’d seen this movie in 2014, I’d have taken the disappointment a lot harder. Now that I’m older, I don’t need to escape into Carol’s world the way I used to. Instead, Carol helped me find a place in my own world, and the calibre of this movie doesn’t take away from that fact.

My 15 year old sister came with me to see Captain Marvel. She never got into the comics, so she didn’t really have any expectations or background information before she saw the movie. It was a joy to watch her reaction as the story unfolded. She was nervous during the action scenes and the Skrull mysteries of the first act, and intrigued as Carol’s backstory unfolded, genuinely surprised by the plot twist and then fully invested in the fate of the [redacted]. Like me, she had a huge grin on her face during the scene when Carol finally realises the full extent of her powers. We watched Carol glow brightly and soar joyfully through the atmosphere into space, relishing in her near-invincibility, and for a moment we were invincible too.

After the post-credits scenes finished, my sister was ecstatic, talking about how much she loved the film and the main character. As we left the cinema, we passed two girls, one wearing a “Carol Corps” t-shirt. I was wearing my Captain Marvel jumper. We made eye contact and smiled at each other. I only noticed the leather jacket worn by the other girl as they walked away from us. It was beautifully hand-painted with a Captain Marvel design, and I stopped and called out to her that it was amazing. The whole interaction lasted less than ten seconds, and then my sister and I continued on our way home, content.