By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
For those hoping for the kind of entertaining Marvel film “Guadians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” provided earlier this year, prepare for massive disappointment and a movie that more closely resembles the failure of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” “The Marvels” does supply some cute comedic moments, but it is not nearly enough to overcome bland, underdeveloped characters, a plot riddled with holes and continuity gaffs, and poor acting from a majority of the cast. On the plus side, at least it is the shortest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
When Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) destroyed the Supreme Intelligence to liberate the Kree, she inadvertently short circuited their sun, plunging the Kree planet into darkness and despair. This gives rise to a new villain named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who leads the Kree on a path of revenge against Captain Marvel, who they refer to as the Annhilator, by opening portals to planets she’s fond of to suck their natural resources and depositing them on the Kree planet. Think of the “Spaceballs” plan instigated by Dark Helmet minus the giant vacuum cleaner shaped spaceship.
With Dar-Benn using the power from a bangle all too similar to the one Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) has, it somehow entangles her power with Captain Marvel’s and Monica Rambeau’s (Teyonah Parris), making them switch places with each other whenever they use their powers simultaneously. This forces the three of them to work together as a team along with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to overcome this challenge and stop the sinister Dar-Benn from her evil plot before she steals the power of the Earth’s sun.
No amount of optical pandering can mask the truth that this is simply a bad film that lacks a coherent identity. A series of rewrites and reshoots like “The Marvels” had is always a bad sign, and director Nia DaCosta does nothing to correct the lack of cohesion. The scenes are haphazardly filmed and rushed with no semblance of direction, leaving viewers frustrated over the number of questions and plot points raised that never get resolved. Like when the team of heroes travel to an oceanic planet to stop the villain from stealing their ocean, only to suddenly leave them to their doom with an oh shucks we tried kind of attitude, but nothing is explained of their actual fate. This includes Captain Marvel’s husband, which also never gets explained how that arrangement even came about. Then there’s Goose, that cat who gobbles up anything and everything it can reach with its mouth full of tentacles introduced in “Captain Marvel.” Apparently, at some point in the film, Goose reproduces via hundreds of eggs that generate kittens with similar appetites, but there’s no explanation as to why or how, it just becomes a convenient solution to a particular space problem in the storyline.
Nia DaCosta is seemingly oblivious to the film she made, stating that “The Marvels” would me be more mature and emotional than “Captain Marvel.” Maybe she thought that statement would be accurate by filming a seemingly record number of hugging and phony tears. Instead, the film can more aptly be described as goofy and cartoonish. Even the fight scenes are so poorly choreographed, shot, and edited, the punches/kicks thrown by the cast are slow, methodical, and unrealistic, yielding boring action sequences that bring very little entertainment value. This movie would have been better served as a two-episode continuation of the “Ms. Marvel” series on Disney+.
With a screenplay as poorly written as this one is, it makes for a difficult challenge for a cast to overcome and deliver quality performances, especially actors and actresses who don’t have the talent upon which to rely. For example, the villain is poorly written as a generic, cookie cutter type of villain that has been done ad nauseum, especially in the MCU. Zawe Ashton is unable to inflect much credibility in her performance with a weak, hasty backstory that does little to reinforce her character’s quest for revenge.
Academy Award winning actress Brie Larson is far removed from her 2016 Oscar win for “Room.” She hasn’t even come close to that caliber of performance since, and her performance in “The Marvels” is nothing short of ambivalent. Brie is an actress going through the motions, speaking her lines without inflection and eyes devoid of emotion that clearly shows her disinterest in the script. When she squeezes out some tears, they lack authenticity and register as false to viewers.
However, Iman Vellani is the bright spot of this film, adding the comic relief of a youthful, naive new superhero. Her portrayal of the fangirl who dreams and obsesses over meeting her idol Captain Marvel and teaming up with her is cute and funny initially but does eventually get stale after a while. Still, she is the only member of the cast to provide a genuine and likable performance, very impressive considering this is her feature film debut.
After pulling in only $47 million in its opening weekend, “The Marvels” is not only the worst of 33 MCU films made to date, but also the worst performing MCU film. There is no spark, there is no excitement, there is no enthusiasm. Even the end and mid-credit scenes that feature tie-ins to other forgettable and weakly developed Marvel characters provide no hope for the future. This should sound the alarm bell for Disney/Marvel that they’ve strayed so far from a focus of creating quality stories that yield quality films. Luckily due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes, the next round of Marvel movies is being significantly delayed, so at least audiences won’t have to endure another one of these for a while.
This movie earns:
