An Age Of Dragons

Like. Looking back, it's hilarious. Fury's been searching for Carol-types for like 13 years and he had nothing to show for it. Then he sees Iron Man on the news and he's like, "This is it. This is IT. Get Coulson down there right now. We've found our guy! This is it! THIS IS--"

What a cool villain concept, the Supreme Intelligence is. They appear in the form you are most comfortable with. We've seen that so much in sci-fi, and then this movie's like, "Wow, what a horrifying power for an abuser to have. The Kree population is controlled by an actual sentient gas light!"

I hope we see more of the Kree in the future. Carol promised to hit them like a meteor to some dinosaurs but it's been almost thirty years since then and we have no idea what ever came of it. Maybe we'll find out in The Marvels.

And then there's Yon-Rogg. The smug, confident, generous, and well-disciplined man opposite Carol's over-emotional and impulsive woman. Or, at least, that's how he'd like you to see it. Insecure? Possessive? Manipulative? What do those words mean!?

Yon-Rogg talks down to Carol, trying to make it a point of honor for her to fight him "fairly". To turn off her powers and face him in his arena, the only place he can beat her.

But he never pays her the same respect, does he? When the inhibitor on her neck shuts off her powers, does he lay down his weapon to face her hand-to-hand? Nope. Disables her with the gravity gun without hesitation.

He always faces her with his men and his weapons at his side. It's only when those things are taken away from him, only when Carol has the upper hand, that suddenly he cares about fairness. Carol must fight him with one hand behind her back for the sake of his dignity but he can lay her out with whatever tools he has at his disposal. Those are the rules of the game he's defined.

Yon-Rogg presents himself like a reasonable man. A fair man. But he's scum. As noted previously, he makes a fuss about not wanting to hurt the innocent people on the worlds he attacks, but then doesn't hesitate to order an Accuser bombing the second he learns that Carol isn't going to obey him any longer.

This was an extremely controversial movie when it released. And by "controversial", I mean it went over pretty well with critics and made $1.1 billion in theaters but there were also some people whining about it on the internet.

(If you aren't sure what to make of $1.1 billion in theaters, let me put it this way: The only solo heroes to outdo her are Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Black Panther. That's the league Carol's in.)

Much like Black Panther, Captain Marvel was a cultural event. The first leading lady in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, years later, does the film still hold up? I'd say so, yeah.

I think Captain Marvel has a lot to say about the insidious nature of control. The ways it works to try and sound reasonable, to make you seem unreasonable for even questioning it. The deceitful language meant to sow self-doubt, to make you feel stupid so that you stay in line with the people who "know better". Never relenting, never ceding ground, always sidestepping any objection to keep pushing.

It has a message that applies on both the personal and political levels, and it applies that message on both the personal and political levels through Carol's and the Skrulls' respective relationships with the Kree.

And it minces no words about it. There are no efforts to manufacture sympathy for the abusers. The film's final statement on Yon-Rogg and the Kree? Don't play by their rules. Don't care what they think. Punch them. Fight them. Resist them by whatever means you have. These people are scum and their opinions do not define you. Break free.

The thing I love about Kreia is the thing everyone else hates about her. Her personality. She's the worst. She's such a genuine bitch. She can and will complain about anything and everything all while blatantly manipulating you to your face. My old granny who's mean and doesn't have any fucks left to give and keeps comparing me to the one student she had who she actually gave a shit about and she's incredibly protective over who also happens to be a war criminal. She antagonizes and talks down to everyone and completely refuses to consider she might be the problem.

"You're manipulating me!" "Oh if you're only realising that now then I had been putting in far too much effort before. But yes I am manipulating you and will continue to do so what are you going to do about it? I'm still right."

Odysseus

Lightsaber crystals used to work in a very simple way: The color of the crystal sets the color of the lightsaber.

In the Old Republic, Jedi used lightsabers of every hue, but by the time of the Prequel, most Jedi got most of their crystals from Ilum, where Blue and Green were the most plentiful. The reason the Sith used predominately red is because the Jedi controlled the places where lightsaber crystals were found, so they used synthetic crystals which almost always came out red.

After a while, it just became the aesthetic.

The new canon Kyber crystals are clear until it seeks a Jedi out and forms a bond with it, where it will then turn to whatever color it wants, and like a living being forms a “bond” with its owner, and the color is set based on the owner's personality.

This introduces so many problems, like when Jedi use another person's lightsaber, or in Attack of the Clones when Anakin and Obi Wan are thrown spare lightsabers. It also means that standard-issue lightsabers like the ones the Inquisitors get make even less sense than before. They work when you can manufacture red crystals, not so much when you have to "Bleed" them like the edgy emo bitch you are.

But the reason Disney made it this way is because the fandom had spent the last decade turning a simple aesthetic choice into something "meaningful." The idea of your lightsaber color saying something about your personality is something backported from the Harry Potter series because if you leave a fandom long enough they'll eventually remake the Hogwarts Houses in everything.

So Disney, because they wanted to sell you a lightsaber building experience, made them work the same way wands do in Harry Potter so when you go to Galaxy's Edge you get to build your unique lightsaber that's completely special to you and only to you.

Which is really fucking stupid given that the hilt designs were already unique in the first place.

Apparently this wasn't adequate.

It's the opposite problem of midi-chlorians. They have over-mystified the lightsaber as a concept, and it's telling that in no way does this concept actually work in-universe.