Marvel Studios is at an interesting period in its history as one of the biggest cultural juggernauts to come out of Hollywood. With the publication of the Variety article that touches on the numerous issues facing the studio as of late, it seems they have finally reached a point where they are flying too close to the sun. And there are communities out there probably celebrating that fact, from certain aggressive cinephiles who have long derided Disney and Marvel to the anti-woke crowd who hates seeing pushes for diversity in media. It’s a mess all around, and it’s made worse by the fact that the film following all this is a sequel to Captain Marvel, which reached some of the highest peaks in bad faith online discourse.
It’s also a shame that the follow-up film The Marvels is the one forced to face an audience with their knives already out because it’s really mostly…just fine. And not only is the movie perfectly OK, it’s not the kind of movie that is aiming for anything especially big in the grand scheme of things. It’s doing exactly the kind of stuff that people have always liked about these movies – action-comedies that are light on their feet with generic plots elevated by charismatic performances, and on top of that, this one doesn’t even hit the two hour mark.
To summarize the premise really quick, due to some scientific mumbo-jumbo, whenever the light-based powers are used by Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), they each begin to switch places. This proves to make their current situation more difficult as they learn of a Kree leader, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who has gained extra powers after acquiring one of the two Quantum Bands – the other being on Kamala. With this extra power, she will exploit natural resources from other planets to restore life to her home world.
That might seem like there are a lot of details to keep in mind, but to be honest, you really don’t. You also don’t have to have seen any of the Marvel shows to understand anything here. Kamala Khan’s whole deal is explained early on, as is Monica and her relationship with Carol. If anything, the only details we don’t get is what the hell Carol has been up to all this time since her movie. And as far as Dar-Benn is concerned, her presence is rendered quite typical, like many of Marvel’s most forgettable villains. And while there are attempts at nuance, they just don’t register.
A lot of the classic super-heroics is very much business as usual, and with that comes a lot of the standard issues that comes with these movies. The only difference this time is that instead of feeling overstuffed, the shorter runtime results in some potentially connective tissue being left on the cutting room floor. The film runs on the barest bones possible, giving you only what is needed to keep the plot going, and in its defense, the film does movie quite fast. Even if the final product doesn’t offer much in terms of emotional or thematic depth.
It is a bummer that there isn’t much meat to the whole thing because the film is directed by Nia DaCosta, who had a hand in the screenplay with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik. I loved her film Little Woods, and while I wasn’t ultimately all that hot on her Candyman, I felt there was quite a bit to admire about its ambitions. If one were to reach, perhaps The Marvels is about American interventionism, as Carol is directly responsible for the conditions that set the villain on her path. But that gets thrown out the window given how it’s resolved. Plus, with the messiness about the relationship between the Skrull and the Kree, and how the movie handles that, especially in light of the ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict, which this very much evokes, it just feels icky, and way out of the movie’s depth.
With all that said, I still had a good time with the film, and more or less in the same way many of these movies are good fun. The humor here works more than it doesn’t, and there’s two sequences that are a genuine highlight, and delightfully strange swings that I really appreciate given how few opportunities these movies get to be just plain weird. One involves singing, the other involves kittens, you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Plus, the action is probably the most inventive it’s been in a while, really taking advantage of the quantum entanglement that keeps forcing the characters to switch places at the most inconvenient time. It’s a cool gimmick.
But of course, what gives this movie so much life are the three leads. Each performer has great chemistry with one another, and they bounce off each other really well, both figuratively and literally. While on paper, I feel there’s still quite a bit about Carol as a character that we as an audience just aren’t familiar with due to the amnesia stuff and the fact that she’s been only popping in for minutes at a time within other movies, Larson is an engaging presence as ever, conveying nuance that otherwise might not have even been on the script. Parris brings a unique perspective as her character deals with a connection to Carol yet being at arms length due to their time apart. And Vellani is just pure joy, bringing the same spirit that made her such a likable personality on the Ms. Marvel show.
The Marvels is probably going to get stuck in this awkward position of being proposed as the big signal that Marvel Studios is finally losing its grip with audiences, as if it’s this big unmitigated disaster. But while the movie is far from great, it is nowhere near that dramatic in its quality. Hell, I’d argue that almost all except a very small handful of movies are worth having such a dramatic opinion about, either positively or negatively. The thing about these movies is that they’ve been running on consistently delivering solid spectacles while never going above and beyond the call of duty, which I do think is a part of the overall problem with the Marvel machine, but it does show that the issues with these are largely systematic and rarely about the actual quality of individual films. The films have largely been fine, a few are genuinely fantastic pieces of pop filmmaking, and even fewer are actually legitimately bad. I had a pretty good time with The Marvels, and I think despite its issues, it manages to charm and take some creative swings even amongst the usual table setting moves for future franchise building, and I’m glad they were able to sneak some real personality to the proceedings. I know that hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement for the film, but it is what it is.
The Marvels is now out in theaters.