Movie Review - The Marvels

I didn't have high expectations for this movie. In fact, I can't remember an MCU movie I was less enthusiastic to see. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my low expectations.

TL;DR

The overall direction of the MCU is a mess. It appears that events in this movie were force-fed to the writers, leaving them with little room to be creative. I have no idea how they can go forward unless they can create characters that we can at least give two shits about.

7:42●●● 95%

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The Good

The acting by Iman Vellani, as Kamala Khan, was refreshing. Honestly, she's hardly acting. I've seen interviews with her, and she's just playing herself: a young woman caught up in an amazing real-life fantasy. She looks like she's having a blast.

Likewise, Teyonah Parris, as Monica Rambeau, was good, and her character felt decently fleshed out.

Mindshift

Brie Larson gets a lot of grief for her portrayal of Carol Danvers, and maybe a little of it is warranted, but most of the criticism should fall on the creators. Brie is, by any measure, a very talented actress. I've pointed out many times no matter how good an actress is, they can't work with crap dialog. This is my biggest beef with this movie: the movie's tone is generally lighthearted and fun, as superhero movies go. We have Kamala being introduced to the MCU, which is obviously fun. And we have the side plot with the Flerken, which wasn't needed at all, but was cute and added a little fluff to an otherwise short runtime. Plus the little song-and-dance on the water world where Captain Marvel is a princess. All of this light-hearted cuteness was out of tone with the actual drama that was going on but largely ignored.

But this movie had the potential to be amazing if they had just gone in with the intention of making something as heavy as Logan. We have Captain Marvel who has made a monumentally bad choice and has been trying to fix it for decades. So what do they do: dump an entire movie's worth of drama in thirty seconds of dialog and then move on.

Plus, we have the tension between Carol and her niece Monica that is glossed over too easily.

The Female Elephant In The Room

And then there's the issue that we have three female leads who conveniently get to fight a female villain. This is the trap that the MCU is facing as they create more and more female heroes. That's great, but they must address how females and men fight each other without being weird. So, way to kick the can down the road.

Villain-Less

This movie didn't need a villain. There was potential to make Captain Marvel's past decisions the villain of the movie and her struggle to come to grips with the damage she has done, both to the Kree and her relationship with Monica. It would have been awesome to see Captain Marvel give Kamala the cold shoulder and treat her as a young kid, just getting in the way, only for Kamala to be the strong one who supports Captain Marvel, in the end, to help her overcome her inner demons. If it were me, I would have strongly considered Captain Marvel sacrificing herself. That's always the power play, but I understand if they want to keep Captain Marvel around longer. Eventually, Captain Marvel has to sacrifice herself because she's too powerful to keep around to solve all the problems.

Grade: D

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of The Marvels.

Plot Carol Danvers gets her powers entangled with those of Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, forcing them to work together to save the universe.