The Marvels (2023)

The singing planet was too far. The aliens cats eating people for transport while "Memory" played? Just far enough.

But the thing I responded to most was the teleportation fights. They were so fun.

The movie's biggest drawback is that the beginning is hard to understand. I remember the stuff from Ms. Marvel fine, but it's been awhile since I've seen both WandaVision and Captain Marvel, and the flashbacks were entirely unhelpful. It's possible people stayed away from the movie because of the homework involved before seeing it. The interconnectivity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a double-edged sword, and started working against the franchise for the first time ever. Some people probably hadn't seen Ms. Marvel or WandaVision on Disney+ yet, and skipped the movie in theaters until they did to avoid spoilers. Not the wisest idea to connect it to two previous TV shows.

The irony is, the Ms. Marvel stuff is pretty self-explanatory, which is good because she's the best thing in the movie. Her enthusiasm is infectious and the cartoon at the beginning shows the movie did better than the TV show about something important. Outside of the Pilot, Ms. Marvel forgot to be fun. It forgot Kamala Khan was a dorky kid who loved fangirling Captain Marvel and getting up to shenanigans with her new powers. The film brings the tone the Pilot set, and the rest of the series stepped away from for dark broodiness, and it's good.

I hated the fact that Monica was stranded in another Universe by the end, but then we find out it's the X-Men Universe in the tag and I turned into the Celestial Toymaker: "Well, that's all right then!"

And while the movie shows the flaws of the MCU interconnectivity, the positive is that despite the fact that the movie bombed at the box office, and there will never be another Marvels movie, it's not gonna be the last time we see the characters. One of the unfortunate aspects of The DC Extended Universe is each character's future participation was predicated entirely on box office performance. The MCU is successful enough that we can still see these characters in other movies and TV shows. If the franchise were on thinner ice I'd be more worried. But Disney can afford a bomb or two.

But the movie may have bombed at the box office, but it's a damn good movie. It's better than a LOT of lackluster Marvel stuff that made money like Quantumania, Love And Thunder, and Multiverse Of Madness. By a large margin. I think perhaps internet critics sabotaged its chances for being so upset at its diversity, which is weird because a LOT of those critics insist that their objections to characters of color are because they believe the adaptations are turning legacy white characters into them for political reasons. But Kamala and Monica are already characters of color in the comics. What exactly was the objection here? I don't see any sort of Woke Agenda for strong female characters of color being allowed to exist. I understand the argument that changing the race of legacy characters might upset purists. This movie did NOT do that, and it still raised people's ire. I'm starting to believe those types of arguments were never being made in good faith. I keep hearing "It's fine using characters of color, just keep the Legacy characters as they are." Well, this movie did that and it's supposedly too Woke anyways.

What's interesting about the complaint is that none of Carol, Monica, and Kamala's heroics feel gender-based. Maybe it's the fact that the movie doesn't make a federal case about being led by three women which is the objection. It treating it as normalcy, instead of making a direct statement, actually makes a statement. That's how I approach Gilda and Bernadette too, and I bet those same types of YouTubes critics would SAVAGE Gilda And Meek. It's a little scary to me.

They did do one acknowledgement of diversity. When Monica has to immediately learn how to fly to save Kamala's life, Nick Fury screams at her "Black Magic!". But if that moment pissed you off instead of making you smile the problem isn't the movie.

I love the MCU for always having it's share of good Skrulls. I love that very much.

Young Avengers at the end. Kate noting she is 23 is part of the problem of making that part of the movie franchise. By the time the first movie actually hits, the cast will be aging out of their roles already. Kamala is okay, but she is not in this for the long haul as the excitable kid. Frankly the MCU trying to keep Todd Holland that even after all this time is already problematic.

I love the movie. I'm sad there won't be another movie specifically of this type but I'm excited to see where the X-Men story goes, and see all three characters team up in the next Avengers films. I had a lot of fun watching this. 4 1/2 stars.