WARNING: This story contains spoilers for “Infinity War.” But not “Captain Marvel,” oddly enough.

Captain Marvel. If you’re like me, the first time you heard that name (or title), you probably thought, “Great. Another typical superhero movie.”

And … you’re not wrong. Except you are, because this one — for the first time in Marvel Cinematic Universe history — features a woman as the lead. Although, all things said and done, I actually do love superhero movies, especially if the star’s a girl!

First off, who exactly is Captain Marvel? Well, for starters, she wasn’t always a girl.

Way back in the 1960s, Captain Marvel was originally a man, but comic book writer Stan Lee finally realized his mistake (because aren’t women heroes just more awesome?) and switched the gender to female. It only took until 2012 to do that. From 1977 on, Carol Danvers did have the title of Ms. Marvel, but it wasn’t until recently in comic book history that she became the Captain.

As far as storyline, I don’t want to give too much away, but essentially, ”Captain Marvel” starts out introducing us to Danvers, or “Vers,” (Brie Larson), a warrior of the alien race Kree. After a mission goes wrong, she ends up on Earth and discovers more about herself while racing to save the world in your usual superhero fashion.

The movie itself is constantly engaging and interesting, full of both new characters and some old ones. We finally find out how Director Nick Fury in “The Avengers” lost his eye, for one, and how he came to possess the Tesseract. Ronan the Accuser, the big bad from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is also featured in “Captain Marvel,” along with Agent Coulson from “S.H.I.E.L.D.”

The movie’s main purpose, however, is to provide the origin story for Captain Marvel, who, it’s implied, will somehow be fixing the universe following Thanos’ “snap” in “Avengers: Infinity War.”

In case you missed it, during the end credits of “Infinity War,” Fury uses his final seconds to dial someone on his pager. The person he paged? Captain Marvel, per the logo that’s displayed. So, expect a lot of backstory. Because that’s the point.

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The beginning of the movie starts out rather confusingly, what with the many flashbacks, shapeshifters and unusual alien words. But as the plot progresses, everything slowly comes together. It ends up less complicated than many recent Marvel Cinematic Universe plots and, despite my serious misgivings following the first 20 minutes, it made perfect sense by the time the credits rolled.

The movie does feature a large plot twist, which I enjoyed immensely but also saw coming from a mile away. Issues with obvious dialogue, names and actions led to the surprise not really being a surprise, but it was exciting nonetheless.

Easily the best part of the movie was when the bad guy, fearing for his life, began to monologue and demand that Captain Marvel fight him on fair grounds (without her photon blast powers) to “prove to him” she could beat him.

I completely expected her to rise to the challenge, since this is a story that showcases the power and abilities of women. What actually happened was exponentially better; before he could finish monologuing, she photon-blasted him in the chest without a word and sent him flying 50 feet away before quipping, “I don’t need to prove anything to you.”

Perfect!

For that reason alone, I give this movie 10 our of 10. Overall, “Captain Marvel” is a great film with some good messages, but mostly just good fun. If you have a hankering for action, aliens and women being just plain awesome, I highly recommend it.

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