The Marvels (2023) Review

 "Are there directions in space?"

-Aamir Khan

When a Kree warrior, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), begins tearing open space and time, a connection between Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) activates, which causes them to switch places if they use their powers.  This forces the three heroes to team up to stop the universe from being ripped apart.

What Works:

This movie is messy, but the parts that work, work well.  The chemistry between the three leads is definitely the best part of the movie.  It's three generations being forced to work together and two of them have some painful history.  I love when the movie slows down to have the three of them talking.  Iman Vellani is especially good.  Her energy and enthusiasm makes the movie a lot more fun.  I haven't watched the Ms. Marvel show, but now I'll definitely check it out.

There's also a few really fun sequences.  The first action sequence of the movie takes place in three different locations with our three heroes being teleported between the three.  It's wonderfully chaotic, well-shot, and a lot of fun.  It's a good way to kick the story off and does an excellent job of establishing the main obstacle of the movie.

I also loved the payoff to the Goose storyline.  I don't think it's super well set up, which I'll get into more later, but the payoff is incredible.  I was laughing my ass off in the theater.  This kind of weird stuff is what I want more of in the MCU.

Finally, the singing planet was utterly bizarre and I wanted more of it.  It felt like something the Guardians of the Galaxy might run into and I mean that as a compliment.  It was like our heroes landed on a planet that was just a classic Disney movie.

What Sucks:

The big problem with this movie is the writing.  It's very bad and messy.  There were plenty of times where I was genuinely confused at what was happening.  At first I thought I might have been missing something from one of the Marvel shows that I haven't seen, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Plot points, like the Goose storyline, aren't well set up and seem to come out of nowhere.  When the movie gets away from the interactions of the Marvels and gets into the larger plot, it loses steam because it doesn't make a lot of sense at times.

The villain is one of the weakest of the MCU and it's a shame because she didn't have to be.  Part of the problem comes from the order of the events in the movie.  Part way through the film, we get a flashback to when Captain Marvel returned to the Kree planet and destroyed Super Intelligence, which causes a lot of issues for the Kree.  All of that is fine, but it's rushed.  The movie should have opened with Dar-Benn living her life and then Captain Marvel comes along and destroys everything.  We needed to see the effect Captain Marvel's actions had on the planet.  This is mostly told to us and not shown and there aren't any Kree characters that we care about for us to get emotionally connected to.  Thor: Love and Thunder did this right with that film starting with the introduction of the villain, giving us his backstory, and making him sympathetic.  That was totally doable here with Dar-Benn and they missed the opportunity.  Instead, we get one of the most forgettable villains of the series.

As much as I enjoyed the singing planet, the movie doesn't do enough with it.  We don't spend enough time there to care when the planet is attacked by the villains.  More time needed to be spent with Prince Yan (Park Seo-joon) so we could learn about his relationship with Captain Marvel and we could start to care about him and his people.  This setting is awesome, but it feels very rushed through.  That's the problem with the doomsday plot as a whole.  It's very rushed compared to the more character-driven scenes.

Verdict:

The Marvels is getting too much hate in my opinion, but it's still one of the weaker Marvel movies.  The main cast is great and there are three genuinely awesome and interesting sequences.  The overall story is badly written with elements that are poorly setup, scenes that should have been in a different order, and it feels rushed.  The villain is especially bad.  It's unfortunate.  With some tweaking, this could have been really good.

 6/10: Okay