It could have been great. Have her test a suborbital stealth jet that uses Chitarri engine tech, and it vanishes. Cue the smash credits and comic book entrance. Go straight to "Here's Captain Marvel, working with group X you've seen before. Here's introduction to her powers. Here's her love interest, an alien who gives her the big green bone. Here she is with her own combat spaceship. Cue her getting the page from Nick Fury. Have her go meet Stallone and the Ravagers to get the coordinates for Earth.
Have the infinity gauntlet go off. Dissolve most the Ravagers. Have her check on Chad Thundercock, Alien Boning Machine, only to find the planet empty and dust in the frontroom. Hell, she can even show up on Titan to find out what happened, meet with Nebula, who's trying to keep Stark alive. There's RDJ's cameo. Nebula can hack the computers in the Ravager ship (populated now by nothing but dust) to get the Earth coordinates.
She has to stop the Kree Empire from invading Earth, where the energy pulse that just wiped out half the universe came from. Cue the big fight scene where she totally kicks ass flying through space while Nebula takes Stark down to Earth. She defeats the Kree, sends them packing.
Now she's the big hero, Tony's badly injured, she gets to meet the Avengers, setup for the second half of Avengers movie.
Bang. Done.
Girl power. Show off Captain Marvel. Make her into a big deal that *might*, just *might* be able to take on Thanos (who beat the Hulk's ass in like 30 seconds), and go totally GRRL PWR! in the SFX.
Oh, wait, that would be a decent popcorn flick.
Considering they hired an actress who apparently has all the acting and emoting ability of Kristen Stewart in a coma, this is going to fucking bomb harder than Cis Busters or Oceans Estrogen.
