The Marvels | The film is not the problem here.

The sequel to the Marvel Studios film which did over a billion dollars at box office but everybody hated, now has a sequel. Why though? Because that money talked louder than the haters.

When I review stuff, I really do try to not let the thoughts of others and the drama surrounding the release have too much of a focus. But it really is difficult to talk about a Captain Marvel movie without any mention of the hate campaign which has driven so much of the discourse and straight-up toxicity around it. And it’s really unfortunate for Marvel Studios that it’s reached a point that this is going to hang over anything they put out with Captain Marvel. But some of this is of their own doing, and we’ll get to that.

Not only was The Marvels having to release knowing there was a hate train for the first film and Brie Larson, it also had the unfortunate fate of releasing during the SAG-AFTRA strike. And it also had to release in the wake of the fallout caused by the critical and commercial pannings of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion. AND it also had to release amidst hit pieces detailing internal issues and the shoddy creative process at Marvel Studios. Oh. And then there is Ms. Marvel being the least watched Marvel Studios / Disney+ show. So to say The Marvels had the odds stacked against it would be an understatement. And the optics of it being a film where the leads are all women (two of whom are of colour), the villain is a Black woman and the director is a Black woman is really unfortunate. Regardless of the quality of the film, this is the shit sundae that The Marvels was having to eat. But what makes it even worse, is that this film is good.

But there is also something else that The Marvels had going against it. Marvel Studios.

I wouldn’t consider myself a die-hard MCU fan. I watched Infinity War and Endgame in cinemas, but at this point I hadn’t even watched all of the MCU movies. I hadn’t watched Thor: The Dark World. I hadn’t watched Captain America: The First Avenger. I hadn’t watched two of the Iron Man movies. But I had watched enough of the films to know all of what was happening in the culminating chapters of phases one to three. I mean, shit. I knew enough about the MCU to know that there were even phases! I keep up with it all now. I am invested…enough. But it’s become increasingly difficult to be enthusiastic about the MCU when it seems to have lost its sense of direction and sense of self. And it’s become harder to keep up with it all when it feels like there is so much of it. You’re locked into this sense of not being able to miss anything, because you may not get any of the next thing that’s coming. But with there being such a decline in quality, watching every film and show feels like hard work now and something I begrudgingly do.

Marvel Studios wants frequency, continuity and non-continuity, but they can’t have it all. But they also can’t have frequency without clear continuity, because continuity is one of the things which not only defined the MCU, but resulted in ‘a shared universe’ becoming a model in Hollywood for other franchises. But Marvel Studios is also in a position where the quality of what they put out is suffering and everybody is aware of it. So, whatever model Marvel Studios is trying to go for, the vastly ranging quality of what they put out will always be a problem, something which becomes more noticeable with the frequency.

My expectations for most things in life are always low, because I am a pessimistic bitch like that. What y’all are not gonna do is let me all the way down. But the MCU has never been a monolith to me. Even when Marvel Studios was firing on all cylinders during its first three phases, there were films in those phases that I did not like. There was a formula which I found tiring. The VFX were always a bit raggedy. There were always glaring continuity issues between shots. The action scenes were rarely thrilling. I still enjoyed some of the films. I think a couple of them are genuinely great (Captain America: The Winter Soldier is fantastic). But Marvel Studios films for the most part are the McDonald’s of cinema. Enjoyable for what they are in the moment, but not always leaving the most lasting of impressions. What kept the MCU in the public consciousness and sustained impressions was the steady release schedule, every film being set in the same universe and how each film featured promo for the next; all of which culminated in a duo of films which did leave lasting impressions critically, commercially and culturally: Infinity War and Endgame. But the problem Marvel Studios has run into post Endgame is that it is trying to do what Endgame did on some level with each and every film and Disney+ show, whilst also simultaneously swinging the pendulum in the complete opposite direction. On paper it’s clear this can’t work. And on paper it’s clear that what made Endgame work was that it was the payoff of a decade of groundwork. But Marvel Studios seems unable to see their own writing on their own wall.

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So, we’re getting ensemble casts for everything now, along with existential, world ending dread for every story. But the stories do not seem to have a great deal of connectivity, which is crazy given the magnitude of things occurring in so many of them. And despite these things that you’d think would have large ramifications within the MCU, they aren’t referenced in other stories and have no impact on them at all. Everybody including civilians knows every minute detail about the final battle with Thanos in Endgame, but the world at large isn’t talking about how an Avenger put a hex on a whole town in New Jersey and ran that shit as a TV show on cable? A celestial made of marble is just sticking out of the Earth and nobody talks about that? Moon Knight and Konshu rewound the sky, but nobody is talking about that? A mummy with a scythe and a crocodile with box braids had a kaiju tussle against the pyramids in Egypt and nobody is talking about that?

Characters in phases 4 and 5 seem to reference and be impacted more by the events of phases one to three than anything which occurred after. Everything seems to be happening in bubbles and it’s really weird. Marvel Studios want to create stand alone stories and I ain’t mad at that. I get it. I think it’s a good call, because at this point if you want to bring in new audiences, you can’t expect them to watch a primer consisting of around 30 films and a dozen TV shows. Except, even with these more stand-alone stories, the payoffs and the context of certain moments won’t hit the same unless you have watched some of those 30 films and those dozen TV shows. So everybody is fucked either way.

Marvel Studios wants to have its cake and eat it too, and I think Kevin Feige is realising that it can’t. Because whatever he is trying to do at the moment is not working across the board. There are outliers. Shang-Chi and The Legend of the 10 Rings being a brand new character and a brand new story meant that you could go into it cold. And Black Panther: Wakanda Forever only really required you to watch Black Panther and MAYBE Captain America: Civil War. And both Black Panther films feel like they are in bubbles to an extent. But everything else? Thoughts and prayers.

And this is where The Marvels finds itself in yet another weird position. Because you COULD watch it and grasp what’s going on without having the context provided by other films and shows. The Marvels does a pretty good job of bringing you up to speed on who the main characters are for those going into it cold. But there is also a whole lotta shit from other MCU films and shows which is woven into the story. In fact, The Marvels is probably one of the only MCU films post Endgame which actually does thread in lots of the world building from other films AND shows. But then there’s also the deal of Captain Marvel having been M.I.A since Endgame, having only shown up in a post credit sequence for a film which released in 2021. So The Marvels is a film that’s kinda stand-alone, but also really isn’t, which is a sequel to a film from four years ago, with a main character we’ve barely seen since then, alongside two characters who are more recent, but were in shows that not everybody has watched.

Okay.

Marvel Studios need to get their scheduling together, because we really should have gotten The Marvels sooner. But Marvel Studios giving us films too late in their own timeline is also a problem they’re having at the moment. Just look at Black Widow. A whole waste of a film for a character who shoulda been had their own trilogy during phases one to three.

But even with the ‘what-the-fuck’ conundrum of The Marvels being this kinda stand-alone, but also really not stand-alone at all hybrid of a product; The Marvels is the first film post Endgame which I PERSONALLY feel recaptures some of that magic from the first three phases of the MCU. Good humour. Charm. Heart. Great pace. Stakes. Repercussions. Surprise cameos which make sense and aren’t just stunts. One of the best mid credit sequences in the MCU. And a sense that something is being built towards. But The Marvels also does something that very few of the films have done in this new age of Marvel Studios which now has Disney+ shows. It actually manages to thread in plot points from a couple of shows and deliver continuity where characterisations are concerned. Well. For the most part. Nick Fury is not the same character he was in Secret Invasion, which I am fine with. And Secret Invasion strangely happened in a bubble without Carol and Monica, which makes NO sense to me whatsoever. I mean, surely they would want to know that Talos is dead? So for there to be consistent continuity with everything else except Nick and that story, it is strange. Marvel Studios wants everybody to watch their films and shows, but anybody who watches The Marvels AND Secret Invasion is going to have questions about more than just why Nick Fury is a different character. It’s like how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness yanked Wanda from Wandavision, but completely changed who she was in that show to such a degree that she felt like a whole other character. (They really shoulda just made her a variant, which would have fixed that). But in The Marvels, Monica is the same spunky, headstrong, willing-to-touch-barriers-of-energy-with-her-bare-hands type of chick she was in WandaVision. And Kamala is the same Captain Marvel stanning girl who constantly finds herself overwhelmed at all of the very un-normal things which are unfolding around her from Ms. Marvel. Watching WandaVision and Ms. Marvel will tell you more about these characters, but The Marvels also tells you enough to the point that you won’t feel completely lost as to who these characters are. It slightly undercuts the shows. But from a narrative perspective, I get it.

Marvel Studios unfortunately can’t keep putting out films on the assumption that people have watched the shows. But if they are going to put out shows which will leave people with SO many questions going into a film which is supposed to follow it chronologically, then maybe it’s for the best - because watching Secret Invasion will make The Marvels make less sense. Secret Invasion was an absolute disaster of a show. But at the very least, two of the shows that fill in more of how Monica and Kamala come to be are two of the better Disney+ shows which are more of the essential watches going into The Marvels than Secret Invasion. Ms. Marvel was great. I don’t care what anybody else has to say.

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But amongst many of the issues at Marvel Studios, one of the biggest has been how it’s handled women. Black Widow was sidelined and written like shit for years until she got her own film; which was not only terrible, but came far too late and had Natasha take a back seat in her down film. Black Panther was the first Marvel Studios film which had women written well and actually made them the heart of the story in many ways. But it took until Captain Marvel to have a woman fully lead a film, which resulted in a complete teardown of Brie Larson. Men wanted a cool female superhero, but had an issue with the woman playing her being an outspoken feminist who called out racism in film journalism. Because of course they would. And then there was that bad bitch team up moment in Endgame which also resulted in ‘discourse’ and hatred online. I will be honest with you though. I did not like that A-Force moment in Endgame. Not because of ‘tHe WoMeN’. But because it felt too ham-fisted and unearned for Marvel Studios to have done at that point. You wanna cash in on a girl power moment, when you haven’t done the groundwork across enough of your films? And to have that moment with NO Black Widow? One of the OG Avengers!? And just look how long it took from that moment for Marvel Studios to release a film about heroes and villains who are all women. Time taken aside, The Marvels manages to deliver a superhero movie chock full of women without falling into many of the tropes that such a movie could easily fall into. Nobody has a love interest (although we do get hints of Carol having had a lil’ something with Valkyrie. C’MON BINARY BISEXUAL). There is no bitchy fall out between the characters. Carol is allowed to be flawed and make mistakes, with the villain punishing her for them in a way which felt pretty justified. Carol, Monica and Kamala are allowed to be vulnerable without it being something that puts one another or the world at risk, because ‘women are too emotional’. The Marvels stands alongside both Black Panther films in terms of women written well, having nuance and standing alongside their male peers and counterparts. Black Panther still beats it out massively. But The Marvels doesn’t write any of the women in this film as egregiously as we’ve seen in other MCU movies. And I do wonder if the common thread is that the director and co-writers of both The Marvels and the Black Panther films were Black.

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The Marvels is basically the MCU’s Charlie’s Angels, which will either sound amazing to you or like a piece of doo-doo. I liked the 2000 Charlie’s Angels film. Shit. I even liked its sequel Full Throttle. And I also liked the OG TV show. So I am very okay with a cosmic Charlie’s Angels. I think this would have been a cool way to market the film, but nobody at Marvel Studios seemed to think so. We’re just seeing Freaky Friday with three women just flying and running around. And despite the trailers focusing on the Freaky Friday aspect of the film, this isn’t even the main story nor hook of the film at all. Marvel Studios has many problems to fix. But one is most certainly creating marketing campaigns and cutting trailers which are better reflective of the final product. Add this to the list of things The Marvels had going against it. But this seems to be a Disney issue, because the vast majority of films Disney has released over the past 3 years have been poorly marketed, had terrible trailers and were not reflective of the final products whatsoever. The Little Mermaid to name one. Another film featuring a female lead who also happens to be Black. An unfortunate pattern.

Something which the trailers for The Marvels don’t really show, and something we were unfortunately unable to see for a press tour due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, is the dynamic between Carol, Monica and Kamala. I initially figured it would be a case of them not getting along until the final moments of the film, when they all realise that they have to work together. But, no. They have this realisation early. And despite the trailers giving off an energy that Carol will begrudgingly have to be a team player, Carol is quickly supportive of the idea. And her arc in this film is learning how to be a friend and a teammate again after choosing a life of solitude for so many years, and that despite the perception of her, she actually does care.

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Despite The Marvels being fronted by a trio of superheroes, Carol is still one of the main focuses. She is not benched or relegated in any way. And the things Marvel Studios come up with to take Carol off the board and not just have this overpowered hero saving everyone and fucking everything up for the bad guys never feels cheap. In Infinity War and Endgame, Carol was having to be a hero on other planets and try to find the Skrulls a new home. In The Marvels it’s revealed that Carol took any opportunity to be away from anywhere she could come close to considering home, because she was running away from the damage she caused on Hala. Running away from not finding a permanent home for the Skrulls. Running away from the loss of Maria. Running away from having to face Monica. Carol exiled herself, because she feels it’s what she deserves and that the power she has been given is nothing but destructive. But once Kamala and Monica come into her life, she realises how lonely her existence has been. It’s a really cool angle to her story and one I wish the film dove into a little more. The cool thing about all of this, is that it is a story about Carol Danvers. Not Captain Marvel. How Carol wrestles being seen as one, but not the other. How she has all of these expectations unfairly placed on her - something the film acknowledges and addresses with the character of Kamala; who admits that she shouldn’t have projected her admiration of Captain Marvel as a superhero onto Carol, who at the end of the day is still a real person. It feels like a meta commentary on how people (shitty men) seem to conflate Brie Larson with Captain Marvel, and assassinate her character because they don’t like her portrayal of...a character.

The film flirts with the rhetoric of public perception, pulling back the veil on why Carol is the way she is. And that whilst she isn’t perfect, she is not the villain she is made out to be…until she is. And we’ll get to this. This is also conveyed through the character of Monica, who holds a great deal of resentment towards Carol for not returning home to her, despite promising that she would all those years ago before her mother passed away. And whilst Carol tries to explain that her being Captain Marvel and the damage she’d caused made her feel unworthy of returning home, Monica explains that she never cared about Captain Marvel, she only cared about her Aunt Carol. The only family she had who wouldn’t return to her, knowing that she had lost her mother. And the film poignantly flips the scenario with Monica at the end of the film, having her make the choice to be alone in order to save ‘the world’. It creates this really cool moment with Carol, who is made to feel helpless despite how powerful we have seen her be. Carol chose to be alone out of fear and shame. Where-as Monica chose to be alone because it was her only choice. Some may feel that Carol should’ve been the one to save the day. But I like that it was Monica. Not just because it was cool to see a Black woman levelled up to be SO powerful in that moment. But I think Monica making that sacrifice will impact Carol massively, because not only does she have to live with the hurt and guilt of losing Maria, but she also has to sit with losing Monica not long after she came back into her life. But again, the film doesn’t really stress or convey the weight of any of this, which is a shame. And given how Marvel Studios like to set characters up one way and then make nothing of it when we see them again, who knows if we will get a clear indication of how much the loss of Monica has affected Carol or if we will see her go out of her way to try and find her, because at this point, too many people that Carol and Nick both know are aware of the existence of the multiverse and have traversed it, for either of them to not try.

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The Marvels not really stressing or conveying the weight of choices made is probably one of the biggest problems with it. The film doesn’t sink its teeth enough into any of the character arcs. Nor does it ask the bigger questions. And we once again see a hero fuck up a whole city of people and rightfully be seen as a villian, but not be held accountable for doing so. Like...c’mon now. Just a couple of years ago we saw Wanda walk away from not only holding a whole town hostage, but committing mass murder in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with zero accountability. And now we’ve got another white woman out here fucking up shit; pulling a Mr. Burns on the sun, giving a planet water from flint and some COVID. But the film never really sells the devastation of what Carol had done, nor does it show the remorse she felt for doing it. So by the time The Marvels villian Dar-Benn comes along and is like ‘Bitch. I’mma beat you up and take your sun, your water and your air’, it’s kinda hard to argue against her. And to be honest, Carol shoulda been like ‘Gurl, take it.’

It’s like Marvel Studios forgot that they had released a whole entire film which was about heroes with destructive powers running amok and not being held accountable for their actions. But ‘Fuck the Sokovia accords’ I guess.

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The inclusion of Kamala and Monica in Carol’s story is so much more than a justification for the film title. They actually make sense in terms of showing that one person is not a monolith. And that people should be allowed to be people and make mistakes. And that even those who feel that they are in the right and justified for their actions, can sometimes be blinded by the fact that maybe they were wrong too. Kamala’s head is so in the clouds about Captain Marvel being a hero, that she doesn’t consider that Carol Danvers has to make tough choices as the hero that she didn’t choose to be. And that being a hero is not as glamorous as she made it out to be in her comic strip; something she learns out in the field, when Carol is forced to leave a whole bunch of Skrulls to die. Monica is so wracked up in hurt over Carol not returning to her, that she didn’t consider how hurt Carol was over the loss of Maria too, and that she may have felt responsible in some way. And then there’s Carol herself, who doesn’t come up with excuses for things Kamala and Monica call her out on. She sees Kamala and Monica’s points of view and manages to distil them down to being grateful on some level that there are people who actually care about her and look up to her, even if they initially get her motivations and who she actually is as a person wrong.

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And let us not forget Nick Fury. Fury feels a paternal responsibility to look out for Monica, having known her since she was a little girl and working with her mother. He is one of the only people Carol considers a friend. And he respects that Kamala is still a kid with a family who respect her path as a hero, but still fear for her. It’s a different angle for Nick Fury, but a good one and one which works.

For all of the superhero shenanigans, the Freaky Friday of it all and the cosmic elements of the whole thing, The Marvels is really a story about family. Monica losing her family is what makes her step up to be the hero and help others. Kamala’s love for her family provides her a sense of groundedness in a world which feels like it’s sweeping her off her feet. After years of being alone, Carol realises that she actually has a family in Monica and Nick, and now Kamala and her family. And Nick realises how important family is to all three of them and respects that - probably because of the events of Secret Invasion, but who the fuck knows if anything in that show matters now. Nick doesn’t force a reconciliation between Monica and Carol, respecting both of the choices they’d made to be apart. And Nick never talks down to or makes light of how much Kamala’s mother cares for her daughter. He feels an obligation to do right by all of them and it’s a really cool dynamic which softens Nick Fury in a really nice way, but still feels on brand for him, because Nick Fury’s closest relationships and confidants have always been women. His mother. Natasha. Carol. Black Maria. White Maria. Monica. Even Kamala’s mother, with whom Nick develops something of a kinship with because of how fiercely protective she is of her daughter and how much she cares. And she also likes what she thinks are cats.

The cool thing about the relationships between Carol, Monica and Kamala is that they all change each other, which is what makes their Freaky Friday switching make narrative sense, because they all realise that they were seeing each other wrong until they had to step in each other’s metaphorical shoes. Carol and Monica seeing how close Kamala is with her family make them realise that they should have put their pride and hurt aside to reconcile far earlier. Kamala seeing the distance between Carol and Monica and what losing a family member did to them makes her value her family so much more. But seeing Monica lose her mother also makes Kamala appreciate still having her mother around, even if she finds her overbearing. And Kamala seeing Carol lose Monica makes Kamala realise that she can’t just be a fan of Captain Marvel, she actually has to BE present and there for Carol too. And Carol realises how much she missed being a part of a family to share experiences and a burden with. It was really heartwarming to see the scene of Carol moving back to Earth, with the Khan’s helping her unpack; who never once blamed Carol or judged her for the things she did. All they cared about was making sure she kept Kamala safe. But again, the film didn’t hammer all of this down to make it hit better. But maybe it did so enough, given it’s what I was able to take out of it. Then again, I’m a softy at heart who over analyses and reads into everything.

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Phases four and five of the MCU has been a fucking mess so far. There is no real overarching story that’s being built to. And the multiverse certainly isn’t panning out to be anything anybody really cares about or fully understands. But there has been one consistent thread in every single film and show which we have gotten post Endgame, and that is family.

Black Widow, WandaVision, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Secret Invasion, season 2 of Loki and now The Marvels. Family was a core theme in each of them. And The Marvels is no different. Pushing the family angle for every single one of these films and shows in the marketing would have gotten old fast. But I do wonder how much better off some of these would have been had they leaned into it; because the family aspects of each of these stories was one of the most compelling parts of them, which also helped the stakes.

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A lot of people didn’t like Carol in the first Captain Marvel movie. And there was clearly an early production note for this film to try and ‘course correct’ her into being more likeable in a way where she would be easier to drop into any of the other films and shows. I really liked Carol Danvers in the Captain Marvel movie. I also liked her in Infinity War and Endgame. My only concern with her was wondering how she could be placed in other films with other characters, given how she had been characterised. In Infinity War and Endgame she was very much an assist who said ‘Fuck the teamwork’ and it really punched through in a film which is about a bunch of superheroes working together. It worked to serve the purpose of showing the kind of person Carol is versus who the members of the Avengers are. But there was no way they could keep her as this lone Wolf type of character if there was any plan to make her an Avenger or have her be in the now standard hero ensemble cast for her own films. So The Marvels offers up a version of Carol who values companionship far more. But here’s the thing. Carol once upon a time did value companionship. Loss is what changed her. It was clear in Captain Marvel that Carol was compassionate and cared deeply about the lives and well beings of others, and that she truly valued friendship and camaraderie. Unfortunately, these weren’t the traits that many took away from the first film, despite it being the most prominent part of her character. But The Marvels places this so far in the forefront, that if you still feel Carol is an emotionless hardass who knows it all, then you really just hate the bitch and have it in for Brie Larson. Because Tony was a whole asshole, but everybody still loved him and sang Robert Downey Jr.’s praises.

But, speaking of Robert Downey Jr., I think what makes Carol work differently in The Marvels, is Brie is given more room to allow herself to come through more in the role, similarly to how we saw the lines blur between Robert Downey Jr. and Tony Stark, Samuel L. Jackson and Nick Fury, Chris Hemsworth and Thor. Brie is fun, light-hearted, warm, compassionate, outspoken, nerdy and champions what she believes in regardless of people’s perceptions of her. This was the case in Captain Marvel too, but more of the warmth comes through in The Marvels. The Marvels have unlocked something which works better for Carol and Captain Marvel, and that is having her always be in the orbit of people who she cares about. Carol still has a slight (lack of) personality issue, which I think stems from both how she’s portrayed in the comics and Marvel Studios not completely knowing what to do with the character. And I wonder if the shadow of Rogue which has always loomed over Captain Marvel is subconsciously hanging over the character internally at Marvel Studios too. The Marvels does enough with Carol for her to be more than just incredibly overpowered. I think the next step is to let more of Brie come through in the role, because this certainly did wonders for her in the TV show Lessons in Chemistry which began to air around the same time The Marvels released.

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Marvel Studios has always had a problem with one and done villains, and that’s not changed here. But Dar-Benn isn’t a terrible villain. She serves a purpose of being a powerful bad bitch, who is threatening and can make a lot of people’s lives hell. And she is in keeping with what we have seen of the Kree in previous films. She is very similar to Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy, even down to her whole mission being to track down an artefact to fuck things up a little. But her motivations never feel unjust once you discover what she is doing and why; which is what makes her work, even if she is a little one-dimensional. Dar-Benn also isn’t ‘evil’. She isn’t just doing bad shit for the sake of it. And she also isn’t some random person within the world of the story. Carol knows exactly who Dar-Benn is and there seems to be a history between them. But The Marvels would have benefitted delving into providing just a BIT more of a backstory on who exactly Dar-Benn is. We see her once in a flashback set during the first Captain Marvel movie, but it’s just her reacting to Carol fucking up the Kree Artifical Intelligence, which effectively runs the planet of Hala. It would have been great to have seen what relationship Dar-Benn had with Carol, and just how bad things were on Hala as a result of Carol’s actions for Dar-Benn on embark on a-two-birds-with-one-non-infinity-stone mission of vengeance and saving her home. Hala doesn’t exactly look like it’s on the brink. We see everybody on Hala in darkness wearing masks, but that’s really the extent of it. I was just like ‘Oh. It’s 2020.’ Maybe Marvel Studios made a choice to not show the Kree dying from being unable to breathe or dying from polluted water and malnutrition, as not to draw too many parallels to real life events. And perhaps Marvel Studios didn’t want to make what is a light-hearted film too heavy by showing a whole civilisation on the brink of death. And in light of what is happening to Palestinians right now, it was probably for the best. But I do think we should have seen SOMETHING of just how bad things got for Hala in some form; to really show the extent of the damage Carol had caused, so we can all better understand what would have driven Dar-Benn to start a rebellion and dedicate herself to her mission so fiercely that she’d be willing to die for it. Really sitting in Dar-Benn’s motivation for a bit more would have better tied her story into that of Carol, Monica and Kamala. Carol seeing first hand on Earth with the snap and also with the Skrulls, what it is like when a world of people lose hope. Monica knowing what it’s like to see somebody be so blinded by loss that they’re willing to do anything to bring back what they’ve lost, even if it means innocent people being used as collateral damage. Kamala knowing what it’s like to want to protect your home and the people you love. All of the pieces were there to better connect Dar-Benn to the main trio so that she felt more ancillary and not just some villain on the fringes. Zawe Ashton does good with what she’s given though. And the Kree have rarely looked as cool as Zawe does as Dar-Benn.

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As for the ‘technical’ aspects of the film, so to speak. The Marvels is a well structured, well paced, good looking film, full of charm with some great action sequences and lots of heart. Everything you’d want in an MCU movie. The power switching is incredibly cool to see in action and is something which isn’t conveyed well in the trailers. You really do have to see the power switching in the context of a full sequence to appreciate how creative it gets and how well it’s shot. It would be so easy for these scenes to end up a mess, but you’re always able to follow what’s happening and who’s switched with who. There are times it becomes chaotic and you lose your bearings, but it feels intentional. Especially when you compare one of the earlier fight scenes when nobody is able to grasp the switching or why it’s even happening with the final fight scene when they have the switching on lock. And we also get to see Carol, Monica and Kamala do some really cool and inventive things with their power sets, both individually and collectively as a team.

The story in The Marvels is pretty simple, which I think works given how much hopping around is happening on screen and how many different parts of the MCU the film is pulling from. We’re getting bits of WandaVision. Bits of Ms. Marvel. The cosmic shit from Guardians of the Galaxy. The backstory of Captain Marvel. Some S.H.I.E.L.D in space shit. It’s great to finally see an MCU movie post Endgame make good on a decade plus of world building. There’s no crazy mystery that requires solving and there are no real twists which occur, and this is refreshing for a film from a company that’s always been about twists and surprises, with films and shows usually hanging entirely on them. BUT. As has become kinda customary for Marvel Studios movies these days, there is a slight sense of a little too much being packed into a film.

The Marvels | Marvel

The dynamic between Carol, Monica and Kamala is great, but we don’t get to see enough of their relationships with one another grow and develop. It’s just ‘Oh, our powers are entangled.’ Then ‘Oh. We’ve got it figured out.’ And it’s really unfortunate, because all of the right beats for their relationships with one another are present in the story, but we don’t get enough time to sit in the moments in between them. Given how good the chemistry is between Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani and how much they commit to their characters and the absurdity of what’s happening in the story, I really feel we missed out on something special. And as aforementioned, we needed to know just a bit more of Dar-Benn and how she and Carol knew each other, just to make the stakes that bit more personal. Because Carol immediately knew Dar-Benn was behind the shit that was going on. And Dar-Benn seemed to know enough about Carol to know which planets to target. But the film never explains how. And then there are the Skrulls, who are here…and that’s it. The Skrulls were such a big part of Captain Marvel and we got a whole Disney+ show about them (which shockingly and stupidly did not feature Carol nor Monica). And now in a new Captain Marvel movie, the Skrulls are just background extras? Marvel Studios needs to figure out what it’s doing with Skrulls. It feels like Skrulls were only included here because they kinda had to be included in some capacity, given they were such a key part of the first Captain Marvel movie and Nick Fury is back in the mix too. But surely we could have had at least one Skrull featured as a prominent character giving us some shape-shifting antics. Oh, yeah. We see no shape shifting from the Skulls here. Make it make sense.

The only thing about The Marvels I flat out didn’t like was the score. Carol’s theme didn’t really stick out to me in any way other than ‘This reminds me of the Avengers theme’. And having come straight off of Loki, which had such a unique score which played a HUGE part in the identity of the show, The Marvels’ score feels really generic by comparison. It also reminded me a lot of a Star War; which I kinda get, given that The Marvels is a very cosmic story set in space and different planets. But it doesn’t give the film any form of sonic identity. So much work was done with The Marvels to effectively rebrand the world of Captain Marvel in a sense, and yet Laura Karpman didn’t carry this through into the score. The Marvels even features a planet where everybody sings and there is a whole song moment between Brie Larson and Park Seo-joon. (Side note: Carol Danvers is a Disney princess). Yet none of the songs from this moment are memorable at all, which kinda renders this whole part of the film unnecessary. Having a female composer is great for a film directed by a woman, which features a trio of women as its leads and writers who are all women. And Laura Karpman being LGBTDISNEY+ too? Lovely. Amazing. But I just don’t think Laura’s score adds anything or stands out the way it should have. Going with Natalie Holt may have been a better choice, given how amazing her work was on Loki. Christophe Beck also would have been a better choice. Not a woman. But he has a style that I think would’ve better fit The Marvels and elevated the score into something which felt memorable. And as per WandaVision, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez coulda been brought in to pen songs for the musical moments on Aladna to make them truly stick the way that they should have.

The Marvels | Marvel

I went into The Marvels with low expectations, as I do most films. And I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I actually think that The Marvels is a great reminder of how fun some of the earlier MCU movies were and also an example of what more of the current MCU movies should be doing. We got the fun, camp, humour and cool action of the earlier films. But we also got great cameos, a killer mid credit sequence, connected threads from other films and shows, along with a sense of what is being built towards - all things phase 4 and 5 films have lacked. Whether we see momentum on the threads left by this film is anybody’s guess. The MCU as of late has been a case of setting things up...then giving us absolutely nothing. And Marvel Studios’ track record over the past few years has been so fucking terrible, that I am really concerned about X-Men coming into the MCU - something which is happening far sooner than I figured it would. I am a big X-Men fan. But I would rather not have them in the MCU at all until Marvel Studios get their shit together, rather than see them get thrown into the MCU and be handled like complete shit. But they’ve opened the door to the X-Men fully now, between Professor Xavier showing up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Beast showing up in the mid credits sequence and Wolverine in Deadpool 3. So let’s see how it pans out. And, it seems we’re getting Young Avengers too, something which had been rumoured for a while. But it’s effectively confirmed in The Marvels, with Kate Bishop being recruited Nick Fury style by Kamala. A scene which really shoulda been a mid credits sequence instead of the end of the film.

HENNYWAY.

As much as I enjoyed The Marvels, it does suffer in the way that many of Marvel Studios’ films and shows do these days, which is that the story being told doesn’t give you enough to just sit in the story. Everything in The Marvels kinda flies by. And then it’s ‘OH LOOK. YOUNG AVENGERS.’ And then ‘OH LOOK. X-MEN.’ Marvel Studios has gotta stop treating its films like stepping stones and start treating them as stories that they care about enough for us to care about. Because whilst I like the premise of The Marvels and felt it was good, the film never settled enough into the moments it had set up to make me care about them the way I knew I was supposed to and the film really needed me to. I never felt the weight of Carol being called the Annihilator, because I didn’t see enough of the extent of the damage she’d caused on Hala. Also, we don’t see what she did until quite some way into the film, when it shoulda been how the film opened. I also never felt that Carol was truly hurt by being given the name ‘The Annihilator’. And whilst the relationship between Carol, Monica and Kamala was nice and worked, I wish we got to witness more of the development of these relationships, rather than hopping and skipping through it. Kamala also felt disproportionately more interesting and was given far more character than Carol and Monica, to such a point that this very easily could have just been a Ms. Marvel movie. And some may argue that it should’ve been. The Ms. Marvel Disney+ show had shit viewership, and unfortunately it seems like this film is going to suffer a similar fate. But I do think that once The Marvels hits Disney+ and people watch it, they are going to fall for Kamala Khan and then want to watch Ms. Marvel to see more of her. It was clear from the offset that Iman Vellani was fantastic casting as Kamala Khan and it’s great to see that she can not only carry a show, but a film too. It was a smart move on Marvel Studios’ part to include her in this film, as she’s not only responsible for a lot of the humour hitting the way that it does, but she’s responsible for so much of the heart and helping ground the story. She also helps balance out the lack of character that Carol and Monica have. It’s really unfortunate that Carol and Monica both have such cool powers and are played by two great actors, yet Marvel Studios has failed to really give either of them character. And in the case of Carol, I think her kinda plain Jane character works in the same way it did for Captain America and has also worked for Superman. But Monica really needed to be written in a way where there was something to her other than just being the smart one who can figure everything out. A lot of what carries Monica is her power set and how likeable Teyonah Parris is, but she isn’t really given much to do and isn’t given much development. I want to see Monica have more fun and not always be sucked into these dire situations amidst trying to reconcile with her own feelings of loss. Like, DAYUM. Just let a Black woman be a bad bitch with powers.

The Marvels | Marvel

But whilst The Marvels does have a bunch of character development and arc issues, this is also a symptom of Marvel Studios not knowing what the hell they are doing. We needed to see more of Carol and Monica to get a better sense of who they are, and Secret Invasion would have been the perfect show to have done this. Secret Invasion was absolute shit. But in an ideal world where somebody at Marvel Studios knew what they were doing, Secret Invasion wouldn’t only have been good, but it would have featured Carol and Monica. And not just cameos. But as MAIN characters. Because it’s absolutely crazy to me that Secret Invasion didn’t include either of them, when they were two of the few people that knew about Skrulls along with Nick Fury. Carol knew Talos. Monica knew G'iah. Secret Invasion was a follow-up of a story told in Captain Marvel. So it made zero sense to tell the story without either of them. Including Carol and Monica in that story would have gone some way toward developing them both. But then it would require people to have watched that show, and this is another issue Marvel Studios are running into with their films. People have to not only be up on the films, but the shows too. I will never forget when I went to watch Black Widow. And after the end credits sequence with that woman from Seinfeld, multiple people said ‘Ooo’s that!?’, because nobody had watched The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. It’s a huge problem, which wouldn’t be so bad if Marvel Studios slowed down to a film and a show a year and gave people time to watch them. The constant bombardment of Marvel Studios ‘content’ is now becoming overkill. And even those who were once fans of the MCU are struggling to not only keep up with it, but care enough about it when it’s so clear that Marvel Studios aren’t on their shit the way they should be. And it’s really unfortunate that good releases such as The Marvels ends up suffering because of how incongruent the MCU has become.

The Marvels | Marvel

The Marvels has issues all unto itself. It’s not completely blameless. But it’s also evident that the Marvel Studios machine is chugging along a track which is being laid whilst the train is on it, and that this approach is affecting which stories are told and how; resulting in films where either too much story is told or not enough story is told, because part of that story either was or wasn’t told in another show or because there are plans of it to be told elsewhere. It’s a mess.

In short. The Marvels is a good film. It’s not without problems. But none of the issues with it are anything bad which ruin the film or make it unwatchable. And they certainly aren’t issues we’ve not seen other films in the MCU during the first three phases suffer from. If you expect a masterpiece, you will be disappointed. But if you go into this with the realistic expectations that folk like myself reserve for MCU films, then you will have a good time.