Film Review: The Marvels

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

A lot of people have been dog-piling on this movie as the negative reviews and poor box office news poor in.  And fair enough, the movie is not a financial nor a critical success.  

However I think that much the venom is unfounded.

The Marvels is actually a fairly enjoyable, middling MCU super hero film.  

Of the Marvel Phase 4-5 movies, it is better than The Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder,  and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.  It's about at the same level as Shang-Chi, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Black Widow (I have not seen Black Panther: Wakanda Forever).  I know that these movies haven't been everyone's favorites.  And The Marvels is not as good as Spider-Man: No Way Home or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.  But for what it is, The Marvels was better than I expected.

The story centers around our three heroes: Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau/Photon (which she is never called in the movie)(Teyonah Parris).  Through some simultaneous mishap, these three become "quantum entangled" so that when they use their powers, they switch places with each other, no matter wear in the cosmos.  This poses a problem because Carol is fighting Kree on an alien world, Monica is doing technical work on a space station, and Kamala is at home with her parents and brother.  The ensuing chaos and violence actually is one of the best sequences in the movie where the characters are thrust in into unexpected life and death situations without any understanding of how they are seemingly pulled away at random.  It turns out that this is connected to Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), the new leader of the Kree.  She has just found one of the Quantum Bands (the other is being used by Kamala).  Dar-Benn intends to use this power to siphon precious resources from other planets to save the Kree homeworld of Hala.  Together, our three heroes have to work together to save the day.

One of the reasons that this movie is more enjoyable than Captain Marvel is that the characters are allowed to have more fun.  This is especially true with Vellani's Kamala.  She comes with a youthful, silly, hero-worshipping energy that was so endearing about Tom Holland's first outings as Spider-Man.  Even as the danger mounts, Vellani brings joy and wonder to everything.  And her awkward interactions with the other two bring out much of the film's humor.  Part of the fun is watching Larson have to react to this wild presence.  It helps melt away a lot of her more serious persona from her first film.

The movie moves into some very strange comedic territory.  But as I mentioned in my review for One Piece, I have become more comfortable with the Asian flexibility in style and tone.  This is not The Dark Knight, where everything is grounded in a tangible reality.  This is a story where you can go to a planet where everyone speaks by singing and a spontaneous dance number can break out.  If that is not to your tastes (as it wasn't to my young nephew who came with us to the movie), you may be turned off.  But if you can appreciate the humor of an absolutely bizarre sequence in the third act choreographed to the Broadway hit "Memory," then this movie will be enjoyable.

The movie flirts with depth of character and theme, but never really commits.  Perhaps this was done in order to keep the overall tone lighter.  There is a lot of tension between Carol and Monica, the latter who feels abandoned by one of the few people she has left who she considers family.  Kamala has a little bit of a wake-up-call regarding the limits of heroism when she has a confrontation with Carol over trying to save everyone on a dying planet, to which Carol replies "We need to save who we can!"  All of this is good fodder from some enriching and complex character work, but the movie only scratches the surface and glosses over the conflicts pretty quickly.  There are some deeply philosophical ideas that resonate with the Catholic tradition that are hinted at, but never fully explored regarding family, war, responsibility, and sacrifice.

Director Nia DaCosta does a competent job with the film.  As I wrote before, the first big action sequence was incredibly fun and creative.  Beyond that much of the visuals are boiler-plate Marvel content, which is not a negative.  But this movie does not stand out from the rest.  She does a good job of keeping a strong feminine tone without making it seem like a big deal.

I generally enjoyed the performances.  Larson, as I said, seems more relaxed in this film.  Some have criticized her performance as lazy, but I think that it just feels like lower energy because she is more at ease.  Villani is the bright spot of the movie.  Given the right material, I think that her character's popularity could go places.  Parris does a competent job as well.  However, the heroes should be forming a Freudian Trio with Kamal as the Id, Carol as Ego, and Monica as the Super Ego.  And while she is clearly the smartest one of the group, her personality is a little too close to that of Carol to get a fun clash of personalities like a Kirk-Spock-McCoy outing.

I really don't mean to be uncharitable, but Zawe Ashton is just awful as the antagonist.  Granted, she does not have a lot to work with, but she has managed to create the worst MCU villain I have seen.  Her performance would be completely forgettable if it wasn't so terrible.  It's like she watched Daenerys Targaryen in the final season of Game of Thrones and tried to copy that, but badly.  She is constantly mugging for the camera and putting on affectations that are meant to convey power but feel more like a child play acting as a grown up.  Widening your eyes and flaring your nostrils does not a performance make.  Samuel L. Jackson is back as Nick Fury, but really doesn't have much to do here so his performance also has a laid-back energy.

If you focus on what The Marvels could have been, it is definitely a disappointment.  

But as it is, it is from the disaster that is being purported.  If you are open to its tone and style, it is a fairly enjoyable piece of superhero fare.