The Marvels (2023) – Marvelous

Released: 9th November
Seen: 8th November

It’s no secret that the Marvel movies are having a difficult time lately, at least a difficult time by the standard of a studio that’s been a cultural juggernaut for over a decade and counting. Basically, ever since Endgame the films and TV series have seemed to be in flux like the studio just realised they did something absolutely massive and are now scrambling to figure out what the hell they do for an encore. Personally, I’ve enjoyed pretty much all of the post-Endgame stuff, I contend that even bad Marvel movies are better than a lot of the other things that are being put out by major studios lately. It’s comfort food but I get that it might be getting stale for some, which is probably why the release of The Marvels is being met with trepidation and anticipation of a bad movie… I don’t know why people think that because The Marvels is one of the best post-Endgame movies to be released but hey, to each their own.

The Marvels, the sequel to the Captain Marvel movie, brings back Captain Marvel AKA Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and teams her up with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in order to take a stand against an invading army who want to destroy a couple of planets worth of people. Making matters difficult is that, due to some space magic science that doesn’t fucking matter so don’t question it, any time two of these three heroes use their light-based powers they end up switching places wherever they are which can lead to some awkward fights and a couple of potentially deadly situations including calling thousands of miles onto Earth. In order to take out this army that threatens so many lives the three heroes will have to work together and figure out how to take advantage of this new strange power they’ve seemingly developed in order to save the day.

The Marvels might clock in as one of the shorter Marvel movies but it makes damn sure to use every single minute it has to the fullest effect. From start to finish, this is a fast-paced trip through space and time that never slows down for anything. You get a few minutes to catch up on all the key information you need about the main characters (helpfully delivered by quick flashbacks and a couple of moments of exposition) and then it’s just a nice breezy hour and a half of these three superpowered women hanging out, kicking ass and showing off some of the most beautiful Space scenes in this entire franchise. 

The action set pieces on The Marvels are genuinely brilliant, showing off the benefit of each of the core cast’s powers in the situations they find themselves in. Contrasting Kamala’s ability to create protective structures with Carol’s strength to smash through obstacles is absolutely fascinating and gives the fight scenes a fun dynamic, a dynamic that’s heightened dramatically when the character swapping begins. While the image of the characters swapping places is used largely for comedic effect in the early part of the film, there’s a lot of fun in seeing these characters pop in and out of a fight at appropriately dramatic moments. It’s well explained and explored enough that you buy into it quickly and it gives this film something different to play with than other Marvel movies.

“Something different” might be the mantra of The Marvels because it seems to revel in just picking the silly fun option whenever it can. This film understands that it’s playing around with alien races so therefore it can do something fun with an alien planet that we haven’t seen before (No spoilers, but it’s a gloriously silly choice). It knows the kind of creatures that exist in this world and uses them to create absolute gold (again no spoilers, but this film has the best use of the song Memory in cinema history). It’s also not afraid to press pause on some of the silliness and actually deal with some serious things, namely the relationship between Carol and Monica and how Carol being gone so long impacted Monica. It’s a tough balancing act to pull off but damnit this film does it with genuine glee.

The absolute superstar of this film is Iman Vellani who has turned Kamala Khan into the bright spot of the modern MCU. She steals every single scene she’s in, either by being the most adorably hyper fangirl ever or with subtle little comedic looks that absolutely destroy every time. Her joy is infectious and there’s no vaccine for that, you will be smiling by the time Kamala is done fangirling and if you aren’t then the problem is you. She basically carries the film, which probably didn’t need help to make everything work but god damn it Iman does so much to make this film better. It is genuinely wild to realise that Kamala Khan is her first role, it’s like she was born just for this and if she’s going to be what leads the MCU forward then I think they’re going to be alright.

Honestly, the only place this film kind of falters might be in the villain – Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) just isn’t as intimidating as you might want them to be. They’re performed wonderfully and there are a few moments when you get some genuinely scary moments out of them but they’re basically there because the film technically needs a villain to give this film a climax because we can’t just have three iconic women having fun with superpowers for a few hours (despite my letters asking for explicitly that thing). It’s fine, it’s the common issue with Marvel films that most of the villains aren’t as interesting as they could be but when the rest of the film is as fun as this is, it does stand out a little more.

The Marvels is genuinely a fantastic time, filled with great action scenes, comedy beats and enough emotional issues to fill any soap opera. It’s fast-paced and fun, running through the wackiest ideas that you could put in one of these films and get away with, all led by the steady hand of a great director who truly has masterfully assembled possibly the most fun Marvel movie of the post-Endgame era. Hopefully, they can take some notes and make a few more movies that are just this undeniably fun, sure the Marvel fatigue might be slowly growing but if the films can still be this fun then there’s definitely a second wind for the franchise.