The story was very weak. The Skrulls are after lightspeed technology? The whole time I was thinking really, shouldn't an alien race with huge spaceships and other advanced tech already have access to such a thing? Turns out what they were really after was the Tesseract (which raises more questions) which was in the possession of Mar-Vell who wanted to use it to end all war. What? In the MCU timeline the last time the Tesseract was seen it was being retrieved by Howard Stark and the SSR which ultimately becomes SHIELD. So how exactly did Mar-Vell get a hold of it?
Mar-Vell is a woman in this movie which is fine but her role in the story is very minimal which is a shame considering the character's rich history.
There's no standout villain once again, Yon Rogg turns out to be the guy but the script gives Jude Law little to work with. The twist of the film I guess is that the Skrulls appear to be the baddies for half the film but then turn out to be just displaced refugees looking for a new planet to call home. I can't say I've read every Skrull story in existence but I don't remember one where they were not villainous so them being portrayed in a sympathetic light was not a surprise I expected or truly wanted.
The rest of the Star Force members were all forgettable background characters who did next to nothing.
Much of the design work on the ships, environments and planets was very generic and uninspired. The Kree homeworld is your garden variety Coruscant type planet, very industrialized and covered in massive building structures while Torfa the planet where Star Force's first mission takes place is a drab, barren wasteland ravaged by war. Imagery we've see countless times in a hundred other sci-fi films. The Kree and Star Force outfits were all just minor variations of CM's outfit. The ships were all very uninteresting basic type shapes and the action beats while serviceable were nothing too exciting. Even at the end when CM unleashes her full power levels against the Kree warships
Brie Larson was decent. Better than she sounded in the trailers but there were still many lackadaisical deliveries from her throughout. SLJ provides much of the energy to an otherwise lifeless script but even he felt dragged down by it. Ben Mendelsohn was good as Talos but again there just wasn't enough meat on the script bones to really sink his teeth into.
Agent Coulson makes his return to the MCU since being killed in Avengers 1 but is pretty much wasted as he has about 2-3 minutes of screen time max and just as little dialogue. Same goes for Ronan who is even more of a waste. Why even bother?
The Kree Supreme Intelligence is featured in the movie but it's never shown in its giant blob-face comic-book form, it simply takes the form of each individual's sub-conscious perception of it. I was really hoping we'd get to see its true form and there was a perfect opportunity to showcase it once Carol regained her memories and remembered who the woman she was seeing as the SI actually was. Alas, it didn't materialize.
Goose the cat is indeed a "Flerken" just like in Kelly Sue Deconnick's comic run. The moment where it reveals its true nature was pretty much the only thing to get a major reaction out of the audience. This movie also didn't feature as much humor or jokes as other MCU films but what humor there was didn't land much at all in my theater.
The score was totally forgettable. I don't recall if there was even a main theme for CM or not. The selection of 90's music was comprised of many of the more trendy or popular tracks of the decade which depending on your tastes was either a good thing or bad thing.
The revelation of how Fury lost his eye is basically played for a joke and thus weakens earlier allusions to how he lost it such as in The Winter Soldier when he says "The last time I trusted somebody I lost an eye."
I don't think we hear Carol actually referred to as Captain Marvel once in the film.
So yeah, overall I'm none too happy with this movie. It's gonna make a ton of money I'm sure but it feels like a fumble for Marvel and leaves a sour taste going into Avengers Endgame.