The Marvels

4 outta 5

The Marvels is a fun and zippy movie, which is a bonus as superhero movies lately have been succumbing to bloat, but at an hour and forty-five minutes this is one of the shortest Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. While it may seem like “MCU homework”, or even worse as a plus sized Disney Plus episode one must pay to see in theatres, it does mostly work on its own. Admittedly, the origin of the three leads is covered in previous MCU content, the movie Captain Marvel, and the Disney Plus TV shows Wandavision and Ms. Marvel, which is a somewhat awkward starting point for a general audience, especially if they don’t have a D+ subscription. But the flick does a decent job of filling people in. And the return of the characters is all very enjoyable, even if one of them just happened to engage in some light alien genocide in between their movies.

Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is flying around the galaxy as a superheroine at large. Back on Earth at the space station S.A.B.E.R. is Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the superpowered Monica (Teyonah Parris) the daughter of Carol’s deceased friend. And in New Jersey is the superpowered Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). Out in space the evil Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) has found a mysterious bangle, the other of which is in possession of Kamala. When Dar-Benn activates a portal, the powers of all three women become entangled, so whenever they use their powers they swap places in space. Now trying to stop Dar-Benn from endangering the galaxy, the trio must figure out how to use their powers together.

The complaints about “homework” for viewing this film is fairly overblown because the movie isn’t really about what happened previously, but the three characters already being established can be a bit daunting. There’s a few expository moments and flashbacks which is something Avengers films managed to avoid. To be honest, much of the worldbuilding previously was covered in other MCU stuff and most of that was on the Disney Plus series. Even the movie’s final scene features two characters that previously only appeared on Disney Plus which makes this feel like a TV show spin off that you must pay to see. The most likable and fun character, Kamala, is from Ms. Marvel TV show, which was unfortunately the least watched D+ show. But she is fantastic in the film and is sure to win over some newcomers. Overall, The Marvels is mainly a sequel to Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel, with the second tier associated content being Wandavison, Secret Invasion and the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

Larson’s Danvers gets to have fun as Carol is mostly aggravated about the entangled power situation, and some of Larson’s reactions are brilliant. There is a whole thing about Monica being estranged from her “Auntie Carol” because Carol left to fight in space. A lot of the emotional heavy lifting is provided by a scene where the characters are connected telepathically as there are ample flashback clips from Captain Marvel and Wandavision that provide context. Once again, it’s sort of a symptom that the movie has that “You don’t need to see everything, but it’ll make more sense if you do.” One somewhat awkward backstory bit is that Captain Marvel destroyed the Kree Planet ruling A.I. the Supreme Intelligence, which sent the Kree society into a tailspin, eventually depriving them of resources and polluting their planet. Not entirely her fault but, yeah, light alien genocide, basically. This gives the villain, Dar-Benn, understandable motivation as Captain Marvel has been deemed “The Annihilator” as all the Kree understandably dislike her. Giving Dar-Benn the hammer of Ronan from Guardians gives the character some historical heft, and Ahston does snarl decently, but overall she is one of the lesser MCU villains.

Paris is at the centre of the movie’s climax and the (incredibly awesome for Marvel nerds) mid-credit scene, one that is so important to the larger MCU picture that it kind of overshadows the preceding film. Imani as Kamala is a huge Captain Marvel fangirl and her joy at meeting her heroes like Carol and Nick Fury is hilarious. Her family tags along and their reactions are fantastic. Jackson’s Fury is still enjoyable as the resident hardass.

The best bits in this movie are inventive scenes of the three superheroes’ powers being entangled as they zip from one point in space to the next. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem to happen every single time, but the randomness adds to the complexity. The movie keeps things breezy although there is a scene when the trio lands on a planet where everyone communicates by singing that is mostly awkward, but the reactions of Kamala and Monica are priceless. Near the end, it sort of devolves into a VFX light show, but there’s many comedic bits that stand out, like an amusingly bonkers sequence where people have to be deliberately eaten by space cats.

Some tonal bits are off in The Marvels, alien Skrull refugees, unacknowledged childhood abandonment, the aforementioned light genocide, but overall things are light, breezy and fun. One doesn’t need to know the history of the MCU to fully enjoy the film, but it wouldn’t hurt either. But as far as superhero spectacle goes, this is a romp.