My Review of The Marvels (2023)

 

Written by Nia DaCosta And Megan McDonnell And Elissa Karasik

Directed by Nia DaCosta

Kamala: "Oh my God. We're a team?"

Monica: "Oh, no, no, no. We're not a team."

Carol: "We're not a team."

2023 has seen the MCU take something of a critical battering. No longer have hey a safety net and like the DCEU, they're in a position now where critics are falling over themselves to tear down the very thing they've spent too long propping up.

I bring this up because The Marvels itself really does seem to be on the receiving end more than any Phase 5 project so far. Is this film really that bad? Actually, no, it's not but there are legitimate criticisms that shouldn't be ignored about the movie or the MCU in general moving forward.

If you've already seen WandaVision and Ms. Marvel a lot of this will be easier to follow. If not, it generally brings you up to speed as Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) finds herself teaming up with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). These three ladies themselves are this movie's biggest strength.

Thanks to a quantum entanglement due to their respective light related powers (that also caused switching places), Carol, Monica and Kamala have a hell of a time getting used to one another at first while banding together as shit goes down. There's some great scenes with Carol and Monica going over past traumas while Kamala's general fangirl moments are nicely timed.

As a team, the three ladies are a delight with natural chemistry between them. Unfortunately for a great team, they're saddled with one of the worst villains the MCU has committed to the big screen to date. Enter, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) and add her to the list of poorly thought out baddies in this franchise.

To be fair, Zawe Ashton does try her best but Dar-Benn is such a thankless role and on paper, she should've been an instant hit. She had a decent motivation in her resentment towards Carol (calling her the Annihilator certainly struck a nerve) and even had the second bangle while wanting Kamala's but she's poorly handled from start to finish that not even her defeat is satisfying to watch.

As for the rest of the movie, Samuel L. Jackson was on better form here than compared to his Disney+ show while Kamala's family are entertaining being thrown into the mix. There's some great scenes involving the Flerken while Monica's outcome definitely set up an interesting plot but will it be enough to save the movie's box office? Likely not tbh.

- Carol had a marriage of convenience with a handsome prince named Yan (Park Seo-joon). His planet gave us a musical sequence and Carol a Disney Princess look.

- King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) popped up to help Carol with Skrull refugees after Dar-Benn destroyed their sanctuary.

- Last scene had Kamala recruit Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) for a new team while also mentioning Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton).

- Post credit scene saw Monica in a parallel universe where she met a superhero version of Maria (Lashanna Lynch) and Beast (Kelsey Grammer).

- Standout music: I'm obviously picking Beastie Boys Intergalactic because the way it was used was great.

- Chronology: Present day New Jersey as well as the S.A.B.E.R. ship, as well as Hala, Tarnax and Aladna. 

The Marvels isn't quite the disaster area some critics want it to be, in terms of quality but nor was it the slam dunk that it should've been either. At worst, it's an average that coasts on the chemistry of its main team but falters with a very weak villain and script respectively. 

Rating: 7 out of 10 

Embiggen Y'all

Yup, this one I should've done a bit earlier and there's two shows starting/concluding that I will talk about next month but here's a rundown of stuff I've been watching. 

Ms. Marvel: With the next show having already debuted on Disney+, I should talk about this six part series that wrapped up over a month ago. It might not have been as big a hot as previous MCU shows but this series did what it needed to do in terms of getting Kamala Khan's origin story off the ground and setting the character up for her big screen debut in The Marvels next year. Iman Vellani did a great job as Kamala, her supporting cast were great, the Clandenstines made for an okay group of baddies and it was nice to get a brief appearance from Carol Danvers to boot.

Stranger Things: Netflix coming to the realisation that going down the split season route with big shows and having a big pay off for them might be the very thing to help them out of the doldrums they're currently. The finale two episodes of the fourth season of this show basically played out like two movies with all the separate groups almost converging on one another in order to take Vecna was stunning. Sure we lost Eddie, Max is in a coma and both Will and Eleven know that worse will come but this was a fantastic way to end what has easily been the best season of the show we've had so far. The expectations for the show's final season are definitely higher than ever now.

The Boys: Season 3 just about managed to prove that while Soldier Boy isn't worse than Homelander, he's not that far off. Both of them being related certainly made a lot of sense along with Ryan siding with his father after Billy's treatment of him earlier this season. This season ended with Homelander being untouchable, Maeve gone, Starlight fully joining the Boys and Billy possibly on the way out. And then there was the Herogasm event that while tamer than the source material itself still managed to be a rather shocking episode.

The Flash: Season 8 ended on a somewhat decent note and now that the end really is nigh, overall this has been a very disjointed season. Reverse Flash got recycled again, Fast Track did nothing of note and who know what Chillblaine brought back from the dead in lieu of Frost. Not to mention Iris's time sickness storyline which dragged out for too long and Cecile being overpowered as a character. I really hope the last season can end this show on a decent note.

The Thing About Pam: In a nutshell, this limited series seemed like Renee Zellweger's attempt to bag herself an Emmy nomination but tonally it was a bit too Dateline meets Desperate Housewives that it jarred a bit. Zellweger did give a good performance as killer Pamela Hupp who murdered her best friend (among others) and tried her best to get away, only to get caught in the end. It's not the strongest limited series you'll watch this year but the six episodes do fly by, so it has that in it's favour.

• Sarah Michelle Gellar will be a regular in upcoming sequel series Wolf Pack for Paramount+ as well as an executive producer.
• Russell Tovey, Zachary Quinto, Sandra Bernhard and Isaac Cole Powell will feature in the upcoming eleventh season of American Horror Story.
• And Just Like That  will see John Corbett reprise his role as Aidan for it's upcoming second season.
• Neve Campbell and  Steven Pasquale have joined the cast of David E. Kelley's ABC series, Avalon.
• Yellowjackets have added Lauren Ambrose, Simone Kessell and Elijah Wood to it's cast for it's second season.
• Dan Levy has joined the cast for Sex Education's fourth season.
• Tom Hollander, Calista Flockhart, Diane Lane and Chloe Sevigny have joined the cast for FX's Feud: Capote's Women.
• Why Women Kill has been cancelled after two seasons.
• Rory Culkin will feature in the sixth season of Black Mirror.
• Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Colin Farrell wil star in upcoming Apple+ series, Sugar.
• Monarch, the country music series starring Susan Sarandon for FOX will feature country music legends.
• BBC/Showtime will make the Gothic thriller The Woman In The Wall, starring Ruth Wilson and Darryl McCormack.
• Only Murders In The Building  has been renewed for a third season.