Reed: So, we watched that new MCU movie, The Marvels…
Griffin: And it’s terrible!
Reed: The heck? It’s a visually stunning, heart-stirring, nonstop-laugh-inducing work of cinema!
Griffin: One of its central relationships is highly uneven! Among other illogical details!
Reed: Oop! We’re doing that thing again where we get right into the criticism without explaining what the movie’s about.
Griffin: Oh, yeah. You wanna take this?
Reed: With pleasure. The Marvels continues three different Marvel stories: 2019’s Captain Marvel, the 2021 TV show WandaVision, and the 2022 show Ms. Marvel. It covers three different superheroines: Carol Danvers, AKA Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau, who has no alter-ego per se (Teyonah Parris), and Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani). When Carol, who has been traveling through space on her own since Captain Marvel, investigates a mysterious portal, she causes all three heroines to trade places with each other whenever one of them uses their powers. She also supercharges Kamala’s bangle with cosmic energy–attracting the villainous Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), leader of the Kree Empire, who wants it.
All three Marvels are forced to band together to stop Dar-Benn as she storms through the galaxy, pillaging the natural resources of innocent planets en route to seize the bangle. Along the way, Carol and Monica, who idolized her “aunt” Carol as a child before Carol’s lengthy interstellar absence, must repair their relationship, while Kamala learns about what it takes to be a hero, and who her idol Carol is as a person.
Griffin: Hence my first complaint: are Carol and Monica on good terms, or aren’t they? The film never gives a hard answer. When Monica finds out she and Carol are together on the same spaceship, she refuses to talk to her…only to offer help repairing a device just a few scenes later. Between these two moments is a single fight scene, which–though excellent–explains none of Monica’s sudden openness.
To be fair, during the repair scene, the tension between them rears its head, but it vanishes again moments later, when the two of them get a total rapport going during a meeting. This fluctuation only continues: the rockiness is on again while the Marvels use a Kree device to access shared memories, then off again in time for Monica to tease Carol while visiting another planet.
Reed: Look, there’s much more to this film than one poorly-written relationship. For example, the comedy is spot-on! Whether it’s Kamala workshopping catchphrases for Monica, an impromptu musical number on a planet where everyone communicates through song, or my personal favorite–the line, “Please let the Flerkens eat you! You are going to be fine”. Just as much credit is due to The Marvels’ flawless CGI, which can show us convincing footage of everything from a dying sun to kittens hatching out of glowing eggs.
Griffin: But what about all the plot holes? We never see Monica actually discover the trio’s power-switching phenomenon–even a scientific genius like her would need time to figure that out. Meanwhile, the heroes go from the first fight scene to the second with minimal turnover–surely even superheroes would be too exhausted for two almost back-to-back fights.
Also, what’s up with the ending? Monica has no rational reason to–
Reed: No! Remember the cardinal rule of reviews: “Guard the ending like your wallet.”
Griffin: Still, I’m not the only one with objections! At one point, the trio has to help when Dar-benn attacks a settlement of Skrulls–a rival extraterrestrial culture that debuted in the earlier Captain Marvel. Niles North junior Ainsley Flintz said, “I feel like we could have gotten a little bit more of the Skrulls, ‘cause they weren’t really in the resolution. It was just, they got attacked and they left, and then we didn’t really get a final moment, whereas in the original Captain Marvel movie, we get some closure.”
Reed: Maybe so, but there’s also plenty that the movie couldn’t do without! Especially the Marvels themselves. You can’t watch these three for any length of time and not feel all warm inside. Kamala is absolutely the heart of this trio: fangirling over her idol Carol, speaking in excited run-on sentences, and jumping right into a space-station escape plan that is way too brilliant for me to spoil. Monica stands out for her toughness, dedication, and ability to play the serious foil to Kamala and Carol’s antics. Carol, for her part, shines as the consummate soldier, still rediscovering the point where superheroism becomes more than a matter of duty.
Griffin: Is it time for the sum-up already?
Reed: Oh yes! The Marvels–
Griffin: Wait, let’s have someone else do it this time! Ainsley had a perfect quote for this.
Reed: Fire away!
Griffin: For all her criticisms, Ainsley said, “You got everything you want in a Marvel movie. You got the cool action sequences, you have the Star Wars space-y stuff, and then you also have the comic relief…Just go see the movie if you’re a fan of Captain Marvel, or Ms. Marvel, or WandaVision–any of the above.”
