Oh, I am a person you never have to apologize about late comments, given my own habits.
I would say Spider-Man:Homecoming does have all the things I mentioned here, though: he's spending a lot of the movie learning about his new powers (they're the suit's powers, not the spider's powers, but it terms of story structure it's there) and struggling with self-doubt about when he can and can't use them. And we have the climactic final battle where a plane almost crashed into his home city and he proves to himself that he really can be a hero, even without his special suit, by punching things a lot.
I mean, a lot of what we see as basic structure in superhero movies is just your standard hero's journey/save the cat formula, but the part where they struggle with self-doubt about both whether they can use their powers and whether they should use their powers is pretty strongly associated with superhero movies to me (which is maybe why the DC movies haven't been as good lately, traditionally in the comics that was more a Marvel thing.)
Carol has constraints imposed on her from outside, but she never really seems to internalize them - it's never "well, maybe I shouldn't use my powers after all," it's "fuck you I'm doing it anyway." So I don't see it differently from you, I think, I just see that as fundamentally different from what's going on in even, say, the Wonder Woman movie, where Diana also has social constraints on her power, but both Diana and the movie structure spend time wondering if maybe Paradise Island's isolation was right after all. Whereas Carol was just plain unambiguously lied to.
And, yeah, I don't know. I don't disagree with you about your reading of any of the fights! But it's relevant that you list a bunch of different fights. And none of them (except yeah, maybe the mental fight against the SI, but there was no punching in that, which is rare a superhero movie) involve her having to stretch her limits to prove to herself that she's really a hero. (In fact, there really isn't any point in the movie where there's any doubt that she's a hero.) Her two big fights against Yon-Rogg are a sparring match where both of them are holding back and the fight in the lab, where she doesn't plan to win, just plans to buy time, and doesn't, in fact, win, and the fact that she loses isn't really a low point of the movie. The part where she photon-blasts him at the end isn't even a fight, it's her humiliating and annihilating him.
I'm not saying none of those are great scenes! "It's more a space movie than a superhero movie" was meant as a compliment, and the fact that there wasn't a forumulaic twenty-minute fight scene at the end where I zoned out is great. Just that they don't follow the emotional formula for the Climax Fight In A Superhero Movie.
And I do think I disagree with you about the stakes at the end: because I kept waiting and waiting for the apocalyptic threat against Earth to show up, and it never really did. After the Skrull reveal, I thought it would be the Accusers. I kept expecting it to be, and if you're looking for the formula it seems like they are, but actually they aim a very targeted missile burst against a military target in the middle of an empty desert, and given that our heroes were still in flight and the Accusers didn't know where they were, very likely the only named character who would have been killed was Yon-Rogg. (And also they were only in the game for about a minute, which wasn't really enough to build tension around it.)
Maybe the Accusers would have gone on to take out major population centers, but we only think that because every. other. superhero. movie. has a major threat to a civilian population; there's no movie-internal evidence that they deliberately target non-Skrull civilians, and some pretty strong evidence that they try to avoid it when possible - Kree warrior ethics are framed much more like US airstrikes than like "we're going to nuke Manhattan just to be safe". (though obviously Ronan also went off the leash later.)
...in fact now that I'm thinking about it I can't think of any scene in that movie where non-Skrull civilians are actually in any danger at all, other than Fury's car chase that Carol wasn't even involved with, which is both a) great and b) super-weird for a superhero movie, because "superhero must directly protect the innocent" is another major part of the formula.
And yeah, you'd expect it to end with "This planet is under my protection" but it doesn't - the message Carol sends back to Halla is actually "I'm leaving here and ending your stupid interplanetary war for you" and she doesn't mention Earth at all. Sure, maybe there's subtext there that Earth is protected, but only if you're looking for it; I think Ronan more got the subtext of "Vers is off the leash and does what she wants" than "Stay away from my home planet" (which he probably doesn't even know is her home planet.) And given that she leaves the Tesseract with Fury, she doesn't seem to be terribly concerned about Earth needing ongoing protection.
It's possible none of that has anything to do with superhero formulas and really it just felt less like a superhero movie to me, though!
no subject
Oh, I am a person you never have to apologize about late comments, given my own habits.
I would say Spider-Man:Homecoming does have all the things I mentioned here, though: he's spending a lot of the movie learning about his new powers (they're the suit's powers, not the spider's powers, but it terms of story structure it's there) and struggling with self-doubt about when he can and can't use them. And we have the climactic final battle where a plane almost crashed into his home city and he proves to himself that he really can be a hero, even without his special suit, by punching things a lot.
I mean, a lot of what we see as basic structure in superhero movies is just your standard hero's journey/save the cat formula, but the part where they struggle with self-doubt about both whether they can use their powers and whether they should use their powers is pretty strongly associated with superhero movies to me (which is maybe why the DC movies haven't been as good lately, traditionally in the comics that was more a Marvel thing.) Carol has constraints imposed on her from outside, but she never really seems to internalize them - it's never "well, maybe I shouldn't use my powers after all," it's "fuck you I'm doing it anyway." So I don't see it differently from you, I think, I just see that as fundamentally different from what's going on in even, say, the Wonder Woman movie, where Diana also has social constraints on her power, but both Diana and the movie structure spend time wondering if maybe Paradise Island's isolation was right after all. Whereas Carol was just plain unambiguously lied to.
And, yeah, I don't know. I don't disagree with you about your reading of any of the fights! But it's relevant that you list a bunch of different fights. And none of them (except yeah, maybe the mental fight against the SI, but there was no punching in that, which is rare a superhero movie) involve her having to stretch her limits to prove to herself that she's really a hero. (In fact, there really isn't any point in the movie where there's any doubt that she's a hero.) Her two big fights against Yon-Rogg are a sparring match where both of them are holding back and the fight in the lab, where she doesn't plan to win, just plans to buy time, and doesn't, in fact, win, and the fact that she loses isn't really a low point of the movie. The part where she photon-blasts him at the end isn't even a fight, it's her humiliating and annihilating him.
I'm not saying none of those are great scenes! "It's more a space movie than a superhero movie" was meant as a compliment, and the fact that there wasn't a forumulaic twenty-minute fight scene at the end where I zoned out is great. Just that they don't follow the emotional formula for the Climax Fight In A Superhero Movie.
And I do think I disagree with you about the stakes at the end: because I kept waiting and waiting for the apocalyptic threat against Earth to show up, and it never really did. After the Skrull reveal, I thought it would be the Accusers. I kept expecting it to be, and if you're looking for the formula it seems like they are, but actually they aim a very targeted missile burst against a military target in the middle of an empty desert, and given that our heroes were still in flight and the Accusers didn't know where they were, very likely the only named character who would have been killed was Yon-Rogg. (And also they were only in the game for about a minute, which wasn't really enough to build tension around it.)
Maybe the Accusers would have gone on to take out major population centers, but we only think that because every. other. superhero. movie. has a major threat to a civilian population; there's no movie-internal evidence that they deliberately target non-Skrull civilians, and some pretty strong evidence that they try to avoid it when possible - Kree warrior ethics are framed much more like US airstrikes than like "we're going to nuke Manhattan just to be safe". (though obviously Ronan also went off the leash later.)
...in fact now that I'm thinking about it I can't think of any scene in that movie where non-Skrull civilians are actually in any danger at all, other than Fury's car chase that Carol wasn't even involved with, which is both a) great and b) super-weird for a superhero movie, because "superhero must directly protect the innocent" is another major part of the formula.
And yeah, you'd expect it to end with "This planet is under my protection" but it doesn't - the message Carol sends back to Halla is actually "I'm leaving here and ending your stupid interplanetary war for you" and she doesn't mention Earth at all. Sure, maybe there's subtext there that Earth is protected, but only if you're looking for it; I think Ronan more got the subtext of "Vers is off the leash and does what she wants" than "Stay away from my home planet" (which he probably doesn't even know is her home planet.) And given that she leaves the Tesseract with Fury, she doesn't seem to be terribly concerned about Earth needing ongoing protection. It's possible none of that has anything to do with superhero formulas and really it just felt less like a superhero movie to me, though!