The Marvels review: One of these stars shines brighter than the others

A dying sun — that's the very first image to appear on screen during The Marvels. It hardly needs saying that this is not exactly a happy omen about the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose once-sterling pop culture reputation has lost quite a bit of shine this year. The superhero franchise's recent theatrical releases have struggled mightily at replicating past box office successes, while its recent straight-to-streaming shows have barely made a ripple in the zeitgeist, especially compared to the high-water mark of 2021's WandaVision. (A recent report from Variety digs into all those nitty-gritties.) The goal of The Marvels, therefore, is to reignite this supernova.

Whether the movie succeeds or fails in this mission will depend on how audiences respond. For now, we can say that The Marvels is a mixed bag that tries to juggle too many different characters and plotlines, but there are some bright spots that point to a possible future for the franchise.

The very premise of The Marvels reflects the complicated continuity of the modern MCU. Each of the three female leads hails from a different project: Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) debuted in her titular 2019 film, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) comes from her own Disney+ series last year, and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) was the breakout star of WandaVision. As you may notice, Monica is the only one without either a superhero nickname or her own self-titled MCU entry. Though the movie tries to make light of these deficiencies, it's nevertheless true that she is the weakest link in this triangle. Carol is also relatively bland as the centerpiece.

Vellani's Kamala, on the other hand, is a shining star and the MCU's best hope going forward. Even viewers who haven't watched Ms. Marvel should be able to easily get the hang of this indefatigably cheerful young superhero, who introduces herself in the film's opening minutes with a hand-drawn adaptation of her own Captain Marvel fan-fiction. This delightful burst of joy evokes both the fun of reading comic books and the multimedia creativity displayed in other recent superhero adaptations like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — energy that the MCU sorely needs.

As that sequence makes clear, meeting Captain Marvel is Ms. Marvel's greatest dream. Unfortunately for them, it ultimately results from a quantum entanglement that keeps the three leads switching places with each other every time they use their similar light-based superpowers at the same time. This situation is first displayed in an energetic fight sequence that takes place simultaneously in an Earth-orbiting space station, an alien spaceship, and the Khan family's Jersey City apartment, as the three Marvels keep switching places and having to pick up where the other left off.

There's a slapstick feel to this scene that keeps it entertaining even as it becomes somewhat hard to track who's where. It's also a showcase for Kamala's amazing family, including Zenobia Shroff as her mom and Mohan Kapur as her dad, who roll with the punches and start hitting Kree soldiers with lamps when they need to. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who mans the space station, also gets to have some fun.

In order to minimize the impact of their space-time shifting, the three heroines stay together for the rest of the film, forming an impromptu team — much to Kamala's delight and the others' annoyance. Director Nia DaCosta finds some genuinely interesting dynamics between the three of them. Kamala dearly wants to impress her idol but faces consequences every time she uses her powers. Meanwhile, Monica was once a young girl who similarly lionized Captain Marvel before becoming disillusioned. But it's a little disappointing that whenever friction does pop up between the three, it's easily brushed over in service of hitting the next complicated plot beat.

With three heroes to split the spotlight, that doesn't leave much room to develop the villain, and the Kree leader Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) is the weakest enemy any Marvel hero has faced in a while. You can definitely feel the weird liminal space the MCU currently occupies in that regard, finished with Thanos but not yet ready for Magneto or Doctor Doom to show up, and the role of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) remains an open question lingering under the shadow of real-life legal issues. Dar-Benn, whose goofy space name gets repeated way too often over the course of the movie, feels like a throwback to the time when every Marvel movie villain was just a dark carbon copy of the main character. (Ashton even sports a similar haircut as Larson.) It's a sobering step backward for the franchise.

The Marvels was originally scheduled for earlier this year, and then got delayed like so many recent tentpole films. As a result, parts of the movie (especially the third act) feel a little slapped together. Several lines of dialogue clearly sound rerecorded, and the villain's logic doesn't quite track even after being explained in multiple exposition dumps.

But for all those weaknesses, there is Kamala Khan. Although her Disney+ series feels stuck halfway between a two-hour movie and the 20-episode teen TV show it could've been, Kamala comes into her own here and works really well at meeting her heroes. Both the actress and the character are clearly so excited to be in a big Marvel movie that you can't help but get a little swept up in it yourself. The film's final scenes contain some classic MCU teases, but they're most exciting to the degree that they promise even more Ms. Marvel to come. If anyone can get this dormant sun shining again, it's her. Grade: B-

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