I don’t quite get some of the online hate for The Marvels.
It’s a flawed and messy movie, yes: but I couldn’t imagine myself actually *hating* it. It’s too sprightly and fun to elicit a disliking, at least from me anyway.
That said, some of the online hate isn’t surprising, given that the first Captain Marvel film and its star, Brie Larson, have for years now been the subject of such relentless and disgusting abuse from the more toxic gutters of the Internet and of YouTube in particular.
The Marvels was being attacked and denounced long before its release: with a legion of ‘influencers’ zealously determined for the film to be bad and for the project to fail.
As far as box office goes, that wish was fulfilled: this was the lowest opening in the MCU’s history.
Which feels a little unfair: there are worse Marvel films than this one. And the fact that DC’s abysmal Aqua Man sequel has grossed higher than The Marvels is baffling.
But some of this is also due to poor marketing (a point that seems to have also been made by actress Iman Vellani): as well as the fact that Marvel and comic-book movies in general have been underperforming lately, with a series of weak projects and waning audience enthusiasm.
Then there was also all the strikes in Hollywood, which meant, among other things, that this film had virtually no promotion campaign, no red carpet premiere, and no media appearances by any of the actors or filmmakers.
In short, everything was against this movie.
The Marvels really came out at the wrong time, and should’ve been released a year earlier.
But, putting all the extraneous stuff aside, what about the actual movie itself?
It’s a strange one, review-wise. Because I really enjoyed it. So much so that I watched it two days in a row. And it’s probably one of those I’ll be coming back to periodically in the future.
I can’t argue that it’s a great movie though. It’s one of those where it genuinely is a fun ride, but it also doesn’t stand up very well to critical scrutiny.
And it isn’t the best sign that the two moments that got the best reactions out of me were the two add-on scenes: specifically the Kate Bishop cameo (I’ve been waiting for ages for Hallie Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop to show up somewhere again) and the Beast/X-Men tease.
Which made it hard to figure out whether I liked this movie or not. I mean, on a basic level, I clearly enjoyed it, so… yes, I obviously like it.
Maybe it qualifies as a guilty pleasure of sorts?
But no, that’s not it either: maybe it’s just possible to enjoy and like a movie, even while having a mixed view of it critically.
And maybe reviewers and armchair critics are too keen to have a fixed view on something: especially when that something has been sadly made in to such a part of the culture war bullshit.
Again though, not that I have blinkers on. The Marvels is untidy, to say the least.
The plot is all over the place. The story moves too quickly, like it has ADHD. Ideas or plot points are thrown up haphazardly and sometimes without clarity. It moves so fast that it’s basically over before you’ve even processed what it’s about.
There isn’t as much meaningful character work as there should be – again, partly because the plot moves so quickly and refuses to linger on anything. Carol Danvers isn’t really developed much beyond her initial introduction in the first movie.
And the villain barely even registers as a character.
It’s also baffling that this film doesn’t connect at all with the recent Secret Invasion streaming series – a series that, as bad as it was, clearly should’ve been directly linked to this story.
In all honesty too, this sequel is missing some of the presence provided by Talos (Ben Mendelssohn) or even Jude Law in the first film.
This may even have worked better if Jude Law’s character from the first movie was the main villain here: it would’ve provided more connectivity and continuity.
This is a film that needed rewrites and fine-tuning. Given how much reshooting and delaying apparently went on here, it’s hard to tell whether earlier iterations were even more messy than this or whether this end product is a result of too much interference, second-guessing or lack of conviction.
Apparently a lot of material was cut in this final edit.
The MCU is definitely in a crisis at the moment: and this film feels like a victim of that crisis.
Yet, for all of that, I enjoy this movie.
This is the most fun Marvel film since at least the last Spiderman movie.
I would say it’s more fun than Thor: Love & Thunder, which overdid its gags and jokes to the film’s detriment.
The humour in The Marvels, on the other hand, mostly just flows naturally from characters and scenarios. And even the one or two more contrived feeling gags (the musical planet and the Flerken/cat sequences specifically) are good-natured fun.
The character dynamics are mostly good. Iman Vellani steals the show as Kamala Khan. Brie Larson is fun as the lead: and, much like Daisy Ridley in the Star Wars sequels, it can’t be easy giving an enthusiastic performance when you’re aware of how much hate and abuse you’ve been getting for this role.
Most of the humour lands right. There are some marvellous set pieces. The visuals are superb in several parts of the film, and the set designs (especially the space station and Carol’s ship) are fantastic.
It also feels very much like the kind of storytelling and ideas you’d get in a Captain Marvel comic book series (especially some of the wackier ideas or moments), which is nice.
This is a movie that seems very unselfconscious in that respect: which is refreshing.
In other words, there’s enough here to enjoy. There’s also enough to find endearing, for a film that has its heart in the right place – even if its plot is a mess.
And it’s a better movie than such recent offerings as Ant Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, Shang Chi or Eternals.
It’s also still more fun than anything the opposition has been putting out.
This film, for all its shortcomings, doesn’t deserve the type of hate it has gotten: or the infamy of being the MCU’s biggest ‘flop’.
Do you remember what it was like to simply enjoy a movie as entertainment – without having to nitpick it to death as though it’s a government policy paper?
That’s the attitude I tried to have with The Marvels: and it made it a fun little comic book caper, if nothing more.
Given how poor some recent MCU offerings have been (Secret Invasion and She Hulk come to mind), I didn’t need much more than that.
It’s not like I was looking for Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia. Just a fun ride and some imaginative zaniness. And, especially in these bleak and uninspiring times in the world, The Marvels gave me this welcome diversion into wholesome fantasy and escapism.
I hope this isn’t the last we see of Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. I hope The Marvels gets a bit more positivity now that it’s available for streaming.
And I hope also that the MCU can regroup and get its act back together.
It’s probably a good thing that the 2024 release schedule looks so empty by MCU standards. A break feels wise.
Completely agree. Unfortunately, there’s often little to no merit in the content of such online dribble. Sadly, there’s a flourishing market for such type of bashing. The race to the bottom continues.
However, the online trolls had little to do with this movie’s demise. This was a poor script, executed as well as it could have been.
Hmmm, maybe. But to be fair, “if you build it, they will come” and this movie didn’t warrant garnering any fanfare.
In the same context as, “if you build it”, do you remember the steaming firey hate that Black Panther had before its release? If we’re judging by how the Internet reacts before a Marvel movie release as a metric of how well it may do, this blows away that theory. And I don’t think it stands as an exception, either. Black Panther proved itself on the page and was executed on-screen.
Hahaa, this is me with how I still feel about, Thor: Love and Thunder!
Oh wow, I absolutely forgot about this cameo. This movie was that unremarkable.
Well, it’s certainly more watchable than, Marvel Eternals. I give it that.
Yes! Also a nod to a poor script, in my view.
And we should probably be glad for it, considering what did qualify to escape the cutting room floor.
Who’s the opposition? DC comics? If you mean those guys then absolutely, yes, I agree. I couldn’t complete watching, Black Adam. I literally had to stop it, never to revisit it and physically spent my time doing anything else.
Yes, it’s called, Thor: Love and Thunder and it was one of the best movies of the year, for me!
You’re defending it as though people are comparing or expecting Oppenheimer. Marvels is a dire film all by itself on merit.
Agreed. Ever since I saw her performance in, Room, before she joined the Marvel universe I’ve been keen to see more of her on screen. She’s a talent.
Jesus, you really hate this film, don’t you?
Black Adam though: god, was that film weak.
No. I hope they follow-up this film with some sort of sequel and do a better job on the script with these characters. I’d like to see future iterations of The Marvels succeed.