Before anyone starts shouting grifter or He-man superhero woman hater, I need to make it very clear that my issues with “The Marvels” have absolutely nothing to do with the female-lead trio or female direction. I’m actually a staunch defender of “Captain Marvel” and have stood by that solo outing since its release. I adored “WandaVision,” and found it wildly refreshing and a step in the right direction for the studio. And “Ms. Marvel” is hands down one of my favorite MCU tv shows, with Iman Vellani being a bonafide star.
I really need to stress how little any of my criticisms of this latest film have to do with the women involved. Nia DaCosta is a fantastic director, and I look forward to whatever her next project is. Brie Larson is a great performer unfairly hated because film bros can’t stand a woman with an opinion. And Teyonah Parris is one of the best up and coming performers on my radar, one who shows a vast range of ability in her limited filmography.
The problem with “The Marvels” has nothing to do with the women who lead it. It has everything to do with the MCU itself, and the studio’s inability to focus on telling singular stories that happen to connect instead of the inverse where connection is the number one priority even at the expense of quality. It is wild to watch the studio that literally paved the way for success consistently fall back into the same mistakes that all of their imitators attempted and failed to do.
Yes, the MCU has slowly become the DCEU, focused solely on bringing things together without reason or merit to generate unearned “events” instead of just telling stories that matter. “The Marvels” suffers greatly from this approach, delivering moments of fun, weird space silliness overshadowed by the massive assignment thrust upon audiences to even understand what’s going on in the first place. See, in order to know anything about what’s happening in “The Marvels,” you need to have watched “Captain Marvel,” “Avengers: Endgame,” “Wandavision,” “Ms. Marvel,” and “Secret Invasion.” That’s two feature films and four TV shows to understand one film. And that doesn’t even count the easter egg watches that are required to even understand the spoilers.
Do You Need to Watch Other MCU Projects to Enjoy It?
That is a tall order for even the most ardent of MCU watchers, and a huge departure from what made the studio a dominant player in cinema. I can’t believe we have to do this again, but what makes the films we love and hold dear in the superhero world isn’t how much they connect but how well they stand on their own. Hell, even “Captain Marvel” rests primarily on its 90s roots as a catalyst for events, and what happened before it and what happens after are secondary to the story being told. Whether you enjoy that film or not is irrelevant; you can just watch “Captain Marvel” and nothing else, and it works fine. “The Marvels” is sadly not afforded this luxury. From start to finish, it exists only to further the murky blueprint of the overall studio future surrounding it rather than tell any meaningful story within its short runtime. And that is really unfortunate, because there really are some interesting ideas that never get fully fleshed out in lieu of getting to the connection.
If we shed the MCU for a second, “The Marvels” contains intriguing stories for all of its characters that are worth exploring. Captain Marvel (Larson) must face the consequences of her actions as they relate to vengenance and wanting to be viewed as a liberator but instead being named an annihilator. Monica Rambeau (Parris) wrestles with her place in the world, wanting to follow her hard earned dreams but still holding resentment for her “aunt” never returning even when her mother died. And Ms. Marvel (Vellani) has to reckon with the fact that her hero, her superhero idol is in fact a human being and much more complicated than just being the beacon with which she has formed her entire life now that she has powers.
Every single one of those individual threads are powerful and intriguing, fit to strongly develop each character and further their story. “The Marvels” only cares about these elements peripherally, shoving all of them to the side to tell the MCU story instead why these characters matter. You can literally feel the constraint DiCosta felt making this, constantly trying to develop her characters and story but continually being told “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
What transpires is a forgettable entry with an even more forgettable villain (played by Tom Hiddleston‘s fiancée, Zawe Ashton) with muddled motivations that culminate in more of an advertisement for the future instead of anything that matters in the present. “The Marvels” is so concerned with where it fits in the larger picture and how it brings everything together for what’s coming that it never feels like it is telling a present story. It feels more like a season finale of “Ms. Marvel” than it does a come together superhero event or feature film. I can’t even tell you the villain’s name and I literally just watched the film. It’s individual impact is practically nonexistent, and I find that be horribly unfair to the women who are genuinely trying to bring their characters to life.
I can’t stress enough how much of a shining light Vellani is across the board. She is just so fun and charming and the pitch perfect audience surrogate for meeting superheroes in a world where they exist. I adore her and her charisma and I need the MCU to put their whole future on her shoulders. She’s got the “it” factor to make this worth watchin,g even if nothing else is working.
I really need to reiterate that I am no in agreement with any YouTuber “critic” or alpha male, woke pointing online troll that blasts this flick for being female led or woke or political or whatever the hell they get their panties in a bunch over any time a white, shredded, machismo shirtless dude isn’t the lead in a movie. I know I have not been positive on the film overall, but it has NOTHING to do with the things the louder megaphone idiots will inevitably bash this film for. No, my issues lie more in just how poorly it is conceived as a feature film. It is far too reliant on things irrelevant to the story being told, the ideas and script are all over the place, and none of the trio (who are all fantastic in their own right) are given enough to do or demonstrate how good they can be in their respective roles. I’m not ready to give an MCU eulogy, but I have never been more sure that the studio needs to take a break from itself and get back to its roots.
“The Marvels” has so many plot threads and unanswered questions it becomes dizzying to wrap your mind around it all. By the time we get to its CGI third act, the stakes feel so insignificant that it becomes incredibly difficult to care about the outcome. It is just another interchangeable villain bent on destroying worlds for, reasons? Even the villain is cheated, because her motivations are rooted in survival and nobility for her the restoring of her people but she goes about it in the wrong way. It is another example of misfiring, because there is a framework in which the villain could be incredibly compelling and on the Killmonger/Thanos level of damaged people taking out their aggression on the innocent to make the guilty pay. But no. We don’t get any of that. I keep calling her the villain because I can’t remember what her name is and don’t even feel like it’s worth looking up. She’s that unmemorable when she doesn’t have to be, and that is kind of the theme here. Great ideas hindered by the need to fit into the larger, muddled, unformed picture.
I wanted to love this film, I really did. The sum of its parts are all standouts for me in the larger framework of the superhero world, and “The Marvels” bringing those pieces together should be right up my alley. Unfortunately, its justification for doing so doesn’t seem to be worth the price of admission. For all that, this film is desperately trying to be for the future, it is so reliant on the connective tissue that you could skip it entirely and still pick up wherever the story eventually leaves off or picks up. For all its desperation, it doesn’t add anything worth remembering to its own story nor the larger story it feels is more important to tell.
It’s not time for the MCU to end, but this is maybe proof that it does need to have a very hard, introspective talk with itself and reevaluate what it wants to be moving forward. I get it, you can’t be on top forever and of course your chokehold on the industry is bound to wane, but this is certainly not how I want to see it go. I haven’t called time of death yet, but if they keep putting out lackluster, confounding entries like this one, I may have to start seeing if the MCU is an organ donor.
There is more fun in “The Marvels” than the MCU is willing to allow, and that is going to keep holding it all back until they either get out of their own way or burn it all to the ground.
Guess I’ll be seated for either a revival or a funeral on the next one. Quick, what do you wear in preparation for both at the same time?
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Stars
“The Marvels” is now in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
