Agree to disagree. I find the Kamala Kahn character to be an effervescent relief to a series that’s taking itself way too seriously or trying too hard for slap stick. Does that make this particular movie great? No. The movie itself is a pretty flimsy plot. The main trope of the movie is someone makes a mistake, the group comes together to resolve the mistake, and develop themselves during that resolution. So with that said, it’s not really good at delivering that, it’s not Trolls bad (the original one which the plot sucks, the music is quite good) but yeah there was a lot of room for lots of character development that was just not included in what was delivered. To me the movie pulled its punches on what it could have delivered.

But in these kinds of tropes you see classic character stereotype traits, in this case Kamala Kahn plays the lighthearted comedic foil and does so quite well through the movie. Needless to say the Captain Marvel character is our person who brings the conflict to be resolved and towards the end you are left with a pretty unsatisfying result. Like the issue is indeed resolved, but it’s about as exciting as how I might feel when I’ve completed my taxes. Hooray, I got that done. Maria Rambeau is our power character consistently pushing the accelerator for the characters to resolve the matter. And she’s pretty good at it, but there was absolutely more opportunity for her to flesh that out that they kept sacking her personal past to keep that in check. Which at some point one might go, yeah we get it, she’s troubled and doesn’t want to talk about it. There’s a degree of too much “I’m the aloof character in this movie”. I will say the final fight scene is actually good for the level of just skirting the level of frenetic and follow-ability. I’ve gotten to a point where I just tune out superhero fights when it just becomes a lightshow and camera pandemonium (ala the most recent Ant Man movie).

Like I said, it’s not a horrible movie. I went to the 10am showing of it on Friday (with one other friend) and that was $40 and that’s where I would say “Do NOT go see this movie for $40”. But I really enjoy the Kamala Kahn character and the level of energy the actress brings to the character. It reminds me a bit of how bubbly my twenty-two year old niece is sometimes and that serves as a nice refresher given the backdrop of generally everything else. So, I will acquiescence, there’s a likely bias on my part for the character.

Again, absolutely not disagreeing with your position on the character. I think Marvel (and this touches just every so slightly on the superhero saturation) has gotten so big that not every character is going to be widely welcomed by everyone. I think there’s a point that the Marvel Superhero movies get so numerous that you have to start considering sub-genres for the movies. And perhaps Marvel should pull back a bit on the distribution (it’s their ship ultimately to sail and sink if need be). But I really enjoyed the Kamala Kahn character in the same way that I enjoyed the Katy character from the Shang-Chi movie. I good comedic foil is like pepper, you need just enough to flavor the food and not too much to over power the food and both of those characters have carried that role quite well thus far. But like anything, Disney has every chance to run that straight into the ground.

So just my two cents.