Okay. *Sigh* Here we go again. The Marvels has arrived as a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, bringing together the three “Marvels” from across the MCU for a brand new space-hopping adventure. Despite having a great deal of promise, this is another huge miss for the MCU, adding fuel to the fire that the universe (at least the film side) is in grave need of a creative overhaul.
Unlike the vocal minority, I actually enjoyed 2019’s Captain Marvel for what it was – a generic, entertaining origin film. With Nia DaCosta at the helm, The Marvels takes an entirely different route in tone and structure, birthing a jumbled mess that fails to stick the landing. I’m going to start out with a big praise – I respect Nia DaCosta for going against the new norm of the MCU and sticking to a refreshingly short 1 hour and 45 minute runtime. I love this decision for two reasons. Firstly, it trims out all the fat – any other director would have made this a 2.5-hour slog by bloating it with unnecessary filler. As a result, the film is very to-the-point and wastes absolutely no time furthering the plot. If only it was a good plot, though. Secondly, it meant I didn’t have to suffer for long when it became clear this movie was, to put it nicely, a little bit shit.
The plot of the film, which can be boiled down to “bad lady wants to do bad things, so heroes try to stop bad lady”, is emotionally flat, meaningless and uninteresting. Not only that, but the tonal shifts are drastic and jarring the whole way through. Some scenes are clearly trying to be wacky, silly and comedic, then the next scene is supposed to be some grand villain battle. The whole movie shifts back and forth between those two tones and neither one really sticks. It’s not all a tonal mess – when our three heroes are sharing some banter, it’s great lighthearted fun. When they’re switching places during fight sequences, it leads to some well-choreographed action. But these moments are so few and far between that they’re not as impactful as they should be.
Back to the plot, you’d think stripping it down would solve all the issues, but not in this case. It’s still muddled with strange subplots and unfulfilling character arcs that don’t really go anywhere. There’s even this whole backstory of an event that’s supposed to have instigated the villain’s revenge arc and fuel Carol Danvers’ inner conflict. It comes out of nowhere, is barely explained and we’re supposed to just take it at face value, but it comes across as lazy writing. Don’t even get me started on the singing planet – it feels like an arc out of a children’s animated series and it’ doesn’t work’s rough to get through. There’s one comedic sequence late in the film involving cats that works in the moment, but the time spent dedicated to setting up that one sequence isn’t worth the payoff. Up until that point, the scenes setting up this moment are disconnected from everything else going on in the story, contributing to the mess of ideas that seem to be just haphazardly thrown in. The same can be said for many things in here – there’s a few neat ideas, but the setup and execution is sloppy.
The characters and the chemistry of the actors is where the movie wins back some points, while also sacrificing some. Firstly, Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan is hands down the best part of the movie. She brings with her the infectious charm she exhibited in her Disney+ series and it lights up the screen without fail. It’s clear Vellani is having a tonne of fun in the role, and that radiates through her performance. She has some great scenes opposite Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson, really stepping to the plate and bringing exactly what the film needed – some life. She’s clearly rubbed off on Larson because her performance here is much more playful and quirky than I remember the character being. That’s not a complaint, it’s a compliment. It gives Captain Marvel a bit more of a unique personality to work with. Teyonah Parris is good as Monica Rambeau, but she makes the least impact due to her character being largely useless and having no real connection to the plot.
Early in the film there’s a certain dynamic teased between the characters of Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau – it poses to be an interesting arc that could bring some real emotion to the film. This dynamic is touched on once, maybe twice, and then seemingly forgotten about. It just adds to the fact that Rambeau is simply a passenger along for the ride while Danvers and Khan bond over actually having some sort of connection to the plot.
As far as the villain is concerned, this may be one of the MCU’s worst and least memorable. Nothing against Zawe Ashton, who plays *looks up name on IMDB* Dar-Benn, but her character is the most basic, thinly-written villain they’ve ever come up with. There’s nothing scary or menacing about her and she doesn’t come across as much of a threat, she’s just a particularly annoying inconvenience. I didn’t remember the character’s name, and I’m surely going to forget she ever existed by this time tomorrow.
Lastly, there’s a big issue with connectivity in the MCU right now – it’s starting to feel less like a shared universe and more like the early 2000s era where superhero films were all isolated. It feels like you could skip this movie and not miss a single pivotal moment that’s relevant to the wider MCU. Aside from maybe the post-credits scene, there’s nothing you couldn’t just explain with a single line of dialogue. On top of that, it makes you feel like you didn’t need to watch other projects like Secret Invasion. This movie and Secret Invasion cross over with their shared inclusions of Skrulls and Nick Fury. However that’s where the connections stop. There’s no character or narrative continuity when it comes to this being set post Secret Invasion, which creates a whole layer of confusion. Nick Fury here seems entirely different from the Fury we see when Secret Invasion ends, making it feel like that whole series never happened.
In the end, The Marvels is everything the MCU did not need right now – it’s rushed, messy and feels more like a TV special than a movie. There’s very few redeeming qualities – the brevity of the film is refreshing and Iman Vellani’s performance elevates every single one of her scenes. Then aside from one or two neat action sequences, there’s not much else to love about it. The visual effects are decent at best. There’s many scenes that are completely CGI and it’s painfully obvious. Compare this with what we just got in the Loki season two finale and it’s perplexing how a TV series has better visuals (and a more well-crafted narrative) than a big budget film. With this release, two of the MCU’s three films in 2023 are in my bottom three films of the year… talk about a fall from grace.
4.5/10
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