THE MARVELS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Marvels, Marvel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 9, 2023

Who actually wants homework? Most of us are more than happy to say farewell to the concept after our schooling has finished, so why does a series of superhero movies insist that we have to take on an extracurricular course of television shows to even understand what's happening in those movies?

That's not necessarily a significant problem with The Marvels. It does the bare minimum to explain how the majority of its three-member team obtained superpowers—meaning that one doesn't need to have witnessed that happen in two separate TV shows to understand why these characters are in this movie. There's more to a superhero than the origin story of how said hero gained powers, of course—an oversight from which most of these movies, not just the ones in this particular so-called cinematic/television universe, suffer.

We want to know these characters as more than just a list of extraordinary abilities. It matters, for example, that we get to see Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), aka Ms. Marvel, in her element, as a teenaged fan of a particular superhero and the daughter in a lovingly suffocating family, and that Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) lost her mother to cancer while she was "blipped" out of existence.

Two different television entries in this franchise covered that ground as much as they were willing to do so, which isn't much, to be honest. Most of these TV series seem to suffer from many of the same issues as their big-screen counterparts. They're hesitant to really explore their characters, since they're in such a rush to get to some fight or to connect everything to some grander narrative. Here, at least, is the end result of that exposition.

If one accepts either the minimum that this movie provides in establishing these "new" characters or the slightly-more-than-minimum that was presented in those television programs, co-writer/director Nia DaCosta's superhero adventure is, thankfully, a self-contained story that sets up its own terms and attempts to play around within them. It's a comedy for the most part, establishing a gimmicky premise and helped considerably by the fact that the actors appear to be having some fun with the material. That it ultimately has to undermine those strengths by giving us a generic villain with world-ending aims is just a reminder that none of these movies really does anything truly different, no matter how playful they might seem on the surface.

Our main hero, obviously, is Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), aka Captain Marvel, whose seemingly unlimited powers appear to be going to waste as she hangs out in space and tries to remember her history. Closer to Earth, Monica is working on an intergalactic portal, and back on Earth, Kamala, a huge fan of Captain Marvel, is toying around with her own superpowers, innate to her or gifted by an ancient wristband. Because of the portal, the three become cosmically connected, so when one of them uses her powers, two or all them switch places.

A lot of this is fun, especially in some nimble fights that have the superheroes accidentally swapping positions at inopportune moments, meaning that Kamala might be dealing with some alien soldiers in the familiarity of her family home, only to suddenly find herself on another planet or inside the space station run by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). As Kamala, Vellani is filled with such legitimately and awkwardly joyful energy that much of the humor simply comes from her reactions to meeting her heroes—and finding herself in the sort of adventures she has dreamed about for years.

The screenplay, written by the director with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, finds some solid footing with this gimmick, as our heroes bond while trying to figure out how it works. It also delves into some moments of strange imagination, including an alien planet where the inhabitants communicate via song and, continuing the musical theme, a moment of comedic horror involving a litter of those cat-looking creatures, which are capable of devouring a human whole, set to a ballad from the only musical that makes sense under the circumstances. Yes, the movies of this franchise often struggle with using humor as a crutch, but there's something slightly different about the way this one, in its weirder moments, embraces just how goofy it can be, because the setup is so plainly silly.

Then, though, there's the rest of the plot, which has the three superheroes trying to stop Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), a Kree leader whose home world was devastated by Captain Marvel's first deed of intergalactic heroism. The character is only mildly interesting in that she wants to save her planet and not simply destroy a few others (including, inevitably, Earth), but what's a slightly sympathetic motive compared to the forcing of such strict formula into a story that regularly proves it's capable of doing something unique within this franchise?

There's not much to The Marvels. That's admirable, because the movie does often function as an entertaining lark, and a source of some frustration, in that it ultimately adheres to predictability in its plot and in its setup of the franchise's future (A digital character makes it look as if a mid-credit revelation was crammed in at the last minute). If this series is going to require so much homework, the payoff should be more worthwhile than this.

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