The nod to Stan Lee in the opening montage was a great touch.

And Captain Marvel -- the latest in Marvel Comics' ongoing domination of cinematic blockbusters -- is a great addition to the lore, setting up a major player for the upcoming Avengers: Endgame, and explaining why the titular character wasn't around during the preceding film series.

Just to get this out of the way -- a lot of folks decided they hated this film, sight unseen, because of comments star Brie Larson made about its feminist message. Personally, I don't really care about what she said, while at the same time I can't see why anyone would mind a few more girl-power superhero movies in the mix. Having a female superhero doesn't diminish the men, it simply adds to the diversity, and that's a good thing. (Similarly, a good movie about Wonder Woman didn't tarnish the reputations of Superman and Batman; their own movie appearances in recent years did that.)

Anyway, that's all I'll say about that.

So, this film -- set in the 1990s, before the cinematic Avengers were a thing -- is a cool introduction to the heroine Captain Marvel. She's introduced to us first as Vers (pronounced "veers"), a Kree warrior serving in the alien planet's galactic space force. It later becomes clear to us that she's actually Carol Danvers, an ex-fighter pilot from Earth whose memories are a bit murky.

The plot revolves around the ongoing Kree war with the Skrulls, and a mission gone badly lands her on Earth, where her memories start to resurface and she meets up with young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson) and, to a lesser extent, a young Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg with more hair).

As a side note the de-aging work here is pretty phenomenal. You quickly forget it's not real, so natural these actors look. (If the technology had been perfected a few years sooner, maybe we could have gotten Harrison Ford to reprise his younger self in Solo!) Jackson, in this film, seems to be having a ball playing himself as a younger man.

The plot is solid, without being exceptional, but I enjoyed it start to finish. Larson is a bit more stoic than most Marvel heroes -- she's less emotional and, as a result, less funny than most of the others in the pack -- but she still makes a good hero.

The biggest flaw arrives at the end, when Larson comes into her full powers. And that problem is twofold: one, she immediately masters a vast array of new powers and abilities without any effort or break-in time, and two, she becomes so powerful that there immediately ceases to be any viable threat against her. I suppose the latter issue is because she is Marvel's Superman, and the company needs someone strong enough to battle Thanos in Endgame, but it removes any sense of danger.

Anyway, ignore the whiners who hate the film because they don't like Larson's politics. The superhero world doesn't have to be a men's club, as the likes of Wonder Woman and, to a lesser extent, Black Widow have proven. I like this new hero, and I think she'll fit nicely into the next wave of Marvel films.