Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Review: The Marvels

The sequel to Captain Marvel had a weak opening financially but it is a solid entertaining film. There are a few missteps but there is a decent plot, an interesting antagonist and some innovative action scenes. Iman Vellani steals the show as Ms. Marvel, with an infectious charm as the starstruck teen with bizarre superpowers but Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris give more grounded performances as Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau. Also, there are cats.

In terms of recent Marvel movies, it doesn’t have the emotional punch of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 but it is substantially better than Quantunmania. The plot has Zawe Ashton as the Kree leader Dar-Benn, seeking to restore both the Kree homeworld and the power of the Kree empire after disastrous years of civil war. To this end, she reclaims a powerful Kree device that has been hidden for centuries that can control hyperspace portals. The use of the devices inadvertently entangles the powers of Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau.

Claiming provocation from the actions of Captain Marvel, Dar-Benn uses the ancient artefact to attack a city of displaced Skrull refugees. I’m surprised this hasn’t received more commentary given the accidental parallels with current events in Gaza. Establishing the bad guy credentials with a genocidal act against a set of people who are shown to have nowhere else to go was clearly not intended by the writers to match current events but that only emphasises the disparity between what looks cartoonishly evil in fiction and what people will rationalise as necessary in real life. I don’t want to derail a review of what amounts to a silly superhero film with connections to a divisive political situation but the accidental parallels are hard to avoid.

Where the film struggles is in mixing the darker themes of a collapsed imperial power attempting to (literally) steal the life from its former dominions to the more absurd cosmic trip between planets. A short musical digression is neatly done and there is plenty of humour but where Guardians of the Galaxy manages to pull the pathos, violence and humour together into a cohesive whole, The Marvels can’t quite manage the same trick. So the lighter parts tend to undermine the tension and the enormity of Dar-Benn’s actions.

Still, it does add up to an entertaining whole even if the tone can feel disjointed. Kamala Khan and her family enliven the whole film. There is a lot to be said for giving a superhero a strong non-super set of related characters. It is something that (Spider-Man aside) the MCU has largely avoided beyond a specific love-interest.

Aside from all that, Nick Fury gets to herd cats which is worth the ticket price in itself.

camestrosfelapton

8 responses to “Review: The Marvels”

  1. I just saw it as well. It’s not the best Marvel movie ever, but it was entertaining enough (and blessedly shorter–in fact, I think the crackling chemistry between the three leads could have used some more screen time). Also the scene with the Flerken kittens, set to the song “Memory” from “Cats,” was hilarious.

    Liked by 3 people

  2. If movie tickets didn’t cost so much and it wasn’t so virus-y out there, I’d go see it. As it is, I’ll watch it as soon as it comes on D+. Ms. Marvel and her family are adorable, and both she and Monica did great work in the TV shows.

    Also, cats.

    IRL, Dar-Benn is Mrs. Loki, which I didn’t know till the press for this started.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. It was a delightful if over-stuffed kick-off for Phase 5 of the Marvelverse. The opening was a bit awkward & if you didn’t see the Ms. Marvel t.v. show, you might be a tiny bit confused on a few points. The movie did seem scattered because they were jumping through so much information — Captain Marvel’s arc, Kamala’s arc, bigger multiverse set-up materials, callbacks to the Skrulls, found family mixed with a plucky bio family, new political developments on Earth, off the wall space opera, etc. The writers were clearly asked to do a Herculean task rather than a contained story & they almost pulled it off. The actors had a ball and offered us many fun scenes.

    But really, it all comes down to the words “Stop running…” I haven’t laughed that hard in quite awhile. It was definitely higher, further, faster, and a bit too fast. But a good ride plus the promise of two teams coming we’ve been waiting on for awhile. Just also finished Season 2 of the Loki series which brings the shape of Phase 5 into focus. It’s going to be a bit different type of saga from End Game. Very eager for the new Captain America movie now.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. I was disappointed with the movie, although I thought Iman Vellani was brilliant in it. I’m very much looking forward to where Marvel takes her.

    As a few others said. the movie was overstuffed for its length and too fast because of that. Yes, shorter movies are better than 3 hour monstrosities, but shorter movies need more focused stories to work.

    I think there were flashes of brilliance: the idea of the Kree being in trouble because of a rash vengeful act on the part of Captain Marvel is a good one, and could have setup a righteous villain (like Killmonger from Black Panther), but Dar-Benn was a bombastic retread of Ronan from earlier movies and I thought the actor was wooden besides.

    The idea of Ms Marvel becoming disillusioned by the real person that is Carol really didn’t have room to develop and was sort of dropped after the “air planet”, with only a callback much later.

    I was less interested in the Monica feeling abandoned by Carol plot point, but it got the same lack of attention in the end as all the other interesting plot ideas.

    Instead of developing all those interesting story points we get a deeply silly singing planet Disney princess bit and a very convenient outbreak of flerkin kittens with a joke soundtrack note.

    Overall I just thought it was a bit of a mess with plot holes you could drive a bus through (why did Monica have to close the space/time hole from the other side?) and weird editing choices that made it visually odd (where exactly was our Sun being drained? Like where was that gate? I didn’t see a gate anywhere near the Sun …)

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I finally saw this and enjoyed it (while I appreciate Lindsay’s criticisms). It’s nice to see a superhero team spending some time practicing their teamwork in advance of battle, and it makes sense that Captain Marvel knows a lot of people in the galaxy, who have a variety of opinions about her depending on her history with them (it would have been nice to work more with the fact that Dar-Benn is deliberately choosing places that Captain Marvel has allied with to punish – otherwise it seems like the only places where air, water and a Sun can be obtained in the whole galaxy happen to be places that Marvel is very familiar with. Perhaps that is what Dar-Been means when she says that water-planet has betrayed the Kree – they have allied with Marvel (I’m not sure). And Ms. Marvel remains delightful (though the conflict between Ms. and Captain should have paid off more). My secret wish is a crossover between Ms. Marvel and Stargirl, to see if the universe can stand a double dose of enthusiastically cheerful superheroes working together.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Rereading the SIlver Age I’ve realized Peter’s supporting cast in comics is bigger than anyone else except Superman’s. It’s part of what made the series strong because there’s so much more potential for drama.

    Like

Blog at WordPress.com.