33 – The Marvels
I liked this movie but I didn’t love it. As a matter of fact I must confess, this might be my least favorite of the entire MCU franchise, though Thor: Love and Thunder comes in at a close second. And I have a few very specific reasons why. But while I usually say that out of ten, an eight is still an eight, I would probably put The Marvels at a seven, maybe even a six. The movie was still enjoyable to watch, but those specific reasons make me roll my eyes hard.
So let me get my grievances out of the way as quickly as possible. First, the singing planet was just stupid. It was almost embarrassing to watch. And the way that Prince Yan was bilingual because he could speak just made it dumber. Auto-tune has taught us that all speaking is just singing without specific pitch. If one forms words with the lips, teeth, and tongue, the pitch is irrelevant. It was just a dumb concept. Second is the whole sub-plot of the Flerken kittens. I’ve said it a hundred times. Cute for the sake of cute is never cute. Never. And that’s all that was. This stupidity of this was emphasized to the n-th degree when they started to play the song Memory from the musical, Cats. The song had nothing to do with the action taking place in the scene, except that it was the popular song from that Broadway show. And to add insult to injury, they played the Barbara Streisand recording of the song instead of the Elain Paige version! Ugh!
But even those two things were superficial. The biggest and most egregious flaw in the movie was once again, the villain. She was called Dar-Benn, played by Zawe Ashton. She was terribly under-developed. Her powers were never clearly defined, her back-story was barely mentioned, her motivations were there, but they were pretty weak. Ever since Thanos, the MCU has a problem with giving us bad guys that matter, ones that have a snowball’s chance of winning against the heroes, ones that we have any sympathy for. Because I didn’t know who Dar-Benn was, I didn’t hate her when she had her small victories, and I didn’t care when she died. When I think of the movie, as a whole, she barely even registers in my thoughts.
But the three leads were awesome. We knew who Carol Danvers was and what she was capable of. If you watched the shows Wanda-Vision and Ms. Marvel on Disney-Plus, you knew who Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan were, what they could do. And we root for them because we know them. It was like in the earlier movie in the MCU, The Eternals. It was hard to care about them because we didn’t really get a chance to know who they were. But the three leads, played by Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani were great. They had a good on-screen chemistry and I enjoyed watching them. I have to give a special thumbs up to Iman Vellani. The other two ladies were seasoned veterans and this wasn’t their first rodeo. But Vellani was a young girl who was new to the action film genre, and I think she handled it well. And I liked that they made a point of showing that Ms. Marvel was an inexperienced fighter. And I loved her reaction the first time she saw a Flerken swallow someone. “OH MY GOD!!!” Because really, how else could you react to that? And it was also believable that by the end, she was a little more competent in the use of her own powers. And now she has both bangles, which will increase her power levels. We’ll have to wait and see where that goes. Nice mid-credit scene, too. The Young Avengers are being recruited, starting with Hawkeye’s protégé Kate Bishop.
As always, the visual effects were top notch. The action was exciting. I really loved the characters and the cast. You can never go wrong with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and Gary Lewis as the Skrull Emperor, Drp’ge did a great job, too. Like I said, the cast was very good. I just wish they could have cut out, or somehow changed the singing planet and the forced cuteness of the kittens. Unfortunately, these things stood out to me when watching the movie, and not in a good way. I’m not saying the movie was terrible or unwatchable, but the movie might have been better if they had taken those things, and the evil Dar-Benn more seriously.
Top 10 Favorite Parts
- I loved the sequence where Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Ms. Marvel are switching places when they use their powers at the same time. Kamala’s home is destroyed.
- Monica flies for the first time and rescues Kamala as she falls from the sky.
- The battle and evacuation of Tarnax.
- The training montage where the three women learn to use their entangled powers together.
- Dar-Benn arrives on Aladna, the battle, and the draining of the ocean.
- Captain Marvel explains how everything is her fault because she destroyed the Supreme Intelligence. This helps to tie it into the first Captain Marvel movie a little
- Dar-Ben begins draining the sun.
- Kamala’s family sends her off to battle.
- The climactic scene where Dar-Benn destroys herself and opens a hole in space-time.
- Monica Rambeau gets powered up and repairs the hole in space, actually becoming more like the character I know from the comic books.