Idk if this would be possible but I have an idea for a small change to Captain Marvel that would make everything about her powers, her arc and just the whole Kree storyline more compelling: get rid of the microchip.
This works for 4 main reasons:
1. It completes/justifies her emotional arc
2. It fixes (arguably) a plot contrivance of her never examining/questioning the chip
3. It makes for a much better final battle
4. It makes her powers/evolution more interesting
1: throughout Captain Marvel there was an undeniably feminist motif/theme of "emotions being treated as a weakness", and while the film does an OK job at disguising feminism as humanism (which ultimately it is, and why that idea works well) through Yon-Rogg as not just a hypocrital man dismissing female emotionality, but a hypocrital alien dismissing human emotionality. Where the film's suffers is that it never really offers any evidence of a counterargument: Carol begins the movie cool, collected, and snarky (and occasionally emotional) and ends the movie exactly the same way. By removing the dampener, and making her emotions the source of her power, the film finally comes to the conclusion that emotions are healthy and important and people who tell you to supress them, are supressing your power. This also draws a clear parallel with the suffragette movement, where it was a combination of emotional resolve, as well as strategy, that ultimately resulted in women gaining the right to vote.
2: This is a small one but, even if the Kree told Carol that the chip was actually the source of her powers, I find it hard to believe that she would never try taking it off to see what she was like without them. It makes her seem naïve in a way that the movie obviously wasn't going for.
3: The final battle was super underwhelming. Maybe I'd been spoiled after Thor Ragnarok, GotG2, and Infinity War, but it felt completely void of stakes or emotion. By having Carol's emotions directly correlated with her power, you could finally see her express a full range of emotions towards Starforce: betrayal, indignance, and relief. This would make the role of the battle not just a CGI fuckfest but a fun way of expelling all of the repressed emotions that plagued the movie in a way that would retroactively make it feel deeply rewarding. Also the most fun part of the movie was watching Carol roar at the Skrulls in the beginning, a whole battle of this paired with genuine emotions of having been gaslight by people she thought of as family would have been AMAZING.
4. Thor has the most impressive power related arc of any of the MCU heroes. Perhaps because Iron Man's suits are external, and Cap's powers are far less interesting than his ideology, Thor as the only other hero with a trilogy (and interesting superpowers) takes this spot.
Thor 1 is about learning WHEN to use his powers (hero vs unecessary interventionist)
Avengers 1 - Age of Ultron is Thor learning to work with others (center of attention vs team player)
Ragnarok - Infinity War is Thor being stripped of all his trademarks (the Hammer, Asgard, etc.) and proving that he relies on these too heavily and is actually more powerful without him (Ragnarok) but even with that power his weakness is not a lack of power, but a lack of failure resulting in arrogance and ULTIMATE failure (Infinity War) (External vs Internal power) + (Ego as the ultimate weakness). And his power set in each movie reflects this.
Anyways, just a ramble but I always think about it when people ask me why I wasn't impressed by the movie
