“Okay, I’m getting a lot of negative energy from you and I don’t like it.”

What’s wrong with Knock Knock Open Wide? “Peace has cost you your strength. Vi...

“Okay, I’m getting a lot of negative energy from you and I don’t like it.”

In the past I’ve had plenty of opportunities to extol my favourite film critic, Tim Brayton over at Alternate Ending and now is as good a time as any to re-up. Check him out if you haven’t already. He’s a fantastic critic and an inspiration and so it is with a certain bitter-sweet melancholy that I must report that I have at last surpassed him.

Not in terms of quality of analysis or wit of writing, fuck no, I’m not insane. But you see, Tim actually reviews movies roughly when they come out, like some kind of freak with a work ethic, where as I review movies when I feel like it, maaan.

But today represents the first time I’m aware of where I actually beat him to the punch. My The Marvels review has come out before his The Marvels review, a victory whose sweetness is only slightly mitigated by the fact that I’m not entirely sure he intends to actually review this movie, a fact that is both completely understandable and quite damning.

A major critic not reviewing the latest installment of the MCU? How can this be?

It’s like that moment during the trial of Charles the First where the top fell off his cane and no one bent down to pick it up for him. In that moment, he knew he was king no more and also possibly that he was about to get a pretty aggressive haircut.

And look, I wanted to like this one. I want to like every movie I sit down to review. I love a good comeback story as much as anyone. And I had actually heard positive rumblings that this movie was far better than its paltry box-office and mediocre critical reception would suggest. I was even told it was something of an overlooked gem. Who told me that? In retrospect, fools. The movie is (mostly) trash.

If Ant-Man 3 was the MCU’s Raya, and Guardians 3 was its Encanto then with The Marvels we have our Strange World.

Here’s where I knew I was in for a rough ride and it’s such a weird little thing but it just goes to show how important editing is.

We open with a crew spaceship travelling through a portal and arriving at what I think is supposed to be Earth’s moon but I can’t actually be sure because the relevant entry on the MCU wiki is still a stub.

Which, a whole quarter after the movie’s release is not a good sign in an of itself.

Anyway, the Kree start excavating and pull something out of the ground and we just casually cut to this woman just standing around:

There’s no musical sting to introduce this character. She’s more or less centrally framed but not really. Basically, the cinematic language of the scene was telling me that this was an extra, or maybe a supporting character who might get a few lines.

This is our main villain.

I’m probably not describing it well, you really have to see the scene to get what I’m talking about. It’s just a complete botch of an introduction to such an important character. Anyway, this is Dar-Benn, a character I had to actually look up because in the comics he is just that obscure. Look, all you need to know, all any of us need to know, is that he was apparently involved in a plot to assassinate the then-Emperor of the Kree Empire whose name was…sorry, sorry let me just put on my serious face.

His name was Clumsy Foulup.

This is how you get people to come back, Marvel. Give me a Clumsy Foulup movie, you cowards.

Anyway, this Dar-Benn is the current ruler of the Kree Empire and is looking for the Quantum Bands, two bracelets that were used to create the fast-travel network. Unfortunately, they only find one, leaving Dar-Benn to angrily demand to know where the other one is.

The other one, apparently, is in New Jersey owned by Kamala Khan, star of the hit Disney Plus show Ms Marvel which I have not seen because I am a forty year old man and that feels like the televisual equivalent of hanging around outside a school. Let me put my stall out, of the three Marvels Kamala (played by Iman Vellani) is by far my favourite while simultaneously being the most annoying. Brie Larson as Carol Danvers is so fucking checked out it’s kind of funny. Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau is not much better but she’s frankly been saddled with a really weird arc so I’m more inclined to blame that on the writing. Kamala’s fangirling over the other two gets a bit obnoxious but it also feels like a genuine emotion, like something a human being would feel and Vellani actually seems to know who this girl is and plays her with some enthusiasm and authenticity. Pretty much everyone else is in strict “hit the mark and say the line” mode. We’re introduced to Kamala in her room doodling fan art of her and Captain Marvel which we’ve all done from time to time and we see that her room is basically a shrine to Carol.

Also, I take the Lightning Bolt light as a cute little shout out to Billy Batson and if it’s not, don’t tell me.

Anyway, right before her fantasy version of Carol whisks her away to the Avengers mansion for…whatever totally heterosexual activity she was expecting, Kamala’s Quantum Band starts flashing and suddenly she vanishes. And then we get some onscreen text saying “Earlier That Day”.

Carol Danvers is in her spaceship having tossy turny flashback dreams when she gets a call from Nicky Fury from his fancy space station orbiting the Earth which is the headquarters of fucking S.A.B.E.R.

This is not a you problem, this is a me problem. See, in the comics, the agency that handles alien shit is S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient Worlds Observation and Response Division which I like because it’s a cool acronym that actually makes sense. But then, S.W.O.R.D. was just casually introduced in Wandaverse as a different agency NOT handling alien shit so in this movie we get S.A.B.E.R., which is S.W.O.R.D. with a lamer acronym. It’s stupid and it bugs me far more than it should. Anyway.

Fury tells Carol that he’s detected a weird surge in the jump network and wants her to check it out. Oh, and Earth is apparently now just a space-faring civilisation with access to universe spanning propulsion. Cool. Cool cool cool. Carol zooms out there with Goose (y’know, the cat that cost Fury his eye) and she finds the hole where Dar-Benn was excavating and also a jump gate that looks like it tried the largest dildo and found out.

Carol touches the damaged portal and suddenly she swops places with Kamala Khan, who swops places with Monica Rambeau, who swops places with Carol. This is bad news for Monica, who ends up on the alien world with Kree enemies suddenly popping out of the woodwork like the fucking Putty Patrol but it’s really bad news for Kamala Khan who ends up in Monica’s spacesuit in orbit over the Earth. Oh but she’s so happy when she gets to meet Nick Fury.

Nick, if it’s gotten to the point that random teenage girls are fangirling over you I think you are no longer a secret agent.

Things aren’t rosy for Carol either, though. For one, she’s now in New Jersey (yeah, yeah cheap shot whatever) but also she’s in Kamala’s room and it’s basically like that scene from Alan Partridge where he discovers his biggest fan’s shrine room.

She heads downstairs and meets Kamala’s parents Yusuf and Muneeba and her brother Aamir who honestly will be carrying this movie to the finish line. She tries to fly away instantly blips back to the alien planet just in time for the Putty Patrol battle where she chokes a random Kree into telling her that Dar-Benn is going to attack a Skrull peace summit on the planet Tarnax. She travels there and sneaks aboard Dar-Benn’s spaceship. Like, she just flies in through a widow, and sneaks in through an open door.

It’s a spaceship.

IT IS A SPACE SH

Meanwhile, Monica has been blipped back to S.A.B.E.R. HQ so they decide to pay Kamala a visit.

“Wow, the US government has a file on me! Because I have superpowers!”
“Yup. That’s the reason.”

Kamala chooses that moment to demonstrate her powers which results in her switching places with Carol. Carol and Monica are then face to face for the first time since Captain Marvel and here’s where the movie’s biggest weakness comes in to sharp relief. The Monica/Carol throughline just doesn’t work.

Firstly, Monica is very much an afterthought in this movie. Three leads is a lot for any screenplay to juggle. It’s the sequel to Carol’s movie, Kamala is the hot new property who’s already had her own TV show and which Marvel is really betting the farm on bringing in the next generation and Monica is also there. Secondly the storyline they’ve given her…

Okay, Monica’s whole deal in this movie is that she feels abandoned by Carol who never came back to look after her after her mother died. It’s basically a parental abandonment story, but with the parental figure being a woman who’s the same age as you and was basically your Mom’s friend from work. That’s…that’s a weird thing to have to play. It’s a heavy lift for any actor and would need some really top notch writing and direction to make it fly even if the acting was there. And Brie Larson did not show up for this.

I’m sorry, if I did not know this actor had an Oscar I would not be able to tell it from this performance. It’s like, you ever see Blade Trinity?

There’s a scene where Jessica Biel’s character finds her friend’s desecrated corpse and she’s weeping over it. And you’d normally expect the hero to, y’know, let down his macho tough guy facade and comfort her. But Wesley Snipe’s Blade is such a cartoonishly one-dimensional badass that instead they have him stand off to one side growling “use it!”. I kept thinking about that scene any time this move was trying to convince me that this Carol Danvers has feelings.

Anyway, Carol tries to get Kamala back by activating her powers. Which she does by flying a mile into the air. Can anyone see a problem with this plan?

Not to diminish the peril but why are there T-Shirts of a comic of a hero who has spent maybe three days on Earth in the last thirty years?

Right, so Monica has to fly up and rescue Kamala despite the fact that her powers don’t allow her to fly and be tangible at the same time. So Kamala has to use her powers to swap places with Carol, pulling Monica along with her. So now Carol’s back in New Jersey, Kamala and Monica have been taken captive by the Kree, things are bad all over.

Dar-Benn tries to kill Monica and Kamala but Carol arrives in the nick of time to save them. And, oh great, we’re doing the Thor 4 thing where the whole universe is the size of a fucking car-park. Dar-Benn travels down to the planet’s surface and tells the Skrulls that she came here to negotiate in good faith but the Kree went and sicced The Annihilator on them so now it gotta be how it gotta be. She opens a portal in the atmosphere which sucks all the air on the planet to the Kree homeworld of Hala. The Skrulls have to evacuate the planet and Carol has to tell a tearful Kamala that they have to leave most of them behind because they can only fit so many Skrulls on their ship.

I dunno. Kinda feels like you coulda squeezed a few more in there.

The Skrull Emperor blames Carol for this, even though Dar-Benn had already told him that she was going to strip the planet’s atmosphere before Carol arrived. But Carol puts a call into Valkyrie who agrees to take in the Skrulls. I don’t know how a small Scandinavian fishing village is going to take in an entire planet’s worth of people but great, problem solved.

On Hala, we learn just what Dar-Benn’s deal is. So remember at the end of the first movie when Carol said that she was going to destroy the Kree Supreme Intelligence and bring freedom and democracy to Hala? Well she did that. And it went about as well as when George W. Bush did the same in Iraq. The Kree collapsed into civil war and their atmosphere was wrecked and their sun was…weakened. Somehow.

Dar-Benn has fixed the atmosphere, at least, but she wants to get the sun back up and running and for that she needs the second Quantum Band.

The Marvels (as Kamala dubs the trio) figure out that Dar-Benn is targeting planets that have special significance to Carol which means that next stop is Aladna which is a musical planet where everyone sings. And y’know what, that’s exactly the kind of fun, goofy, out-of-the-box idea that this movie desperately needs. But, unfortunately, this musical is far more RENT than Hamilton. And then Dar-Benn shows up and destroys the planet so it’s more like, I dunno, Bad Cinderella? Sure, that works.

Kamala feels very guilty because she thinks that if she wasn’t there Carol would have been able to cut loose with her powers and defeat Dar-Benn, Carol feels guilty because this is actually 100% her fault and Monica is also there.

In a cornfield they have a bonding moment and resolve that third time’s the charm and they will totally save the next planet, honest. Good thing too, because the next planet Dar-Benn is targeting has the Statue of Liberty.

They confront Dar-Benn on her ship over Earth and defeat her and try to convince her to let Carol try to restart the sun. Considering how Carol’s batting average this movie, it’s perhaps understandable that Dar-Benn rejects this proposal and takes Kamala’s band. She tries to use them and instead Thanos’ herself and tears a hole in spacetime between this universe and another one.

Carol’ asks how they can fix it and Monica proceeds to give some of the ripest, most ludicrous technobabble I’ve heard since Star Trek Voyager stopped airing. The plan is to blast Monica with enough energy that she can then re-polarise to close the jump portal and save the universe.

Unfortunately she has to do it from the opposite side for…reasons which leaves her stranded in the other universe. Carol flies Kamala home, they have a “ya done good kid” moment and Carol reignites Hala’s sun because she kinda owes them that.

And the movie ends with Kamala visiting Kate Bishop and pulling a Nick Fury, asking her if she wants to join a new team.

***

It’s more of the same. The same declining quality. The same minimum effort. The same ropey effects from over-worked underpaid artists. The same collection of studio notes and mandated beats masquerading as a story. Almost everyone is tired. The magic is gone. I don’t know if it’ll come back.

Scoring

Adaptation: 07/25

A string of samey CGI setpieces looking for a plot.

Our Heroic Heroes: 07/25

We get a good screen Kamala Khan. That’s about it.

Our Nefarious Villain: 02/25

All the angry jaw acting in the world can’t save the most utterly forgettable villain the MCU has yet produced.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 08/25

The Khans elevate matters somewhat.

The Stinger

Monica wakes up in another universe being watched over by her mother, who it turns out is not her mother but is actually Binary, which was a title Carol had in the comics…fuck it, doesn’t matter. BEAST IS HERE!!