MCU… or ICU?
Captain marvel returns with a couple of pals in a rackety, underwhelming alleged romp.
The Marvels
Director: Nia DaCosta • Writers: Nia DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik
Starring: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Park Seo-joon, Samuel L Jackson
USA • 1hr 45mins
Opens Hong Kong November 8 • IIA
Grade: C
Wow. Marvel is really hurting, isn’t it? There’s been a lot of ink spilled recently about Marvel Studios’ rudderless, post-Endgame output, the sheer volume of it, and the vast majority of it being unable to leave an impression. Except for maybe all of us pointing and staring at the shoddy VFX and the poor souls who are forced to do them being inspired, nay compelled, to form a labour union because of it. Producer Kevin Feige and his Igor, Disney’s Bob Iger (I don’t care who’s the boss, Iger seems like a dude who lurks in the shadows being weird) have gone from masterminds to puppet-masters, heaping content on Disney+ that’s increasingly important for following what’s happening in the MCU and burning us all out in doing so.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the central films in the once-vaunted MCU were less unremarkable (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s US$475 million isn’t chump change, but it’s not Avengers: Endgame’s US$2.8 billion). That’s the biggest problem with the 33rd (!!) MCU film, The Marvels. It’s essentially a sequel to 2019’s mainline film Captain Marvel (which earned a shocking US$1.1 billion), whose terrifically messy narrative sees Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (insufferable NFT booster Brie Larson) battling her Kree nemesis (who now?) Dar-Brenn (Zawe Ashton, The Handmaid’s Tale, Tom “Loki” Hiddleston’s better half). You’ll only know these details if you drop HK$73 into Disney’s coffers every month, so there is a recap mid-film (it doesn’t help).
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The Marvels starts its confused – yet blessedly short – story with cosmic energy-based superhero Captain Marvel hanging out in deep space like an intergalactic highway patrol. She’s been there since she saved the world in Endgame, and she’s still evidently the ultimate power in the universe except when she’s not. Dar-Brenn takes a glowy artefact with her magic stick and messes with the network of jump gates (didn’t I see this in Stargate SG-1?), which also messes with Cap. I guess?
Some frantic editing that’s supposed to make us as confused as the main players (mission accomplished) reveals Danvers can teleport with Maria Rambeau’s daughter Monica (poorly used Teyonah Parris), a SABER (what now?) astronaut working with Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson). She developed some other kind of energy-based power after walking through the Scarlet Witch’s hex field in the pandemic kick-off Disney+ series WandaVision. Turns out they can both swap with Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) from last year’s every-last-nerve trying Ms Marvel, also on D+. She’s from Jersey (this serves as inherent comedy) and has an unhealthy level of hero worship of Captain Marvel. And you guessed it. Her energy-based power makes light into real matter. This is the set up for yet another universe-saving quest that ends with a sky laser because Dar-Brenn is pissed at Danvers – and Fury, for a failed peace treaty between the Kree and the Skrulls. Check out Secret Invasion for more!
Director Nia DaCosta did some clever, stylish, thoughtful work with the Candyman truquel, and here she gets a nice “black girl magic” moment, gives Fury a few zingers about not touching alien shit, blows fragile fan boy minds with song-and-dance planet, Aladna, and provides the MCU’s single most delirious sequence so far, when Fury’s ginger Flerken cat Goose and its army of babies eat a space station crew. It’s the kind of vaguely subversive, big swing fun The Marvels needed more of, and which DaCosta could have supplied had she not been hamstrung by MCU franchise mechanics and story beats.
Instead we’re treated to watery emotionalism (because girls) that doesn’t really land, and some loosey-goosey (sorry) themes about the elasticity of family and the weight of notoriety. And on top of it all, this so-called beginning of Marvel’s course correction feels a lot like one of the better performing franchises out there right now: Star Trek. The ultra-colourful Aladna that looks ripped out of a holodeck programme (maybe Janeway 1), the rifts in spacetime, and the planetary resource siphoning all recall the continuing voyages of Federation captains (#JusticeForShaw) more than they do Stark Industries. The Marvels isn’t as sloppy as Quantumania, or as wholly unnecessary as the smug Thor: Love and Thunder, but it doesn’t make me care about the rest of Phase 5, Phase 6 or anything beyond – X-Men, Photon or otherwise. For die-hard completists only. — DEK
*The Marvels was reviewed during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labour of the actors it wouldn't exist.
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