‘The Marvels’ Isn’t As Bad As Everyone Says It Is
For some reason, toxic Marvel fans have adopted the attitude that The Marvels is the worst thing the MCU has ever produced, that it singlehandedly nearly toppled the Marvel empire, and that this is exclusively due to its inclusion of such offensive themes as female bonding and women talking in general.
Sure, the movie underperformed at the box office, but this was more to do with Marvel movie fatigue than the actual quality of The Marvels. Before The Marvels bombed, a trio of stinkers came before it – Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – all of which caused MCU’s hard-earned goodwill to dwindle. Marvel’s insistence on interconnectedness and IP at the expense of story should also be blamed, as it affected the quality of not only those movies but The Marvels. In this way, The Marvels was just the first major casualty of an IP disease that plagues the MCU, and which is only barely in remission, if the numbers for the new Captain America movie are any indication.
While The Marvels is by no means a masterpiece, it’s nevertheless better than most people give it credit for. Here’s why.
1. Kamala Khan
Even I, who had never seen Ms. Marvel, could immediately appreciate the exuberant fangirl charm of Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala Khan in The Marvels. Even when she’s delivering a corny line, she sells the hell out of it and injects levity into an otherwise by-the-numbers script. She steals every scene she’s in and is a significant reason why this movie is a perfect undemanding sick day watch.
2. It’s short
Are you in the “Wicked was 30 minutes too long” camp? Then The Marvels is perfect for you. Unfortunately, the short runtime of The Marvels is due to production meddling, which caused the movie to leave certain themes and storylines underdeveloped. Still, it has made for a remarkably breezy watch, with plenty of humorous scenes left in the mix. There’s no unnecessary exposition or plodding flashbacks dragging down Act One, and the characters almost immediately embark on their compact, action-packed adventure.
3. The Freaky Friday of it all
Whoever had the idea to add teleportation to this movie’s fight scenes is deserving of a raise. Marvel fight scenes can occasionally feel CGI-heavy or extraneous or both, but The Marvels heaps a healthy serving of fun onto its battle scenes by having its characters teleport and switch places mid-punch or mid-kick. It’s a perfect opportunity for controlled chaos and Brie Larson’s “stoically annoyed” face.
4. The Cats reference
Messy it may be, The Marvels still has a few inspired moments that point to a genuine vision embedded somewhere within. Exhibit A: The scene with Goose and the Flerkens, where Nick Fury’s team commands an entire spaceship to “let the Flerkens eat you.” This leads to a hilarious moment, scored to “Memory” from Cats, where several clueless-looking kittens are hurled into space and subjected to the realities of zero gravity. It’s the kind of absurdity you crave from a movie about intergalactic criminal vendettas.
5. The villain is better than Gorr
Dar-Benn, the villain of The Marvels, is forgettable – I literally had to look up her name. She’s not bad, though, She’s not Gorr in Love and Thunder. That is to say, she’s not boring and tonally discordant with the rest of the movie. She’s just kind of there to serve her storytelling purpose, get bodied, and get gone, placing her squarely in the middle of the Marvel Villain Effectiveness Spectrum™. Honestly, do you remember the villain of Thor: The Dark World or Eternals either? I didn’t think so.
6. The post-credits scene is worth waiting for
I have lost count of how many MCU mid-credits scenes or post-credits scenes have been abandoned and forgotten for posterity, leaving story thread after story thread loose in the wind. Does the MCU even have someone in charge of keeping track of those? Or do MCU writers literally just make post-credits scenes for fun and then forget them? I say all this because it isn’t guaranteed that every possibility teased by the end of The Marvels will ever happen. That said, the possibilities that are teased are very fun: Kamala Khan appears to be assembling the Young Avengers. Thanks to the performance of The Marvels, they may never see the light of day – in movie form, at least. But still, they might show up in a series, or at the very least in another useless post-credits scene. In any case, it’s not too late to revisit The Marvels and realize how very not-bad it is. Enjoy!
