Iman Vellani, Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris star in ‘The Marvels.’ Photo Credit / Marvel Studios
A lot has changed since the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its overseer Kevin Feige were at their pinnacle with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which served as the culmination of roughly a decade of interconnected superhero storytelling. To name some rampant issues that have erupted since (if you haven’t noticed), a global pandemic sent the world into disarray and political tensions skyrocketed, shifting the paradigm for moviegoers’ standards and what particularly warranted a trip to the theater. Especially when they were given their swan song, the heroic exploits of characters like Iron Man and Captain America fighting to keep their fictional universe intact lose their escapist thrills when our very real one feels like it’s on the verge of collapse.
As the next generation of heroes is ushered in, they vie for audience interest as viewers are forced to follow a far more esoteric and less accessible overarching conceit than “big, purple man needs six space gems to wield his sinister control over the galaxy:” the Multiverse, stretched detrimentally thin over multiple films and now Disney+ television series per year. What is the point of the MCU when it’s become this oversaturated and its quality control is at a nadir, when they’re constantly overhauling their product and inflating their once distinctive tonalities to the point of anonymity?
Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), the Air Force pilot-turned-superhero who was introduced in 2019’s Captain Marvel, suffers a similar crisis of identity after approximately 30 years of defending the galaxy, or at least that’s what you gather from a narrative that lurches at a frantic pace. A bona fide hit at the box office, her origin story set in the 1990s savvily introduced the character into and retconned the Marvel film canon, with her extended absence being chalked up to a long standing stewardship and protection of the Milky Way, including the political relations of many of its inhabitants. However, Captain Marvel and her franchise are keen on making up for lost time, having reclaimed her identity from brainwashing alien captors, the Kree, in that 2019 feature.
The plot only grows increasingly muddled as it inherits the baggage of the MCU’s serialized storytelling, so I suggest buckling in while this clunky franchise vessel struggles to exist on its own terms and achieve liftoff into the stratosphere. Having shouldered the weight of intergalactic diplomacy for decades now in insistent isolation, Carol encounters a new dilemma that challenges her adamant lone wolf status, conveniently with some of your favorite Disney+ characters.
Trying to foster peace for the Kree nation in its ongoing civil war but thwarted by the villainous Kree revolutionary Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), Carol’s powers become entangled with similarly superpowered beings: the plucky teenager, aspiring superhero and Captain Marvel megafan, Kamala Khan (an endearingly effervescent Iman Vellani) of Ms. Marvel and stern astronaut Monica Rambeu (a wise and quietly commanding Teyonah Parris), who was introduced in WandaVision and has been estranged from Carol since her youth, when she was close with Monica and her late mother before she disappeared into the cosmos. Switching places through teleportation whenever they use their powers, the three women must learn to work together and prevent Dar-Benn from using a mystical bangle like Kamala’s to destructively siphon off natural resources of other planets to restore her desolate homeworld, whose devastation Carol may have been inadvertently responsible for in the past. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his governmental space station S.A.B.E.R. are also in the mix. I’m not sure if his recent TV series Secret Invasion factors in, as I did not see it. I vaguely remember catching the first episode of Ms. Marvel. It was good, I think.
When Nia DaCosta was announced as the director of the Captain Marvel sequel, one hoped for a Winter Soldier-caliber upgrade from a rather typical origin story, though a vibrant one that compellingly established the character, but The Marvels and DaCosta’s considerable talents are undermined by being another generic entry churned out of the studio conveyor belt. For whatever interesting tone DaCosta musters in the MCU mold, it’s all sucked into a vortex whizzing with the chaotic structure of imposed mythology and the sanitized trappings of a committee that ultimately deems how the picture is made. Studio interference is evident, and standing at a breezy yet confoundingly short 105 minutes, the narrative has been hacked to bits, a choppy patchwork with character and plot beats left either rushed or completely unaccounted for (such as Carol and Monica repairing their strained relationship out of abandonment), their earnest underpinnings rendered as weightless. It’s a movie that often actively makes no sense, or at least used to and doesn’t anymore.
In her first two features, DaCosta exhibited incredible flair for character dynamics, sociological insight and stylistic personality for the neo-western healthcare drama Little Woods and psychological social horror Candyman, and her foray into comic book filmmaking soars when DaCosta lovingly crafts a zany romp about the healing bonds of sisterhood, with the chemistry of its leads truly sparkling. It’s just that her auspicious vision is frustratingly inhibited by franchise dictates and commercial engineering. My intention is not to stoke the vitriol of certain toxic groups that want to see this movie fail for the wrong reasons, but it’s apparent the MCU is at a point where you can’t legitimately attribute the primary authorship of one of their “movies” to the credited director. These are all Kevin Feige productions, just with whatever thin sheen they’re lucky enough to paint over that hollow shell.
Unlike the glossy concrete aesthetic that has plagued many Marvel productions, The Marvels is permeated with a warm cosmic glow, yet the exciting impression wanes too often. Dynamic bouts like a zippy action scene that introduces the “body switching” conceit with intercutting locations; playful musical sequence containing colorful flourishes; and commendably caustic bit with flerkins, or alien cats that forcibly wrangle anyone or anything with large tentacles that spring from their mouths, and the inspired use of “Memory” from Cats are too few and far between. With Carol grappling with the burden of her heroism, DaCosta even seems to interrogate her role as an intergalactic interventionist, one that doggedly defends the downtrodden across the galaxy but whose political influence and taxing lifestyle have become unruly. The rapport among Carol and the effusive Kamala and more critical Monica attempts to reconcile the idealized and thorny perceptions of Captain Marvel, humanizing her in the process. However, just like DaCosta’s vision, the film’s lightweight, sterilized approach dilutes these darker, more somber elements, and they’re swept under the suffocating rug of the MCU just like the rest of the movie.
The Marvels is the culmination of all of its namesake studio’s post-Endgame fumbles, from the hackneyed house styling to the empty tropes, like a one-dimensional villain, to the convoluted mythos foisted upon every project. Despite DaCosta’s and the cast’s best efforts, their movie has been distorted by the corporate IP machine as it spews something so insipid and ostensibly digestible, pandering its oversaturated product to an exhausted audience losing its viability. The Marvels is unfortunately less than marvel-ous.
Grade: C-
