The Marvels feels uninspired
I wanted to like The Marvels. I really did.
Suffice it to say I had skin in the game. Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel are my two favorite comic-book superheroes: I saw myself in Kelly Sue DeConnick’s spunky aeronaut and Sana Amanat’s brown fangirl, and even created my own superhero, Supernova, modeled after them (a 5’4’’ Desi kid who harnesses nuclear fusion to create energy blasts). Watching The Marvels was supposed to be a cathartic act; it was supposed to mark the end of my fanhood, my adieu to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in my senior year of high school.
Instead, The Marvels reminded me why I’ve moved away from the MCU in the past few years: banal plots, uninspired writing, and a lack of thematic continuity.
‘Glowy and mysterious’
The long and short of it: Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel, a.k.a. Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) learn that their light-based powers have become entangled. To fix the mishap, which causes them to switch places every time they use their powers, they must join forces. Their adversary: Kree villain Dar-Benn, who is hell-bent on ripping holes through spacetime to siphon off resources from other planets. As usual, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but not really (how do you really raise the stakes in a post-Endgame world?).
I didn’t go into the movie with high expectations—when a villain says “You took everything from me,” you know you’re not going to be in for anything special—but even among mediocre Marvel movies, this film falls flat. Plot holes and inconsistencies are numerous. The dialogue is bland, save for some witty repartée. After Nick Fury confronts Danvers on her decision to investigate a rip in spacetime, Danvers protests that she had to see it because it was “glowy and mysterious.” The words would make more sense coming from a petulant five-year-old and simply don’t fit the character established in Captain Marvel. Any emotional dialogue is rather on-the-nose and resolves any character conflicts within a matter of minutes.
The movie also has odd tonal shifts, sometimes exploring the emotional weight of the relationships established in Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel, and other times disregarding them. At one point, Danvers, Khan, and Rambeau visit a planet whose inhabitants can only speak in song; the entire premise feels out of place and awkward, played for laughs but simultaneously meant to show us the responsibility Danvers feels towards others. At another point, a host of kitten Flerkens are used to swallow and spit out troops (at this juncture, I found I was physically incapable of cringing harder than I already was).
The result: something like Thor: Love and Thunder, whose screaming goats couldn’t redeem the ridiculous meaninglessness of the plot. The movie attempts to discuss coming to terms with one’s legacy, and the pitfalls of idolizing heroes, but character development runs only skin-deep. The film has virtually no impact on the MCU, no stakes; it only advances the plot through the mid- and post-credits scenes.
The movie’s saving grace is Kamala Khan and her family. They’re larger than life, and it’s thoroughly enjoyable. If nothing else, it was wonderful to hear Urdu being spoken in a Marvel movie outside of the context of terrorist organizations (Iron Man, I’m looking at you). “Mein uski jaan leloongi!” (“I will kill her!”), Kamala’s mom threatens as her daughter flies off with Captain Marvel.
The chemistry between the three protagonists is also palpable, but the short runtime and disjointed plot—as well as a clichéd villain—offers little opportunity to truly explore their dynamic.
Marvel’s music issue
Speaking of dynamics: I went into the movie anticipating another brilliant soundtrack from Laura Karpman, who also wrote the score for the Ms. Marvel TV show. While I knew there would likely be a “Marvels” theme encompassing all three characters, I had hoped that I’d once again get to hear Pinar Toprak’s sweeping theme for Carol Danvers from Captain Marvel, one of the most distinctive leitmotifs in the MCU (which other starts with a minor-seventh leap?), as well as Kamala Khan’s theme from her TV series. I got neither.
Although Karpman’s score was still riveting, replete with musical Easter eggs, the blow to thematic continuity was particularly acute because of recent improvements after years of disjointed musical themes. Hawkeye incorporated a theme from Infinity War in its soundtrack; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 maintained the Guardians’ musical core. Yet here was a stellar opportunity to bring back characters’ leitmotifs, John Williams-style, and Karpman did not.
The characters’ teaming up doesn’t preclude her from showing their unique musical strengths; it would have been fantastic to see their themes interweaving during fight scenes, as they swapped places, for example.
A story lacking nuance
There’s something to be said for watching female superheroes team up—it was rewarding not to have to see a testosterone-fest for once, and the movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colors (something you could hardly say of Marvel’s earlier films). I showed up in part to celebrate the female superheroes I’ve idolized.
At times, though, the movie felt like tokenism: a “woman superhero movie.” It’s as though Marvel wanted to cram every female superhero it had into the movie—Valkyrie shows up, although she has no established relationship with Carol Danvers; even Kate Bishop makes an appearance. I can’t help but wonder if this is Marvel’s way of avoiding telling women’s stories individually. If they consolidate women’s stories into one-time “woman movies,” they avoid telling each female hero’s stories.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t discuss women’s experiences in the MCU—systemic inequality is as real in the fictional multiverse as in ours—nor that we shouldn’t center their woman-ness. But there are movies that have maintained better balances, telling nuanced stories of womanhood and heroism: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever featured a female-led cast without making it the selling point of the movie.
Outgrowing my heroes
It’s possible that part of the reason I disliked The Marvels was because I’ve simply started to outgrow my heroes. As Peter Parker and Kamala Khan have stayed frozen in time at sixteen years old, I’ve grown from thirteen to seventeen, and the movies have lost a little bit of their magic.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop believing entirely. No matter how old I get, I will always try to use the Force, and I will always believe that someday, I’ll learn to fly (call it naïve, but it is what it is). Perhaps I need to take a page out of Kamala and Monica’s book and stop finding heroes to idolize, looking to the real world instead of the big screen to find complex individuals I can learn from.
Goodbye, Marvel. It’s been a fantastic ride, but I think this is my jump point. I can only hope you’ll once again learn to fly higher, further, and faster.