Captain Marvel

[Lord Golbez]

That's a fair point, but really the stakes are pretty much illusory in any Marvel movie at least before Infinity War and arguably Infinity War as well, because we know a lot of that is surely going to get reversed in the next movie. Saying that there are no stakes because we know how it turns out in the future is a kind of metalogic argument that I don't see as substantially different from we know the superheroes are going to win because this movie is part of the Marvel franchise and they have to be around for the next movie. The stakes are plenty high in the context of the movie taken by itself.

(SPOILER)Moreover, you're just talking about the stakes for Earth. What about the stakes for the Skrulls? We haven't seen them in any other Marvel movie to date, so we can't know it turns out well for them on that basis. Again, saying the stakes are low here brings us back to the same metalogic as any Marvel movie. We know the movie probably won't end in genocide, because that wouldn't fit the Marvel brand. Other than that, there's nothing ahead of time to tell us the Kree didn't succeed in wiping out the Skrulls. So I'd say the stakes are considerably higher than most Marvel movies. The only way I agree in the stakes being low is by the end of the movie (though not throughout the movie as a whole) Captain Marvel so completely outclasses anyone she's fighting against that they can't really be considered a threat to her at all.