‘The Marvels’ Proves The MCU Isn’t Dead Yet
The following story does not contain spoilers for The Marvels.
IT'S NO SECRET that Marvel Studios has found trouble drumming up excitement for its projects of late. 2023 has not been a banner year; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (which was released in theaters in February) and Secret Invasion (which debuted in June) received, respectively, the worst reviews of any film or Disney+ television project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The studio's biggest hit of 2023—Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3—landed on an emotional level and with great box office success... but arrived just in time for that sub-franchise's most important creative figure, writer/director James Gunn, to essentially close his story out as he goes to lead the competition at DC Studios.
Marvel badly needed a win on the movie side, and while The Marvels—ostensibly a sequel to 2019's Captain Marvel and the TV series Ms. Marvel and WandaVision all at the same time, though the movie does a good job of making it easy to understand what's going on if you haven't seen the two Disney+ shows—isn't an Avengers: Endgame or Captain America: Civil War level explosive smash, it's a really fun time that nails its character dynamics and gives puts some genuinely fun (and visually-compelling) action on the screen. It evokes the kind of movies that Marvel Studios was releasing in, say, 2016 to 2019, when it felt like the MCU was really firing on all cylinders, even when every project wasn't necessarily an earth-shattering paradigm shifter.
The movie picks up at a very specific moment in time: right after the events of 2022's Ms. Marvel, some unknown period of time after WandaVision (as Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau has already basically mastered hew new powers), and also some undisclosed time after Endgame (there's no reference to Brie Larson's Carol Danvers' last on-screen movie appearance, in the credits scene of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings. Who knows.). We also don't definitively know where this falls in the Nick Fury timeline, as he's present and seems to be doing well, but there's absolutely zero reference anywhere to the events of Secret Invasion. Maybe that's for the best.
That brings us to what makes The Marvels so much fun: at only 1 hour and 45 minutes, there's not enough time to bog things down with unnecessary details. The movie needs to keep the pace quick and brisk, and director Nia DaCosta does a good job of making sure the movie is always doing just that.
The premise is simple enough: Captain Marvel (Larson), Monica (Parris), and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) are having some kind of power entanglement, and every time they activate their light-based powers, they switch spots, frequently sending one to space, sending one to Jersey City, and sending another to the outer rim of the galaxy. It's a doozy!
This set-up makes for a light-hearted, light-tone cosmic adventure of a movie that really makes use of DaCosta's (who last directed 2021's Jordan Peele-produced Candyman) very apparent visual talent. The fight scenes make great use of this switcheroo set-up, and it's a blast to watch sequences both when the characters have no idea what's happening, and, later, predictably figure out what is going on and how to maximize this to their benefit.
The action and performances of the film's three protagonists (and Jackson as Fury, who, as always, delivers) is also joined by some additional pieces that just make the movie feel cozy and fun. Just like in Ms. Marvel, Kamala's family—including her overbearing but lovable mother, her gregarious father, and her sardonic brother—provide a super entertaining peanut gallery that lasts throughout the duration of the movie. And anyone who enjoyed meeting Goose the Flerken (a creature who looks like an adorable tabby cat but secretly has giant tentacles that shoot out of its mouth) will be in for quite the Flerken-fest.
If there's a negative in The Marvels, it's the villain, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). You kind of get the sense that at some point there had to be something more there. But this is now the third Kree-adjacent villain we've had in an MCU film (following Jude Law's Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel and Lee Pace's Ronan the Destroyer in Guardians of the Galaxy), and on top of providing nothing new, it's never quite clear what, exactly, her evil plan is outside of "be evil." Ashton's performance lacks the charisma that Larson, Parris, and Vellani have opposite her.
It can take you out of the movie briefly, but the energy that comes from the other parts of the film more than make up for it. Larson is ostensibly the lead, and in context of everything happening, she's now the most veteran superhero of the bunch. That works super well when she's paired up with new friend (and Captain Marvel superfan) Kamala. Vellani brings so much positivity and infectious charm to the role that it's hard not to smile every time she's on screen; the way she interacts with Larson's Carol somewhat invokes the way Tom Holland's Peter Parker saw a mentor (and, eventually, a friend) in Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark.
There's still a lot of work to do within the MCU to reach the heights that the franchise previously reached; some new seeds will need to planted (some are here, particularly at the end of the film and in its credits scene), some things will need to be undone, and, let's be honest, the franchise is just going to need a little bit of luck. But The Marvels is a good start and a valiant effort to get this ever-running freight train back on the track.
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