I seriously, seriously do not understand why Captain Marvel got a movie before Endgame instead of Black Widow. It literally makes no sense from a story perspective, or really from a business one.
She barely does anything plot-important in Endgame. The intro where Tony returns to earth could have been easily written where Tony and Nebula use parts of her body to jerry rig the ship. It’s not like Tony’s whole schtick is that he’s a fucking super genius who made an infinite energy generator in a cave!!! With a box of scraps!!
The scene where she flies in and destroys Thanos’ ship could also have easily been replaced with a supercharged Thor, or it could have not happened at all. From a plot standpoint, she was very clearly written in at the last minute (and I believe the directors have stated as much).
As for why she’s not on Earth during these events? She said it herself, there’s other planets out there in the universe that need saving.
Meanwhile, unless there’s a specific reason the Black Widow movie NEEDS to take place after her death (which doesn’t seem to be the case), it makes no sense to have it come after Endgame.
Seriously, why didn’t they just swap these two movies? They still would have gotten their wahmen superhero flick, and I bet it would have drawn a lot less controversy than Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel, as a standalone movie, is ... An OK, mediocre action movie at best. As a movie in the MCU, though? It's an absolute stinker, through and through. It's basically the only MCU movie where it makes more sense in the context of Infinity War and Endgame to NOT watch it. Watching Captain Marvel brings about one huge, unforgivable plothole: Captain Marvel's abilities basically make her Space Jesus. And one of her big enemies in her solo movie was Ronan-- someone who worked very closely with Thanos.
How did Captain Marvel not even know about Thanos for all of these years, when he was genocide-ing so many other planets?! And no, "Space is just really big you guys" isn't a good enough explanation. She had been around for 25 years before the Snap; there's
no way she didn't know about Thanos. Methinks Captain Marvel sucks at her job.
Even though she was shoehorned into Endgame, though, the movie was thankfully not ruined for me. However, the movie
would have been better without her. No question. Tony Stark could have easily found a way to get himself back home; in my opinion, it would have made more sense if that had been the case because of the awesome parallels it would have drawn with the first Iron Man movie. The first MCU movie of the Infinity Saga starts with Tony Stark using his intelligence to get out of captivity, and the final MCU movie of the Infinity Saga starts with a very similar thing. That would have been really cool. But ... Nah! Just have Carol find them.
I swear that the Russo Brothers intended for Doctor Strange to take down Thanos' ship with the body of water he was holding back from entering the battlefield. How cool would it have been if Strange had made a gigantic whirlpool or something to take down the ship?
I also swear that Captain Marvel's one-on-one fight against Thanos was intended for the Hulk as well. I think the Hulk got totally cucked because of the inclusion of Captain Marvel. Infinity War had set up this great potential for a "rematch" fight between the Hulk and Thanos ... And I've grown to be even more disappointed that we didn't see it.
It was funny that Thanos literally punched her out of the movie, though ...
Begone, Thot!