2. The whole "She is a girl, she can't do things"
The guy on the bike? Fine whatever he is a scummy biker and it lasted a second. the "It's called a cock pit for a reason" might be the single worst and most pointless scene in all of the MCU but again whatever, it was gone in a second. The "I'm just a girl" as she is fighting the Kree Ninjas was a freaking terrible idea, you do not get to pull the "STONG WOMAN!" Trope out of your rear end when one of your OPPONENTS IS A FEMALE, and the worst part of that fight scene is that they could have showed off Captain Marvel's combat prowess by having the Kree Ninjas actually fight as a team like the Avengers did in Infinity War.
Personally, I think if you approach the movie with a clean slate, instead of getting caught up in the meta context of the movie, this works. Of course Carol is a woman, growing up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and of course, the movie leans into the specificity of the character. But this idea that some people want to be what their surroundings, their culture, their families, their entire world want to decide for them isn't a "she's a girl, she can't do things" thing. Carol is a person that has lived her whole life being told who she was and what she was going to be, and her own internal compass said something different. That's a major subtext to Crazy Rich Asians. Heck, that's the major subtext to the movie Dead Poets Society, and a whiter-maler movie there is not.
I think something I got from the movie that I don't think everyone did is that the movie cleverly (in my opinion) set her past aside and more or less started with her relationship with Yon Rogg. And who is Yon Rogg? He's someone who is trying to mold her into the perfect Kree warrior, a calculating, emotionless, strong, cold blooded killer. He isn't trying to put her down - he *genuinely* wants her to succeed, but he wants her to succeed as the thing he wants her to be. The movie is about Carol's conflict with who she is told she is by Yon Rogg and the Supreme Intelligence, and who she thinks she is deep down inside, and it is this conflict that brings her memories back.
And her memories start off with all the times she was told she couldn't do or be what she wanted, and her failing in the face of that. It is only at the end, when she fully recovers who she was, that she sees that who she was, wasn't someone put down, wasn't someone who was oppressed or limited, it was someone who was told not to try, tried anyway, *failed*, and then got back up again.
But Yon Rogg shows that it isn't about people trying to keep Carol down. Its about people deciding for her what she should be, even if that thing is a very strong, powerful thing. Yon Rogg throws this in her face at the end, and she reacts emotionally, not because Carol is an emotional person, but rather because she's doing exactly what Yon Rogg has told her what she shouldn't do. It is breaking free from living they way he decided for her to live.
The whole "girl power" thing isn't about her enemies being male or female, it is about her reclaiming her true identity. And yes, for a woman who wanted to be a combat pilot in 1980s and 1990s America, I'm sure "girl power" was a critical part of her identity. But "I'm a girl doing what people don't want girls doing" is first and foremost about a person fighting to break the mold being forced upon them. Its just, well, she's a girl.
