A repost of my review
In the autumn of 2023, as the DC Movie Universe scrambles and regroups and the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles to regain its prominence in pop culture, two movies hit the screen with far less fanfare than one might expect, and diminishing expectations. DC plunged the depths and brought up Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and Marvel took a Hail Mary shot into space and bet on The Marvels.
The results are, let us say, problematic.
The best Marvels have been superhero movies and something else. The first Captain America is a superhero war movie. The second, a jacked-up spy thriller. Ant-man is a superhuman heist comedy.
This one is an interstellar road movie, Boys on the Side with superheroes. At its heart, however, there's a villain with a legitimate grudge, a lead hero who has messed up on a planetary scale, and a wannabe sidekick coming to terms with the problems of meeting her hero. Mediating between the two is Captain Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), reluctant superhero, and Nick Fury, played by a talented actor who at this point often seems to be going through the motions. There's a premise here that could have worked.
Unfortunately, they didn't trust the premise, nor the potential for the interaction between Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). These things should have been emphasized, with more character scenes and fewer things going boom. It gets lost in the desire to have bigger and better special effects sequences, like, every ten seconds, and Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Marvel comic humour. These scenes can work. We have lots of CGI-enhanced battle action. And there's a bit where the script simply abandons itself to its own absurdities. It won't please those who take their superheroes too seriously, but I laughed out loud. It's so good, it justifies Andrew Lloyd Weber. But these set pieces work on an individual level, and not in the context of the larger movie.
Worse, they interfere with the film's heart, dark and redemptive. They either needed to make a Guardians-style movie (they clearly tried) or allowed the actual plot to develop as the driving force. Our three protagonists-- the Captain and the kid, in particular-- could have provided the emotional center as well as humour. The actors are certainly up to it. Indeed, they struggle to carry the film, which blends the YA/Mid-level family-friendly Ms. Marvel series, the one your buddy's eleven-year-old daughter loved so much, with a plot involving multiple threatened genocides, and a central hero whose enemies have taken to calling her "the Annihilator."
Unfortunately, it's a tonally incoherent mess, a potentially excellent superhero movie dragged down by too many scenes that someone found funny or exciting and too much reliance on the MCU's vexatious continuity.
This problem has bedevilled the parent industry for some time. Marvel emphasized continuity from the beginning and, initially, that made readers feel like they were entering a shared universe while allowing Marvel to promote their other titles. Over time, the interconnections became oppressive. Eventually both Marvel and DC comics started including notes along the lines of, "Woah, confused about why Captain Wish-Fulfilment has a foot growing out of his head after page 9? Guess you better check out ish #33 of The Incredible Onanist, now on sale."
And so with The Marvels. Its already convoluted double-sequel plot over-relies upon prior knowledge of the Avengers franchise, WandaVision, Thor, and Spider-man: Far From Home. As a bonus, we get references to Disney+'s Hawkeye series and Click for Spoiler. Those last two, at least, are kept to the epilogue and mid-credit sequence, so they don't really distract. The script also keeps calling attention to its reliance on external material. Instead of being intrigued by the film's larger reality, the references would drive away anyone who hasn't been consuming large amounts of Marvel franchise programming.
Of course, the film comes at time when a basket of people for questionable reasons want Disney, Marvel, and anything they can label "woke" to fail. Forget those guys; they wouldn't have liked this thing even if Marvel Studios had produced a cinematic masterpiece. Unfortunately, it hasn't, and its poor performance at the box office does not bode well for the MCU's future.
This isn't a terrible movie, and if you just want superhero mayhem with female leads, you and your popcorn will probably have a passably enjoyable time. But it's not a particularly good one, it cost a fortune to make, and I found myself continually distracted by the better film that layers of revision, required external continuity, and F/X money shots obscured.
Director: Nia DaCosta
Writers: Nia DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik with, I suspect, a lot of mandated rewrites.
Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel
Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel
Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn
Gary Lewis as Emperor Dro'ge
Park Seo-joon as Prince Yan
Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba Khan
Mohan Kapur as Yusuf Khan
Saagar Shaikh as Aamir Khan
Leila Farzad as Talia
Abraham Popoola as Dag
Daniel Ings as Ty-Rone
Alex Hughes as Kree Announcer
Shardiah Ssagala, Cecily Cleeve, Remi Dabiri-McQuaid, Ffion Jolly as assorted Skrulls.
Kenedy McCallam-Martin as Young Monica
Savannah Skinner-Henry, Rachel John as noteworthy Aladneans
Daniel Monteiro as Royal Attaché
Kya Garwood, Shereen Walker Fikayo Ifarajimi,Shereen Walker, Kamara Benjamin Barnett, Kenny-Lee Mbanefo as various Kree
Special Guests:
Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie
Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop
Replies
Well, that's disturbing.
My wife loved Captain Marvel -- we've watched it twice, and she's cried both times -- but we haven't seen The Marvels yet. We really fell out of the habit of going to movies when we stopped during the pandemic; we've only seen one movie at the theater since (Barbie) and only because we had an out-of-town guest who wanted to see it. I had toyed with going to The Marvels for my wife's sake, but you've convinced me to wait for it to be on Disney+.
We also enjoyed the first Captain Marvel, and we-- and my wife, in particular-- liked the Ms. Marvel show. You may feel differently than I do, but (as I think is obvious), I was very disappointed. They had so much to work with.
Interesting. Most of the hardcore comics fans whose reviews I've seen really enjoyed The Marvels.
For what it's worth, it has a 62% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with reviews all over the place. The audience scores it more favorably. But I also think we're also getting the fan audience, and not the broader mainstream audience of the earlier Marvel films.
Now that it's on Disney+ I finally saw it. I didn't hate it, but I have two main quibbles.
It gets really confusing when the special effects are over-emphasized. If it's confusing for me as a life-long superhero fan, it may have been too much for the mainstream audience. They were trying too hard.
I guess going from WandaVision to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness worked okay. If somebody hadn’t seen WandaVision they could still understand what was going on. In The Marvels it was assumed that everybody had seen Ms Marvel. If not, Kamala and her family weren’t clearly identified. I love them all, but somebody who hasn’t already “met” them isn’t having the same experience. It’s likely that most of the audience saw the Captain Marvel movie and knew about the little girl Monica Rambeau. If they didn’t see WandaVision they didn’t see grown up Monica get her powers. Referring to a Hex-Sphere that most hadn’t seen just added more confusion.
Cap, if you still haven’t seen it, don’t be dissuaded. For us insiders it’s still pretty good.
We're going to have a movie night soon at the cave, and The Marvels is up first. Probably Sunday, if the stars align.
So no, not dissuaded. But the points being made here sure make sense.