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

A second take from Rob Williams

And so we come to the 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Marvels is a bit like a mini-Avengers in that it isn’t single character lead. We have a trio running things under the control of Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson); Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). The three quasi-Avengers are taking on a villain seeking revenge for the outcome following the destruction of the Supreme Intelligence. This villain is the new leader of the Kree, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). 

There is a variety of feeds for The Marvels. Having seen all the relevant media, it’s hard for me to say how much of them you need to see to make sense of things but, I think, The Marvels is fairly  self sufficient. Captain Marvel is the origin film for Carol Danvers, WandaVision shows how Monica Rambeau gets her powers, while Ms Marvel tells the story of Kamala Khan. If pushed, I would say that Captain Marvel gave the most to The Marvels. It introduced the villains, some of the people who are being oppressed, and the heroes who save the day.

Black Girl Magic…NOW!

Popping back into being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we find ourselves on Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel’s ship drifting through space. We are also introduced to Dar-Benn who is searching for the quantum bands which will help her restore her home planet of Hala which got the rough end of the stick when Carol Marvel/Captain Danvers wound up her solo feature outing. Dar-Benn finds one of the MacGuffins on a desolate planet but is a bit annoyed that there is only one when she was expecting to find two. Of course, those of us who have seen Ms Marvel know exactly where the other one is!

While stomping around searching for stuff Dar-Benn is randomly opening up portals, jump points, in space and this is what catches the eye of Nick Fury and his underlings. While she is jumping around the universe Dar-Benn is also stealing things from weaker planets to patch up Hala. Unfortunately, what she is taking is little things like air, water, and sunlight which means that the other planets become less than habitable. When one of the planets Dar-Benn targets is the one we’re sitting on and what she decides to take is sunlight, that’s when we sit up and take notice.

I Always Come Back

Our three superheroes become aware of each other when their powers get merged thanks to a dodgy jump point. The upshot of this is that when any two of them use their powers at the same time they swap places regardless of how far apart they are. This leads to some very amusing scenes especially while they are learning about this wrinkle and each other. The real joy of The Marvels is the delight and fangirl behaviour displayed by Iman Vellani offset by the sheer evil charm of Zawe Ashton. Both of these characters grab your attention every second that they are on the screen.

Running for one and three quarter hours it is the shortest MCU film to date and I think that that is a definite plus. The Marvels is tight, well paced, and snappy. Maybe that is a lesson that the MCU needs to take on board. It is also very funny…Aladna is a planet where everyone sings instead of speaks and it is delightful! Throw in a whole swathe of cameo appearances and clever sight gags and The Marvels is a cavalcade of laughs, nostalgia, and excitement for what’s to come. In my opinion, The Marvels is, quite simply, the best MCU film for some time. After a few duds, I am now looking forward to the rest of Phase 5 and beyond.

Read Dan's, much less forgiving, review of The Marvels: Grade D.

Rob's grade: A+

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