Captain Marvel Reviews: 10 Early Reactions You Need To See

4. It Feels Like A Phase One Movie...For Better Or Worse

"Thankfully, for as relatively high-concept and cosmic as Captain Marvel's story engines are, the plot itself doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it relies pretty heavily on the greatest hits of Phase One movies like Iron Man and Thor, digging into the deeply flawed but still wonderfully sympathetic motivations behind Carol's burning need to uncover the truth. It's a refreshing return to the origin story formula that allows Carol to gleefully occupy the same spaces that the MCU has previously reserved exclusively for men...That said, the Phase One nostalgia does seem a bit jarring at times. It's strange to feel the MCU suddenly pivot back to the pure origin story routine after the last two years have been so experimental." - IGN

"The first and most fatal mistake of the script that Boden and Fleck co-wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet is that it reduces Vers — or Carol Danvers, as she’s later and better known — to an amnesiac for most of her adventure; in other words, Captain Marvel is far and away the least compelling thing about 'Captain Marvel.'" - IndieWire

Many members of the press expressed surprise at just how aggressively Captain Marvel feels like a throwback to the earlier days of the MCU. After all, by modern standards the origin stories for Iron Man, Thor and Captain America seem positively quaint.

Some felt that this was a net positive for the film, stripping away the MCU's sometimes overbaked complexity in favour of a more simplistic story, while others deemed the treatment lacking in imagination.

Expect this to be an aspect of the film which most fiercely divides the fanbase.