Captain Marvel

Marked essential and this is the page where the chronological order on this site is most misleading. It sits third in the timeline, in 1995, and it is close to the worst possible entry point: it was made as a prologue for people who had already watched twenty films, and its best beats are recognitions rather than introductions.

The film is a middling origin with a good idea in the middle of it. The protagonist begins believing she is a soldier of an advanced civilisation, being trained by a mentor who keeps telling her to control her emotions, and discovers that her people are the aggressors and the refugees she has been hunting are the victims. A superhero film where the hero's arc is realising she has been the invader is a sharper premise than it is usually credited with.

Around that is a 1990s buddy comedy with a de-aged Nick Fury, a cat, and a soundtrack of needle drops deployed without much thought. Brie Larson plays the first half deliberately flat, which is a choice the script does not always support, and the character loosens considerably once she stops being told to behave.

Ben Mendelsohn's Talos is the best thing in it. The film arrived weeks before Endgame with a brief to explain who turns up at the end of Infinity War, and that is mostly what it does.