The Marvels

THE MARVELS
2023 | Dir. Nia DaCosta | 105 Minutes

"You can stand tall without standing alone."

A crisis erupts in space brought on by a vengeful Kree leader with a grudge against Carol Danvers, inadvertently cosmically entangling Carol with her estranged family friend Monica Rambeau and the heroic Captain Marvel fangirl Kamala Khan. The trio of light-based-superpower-wielding women must join forces to protect the very fabric of the universe.

More than any Marvel Studios film before it, The Marvels is bafflingly inaccessible for casual viewers while the picture as a whole only serves to tease potentially exciting overarching plot developments to come for devotees of the cinematic multiverse. As a sequel to Captain Marvel, it's surprisingly disappointing, offering frustratingly thin character development for Carol Danvers who has made seemingly very little progress to recover her lost memories since her last appearance. The plot only scratches the surface of the inherent drama behind a superpowered being capable of making horrifyingly terrible mistakes -- such as destroying an evil planet-controlling AI by committing what may be considered an intergalactic war crime in the process! Though it's understandable that the overall tone of the picture is meant to be light and fun, this plot revelation is dark and intriguing, and the film more or less handwaves it away by the time it wraps up its narrative. Conversely, The Marvels does an excellent job of furthering the ongoing story arcs of Monica Rambeau and (especially) Kamala Khan, rewarding devotees who adored the WandaVision and Ms. Marvel miniseries on which they respectively had starring roles, with Monica finally resolving her issues with Carol and Kamala learning her idol isn't totally perfect while accepting her as a friend. However, such storytelling decisions mean little to anyone who wasn't onboard for those shows, and are decidedly not an ideal fit for the structure of a complete film.

The Marvels is at times a puzzlingly flawed ride for a project with a blockbuster Marvel Studios level budget. From the shoddy editing (Kamala switches from being in street clothes to her superhero costume and inexplicably back again between spatial swaps at the start of the film) to the hit-or-miss broad humor (the middle act features a planet where the primary language is song) to the under-baked ideas (the climatic battle is intercut with a satellite evacuation by Flerken ingestion), too much of the picture just doesn't quite gel from scene to scene. However, the action set pieces are undeniably a lot of fun courtesy of the randomized swapping of the heroic trio, notably the multi-location fight scene in the first act and the three-against-one climatic battle.

Returning as Carol Danvers, Brie Larson does her best to bring emotional weight to the all-powerful but less-than-perfect Captain Marvel, her greatest challenge is evidently wrestling with a script that requires her to be flip-flop radically between funny and dramatic while offering little in the way of tangible character motivation. Completing her character arc that began in earnest on WandaVision, Teyonah Parris gives a convincingly heartfelt performance as Monica Rambeau, genuinely touching in her portrayal of a woman overcoming her resentment towards an estranged family member. The indisputable MVP of The Marvels is Iman Vellani's Kamala Khan, bringing an overabundance of infectious enthusiasm to the screen, Vellani with her natural charisma is more often than not the saving grace for scenes that don't quite work. Zawe Ashton fills the thankless role of sky beam generator antagonist Dar-Benn, a villain who is interesting and nuanced in theory but barely registers as an actual character in the grand scheme of things. Samuel L. Jackson once again returns as Nick Fury though ill-fittingly in a much more over-the-top comedic capacity than ever before. The cast also features Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, and Saagar Shaikh reprising their Ms. Marvel roles as Kamala's family in a few scene-stealing moments, and Park Seo-joon in a small part as Carol's secret singing alien prince husband.

Objectively, The Marvels is a disjointed, haphazardly structured film that is a textbook example of all of the shortcomings of the Marvel Studios machine. The picture is simply a woefully incomplete experience on its own. However, diehard fans of the mega-franchise should find the fantastic action and the sillier-than-usual hijinks amusing enough, particularly those invested in the characters established on the various ancillary miniseries -- which likely limits the intended appeal of the feature to a rather exclusive audience.

MID-CREDITS STINGER

Monica Rambeau awakens in another world, meeting a young variant of her mother and a furry blue scientist (Kelsey Grammer). The beastly genius examines Monica and deducts that she is from a parallel universe.

FRAGMENTS

- The Marvel Studios logo that opens the film primarily features footage from Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan's past MCU appearances

- While it's neat that Laura Karpman's score features references to Kamala Khan's theme from Ms. Marvel, Pinar Toprak's theme for Carol Danvers from Captain Marvel which was also referenced in Avengers: Endgame is sorely missed

- I usually don't have any issues with MCU tonal shifts, but seeing such a dour Nick Fury on Secret Invasion (which takes place directly before this film) switch to super silly Nick Fury gives me major tonal whiplash

- Kamala's brother Aamir got married during the events of Ms. Marvel but his wife oddly does not appear in this film, and while he is presumably on the phone with her when the Khans relocate to the SABER satellite halfway through the movie, she is neither seen nor heard even during the epilogue when the Khans move into the Rambeaus' former home in New Orleans

- The cameo appearances by Valkyrie and Kate Bishop are absolutely delightful

007 CONNECTIONS
- Lashana Lynch (Nomi in No Time To Die)