Hogan Reviews

Another MCU film has hit… Disney Plus and due to the expense of bus fare and cinema tickets I skipped out on the actual cinema airing, so here’s my review of The Marvels! Honestly I hated how little I was excited about the film because of a certain subset of fans being really into ragging on the film for having female leads and I really didn’t want to be associated with them, but truth is the trailers did nothing for me so I waited for the streaming debut. Was I wrong in that? … No, I don’t think I would’ve got my money’s worth had I paid to see it, but it was still more entertaining than I thought, so let’s take a look!

The key concept for the start of the film is that Captain Marvel / Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) all become entangled when Kree villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) unleashes the power of one of the Quantum Bands, with the other band being the celestial object Kamala wears as a bangle. This causes the three “Marvels” (even though Monica never gets a hero name…) to swap places with each other whenever one of them uses their powers at the same time as one of the others, which given at the time this happens Danvers in on an alien planet fighting Kree, Rambeau is drifting in space (luckily for Ms. Marvel, in a space suit that doesn’t get zapped along with her!) and Kamala is… hanging out in her room in her parent’s house respectively it leads to some understandable confusion for all involved. Once they all come together and meet with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) who is now in charge of the S.A.B.E.R. space station they start putting two and two together and the titular trio of Marvels heads out into space to find Dar-Benn and put a stop to her “evil plans”.

A slightly worried (and blurry) Captain Marvel!

What are her evil plans I hear you ask? Well, actually it’s to restore breathable air, the ocean and eventually sunlight to her home planet after a deadly civil war ruined the atmosphere. So actually a noble gesture, it’s just that in order to get these resources Dar-Benn decides to take them from planets inhabited by people Danvers is emotionally connected to rather than uninhabited planets, so… yeah. This is thanks to the “Kree Civil War” only coming about because Captain Marvel arrived at Kree HQ and destroyed their Great Intelligence AI (finally making its MCU debut! … for a few seconds) which was what everyone relied on for guidance. This Carol later admits was a mistake in hindsight and the fact that the Kree refer to her as the “destroyer” was something of a sore spot for her, so much so she claims it was this and the need to do good in response to it that meant she didn’t return to Earth to visit Monica or her mother (who died before Carol could return) I don’t really by that, but whatever makes her feel better! So the three Marvels spend some time bonding before and after a resettled group of Skrulls get their new home world destroyed by Dar-Benn opening a rift in space above their planet and our lead trio work really well together, especially Kamala, who’s over-excited fan-girling over her idol was endearing and fun. Much like the TV series she starred in Ms. Marvel, or Iman Vellani, was the star of the show here.

The latest addition to the “MCU Forgettable Villains Posse”, or FVPs for short.

The middle is where the story sags a little. Nick Fury dealing with both Kamala’s Mum, Dad and brother (played by Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur and Saagar Shaikh respectively), who also have great comedic timing, and an infestation of “Flerkens”, the cat-like species who eat things whole with horrid tentacles coming out of their mouths from the first film, which was funny then but may have been over-used here. Meanwhile the Marvels end up on the planet Aladna, where everyone has to sing everything and dance all the time, which was a kind of amusing idea for a few seconds, then it really wasn’t. Luckily the Prince (played by Park Seo-joon) was “bilingual” and could speak normally as well as sing-talk, whatever that means. He’s married to Captain Marvel, by the way. Apparently it was for convenience but who cares because the planet is put in peril when Dar-Benn opens up another vortex thing to steal the planet’s oceans but after a big battle with Benn that leads to her escaping the Marvels figure out her next port of call will be Earth and so head back and the fate of Aladna isn’t touched on at all, nor does the Prince appear again. *shrug* If they don’t care, I don’t!

That led to the big finale which I’ll get to in the spoilers, but overall the film was perfectly fine and had some good comedy moments and fun, simple superhero battles but I never felt invested or excited. It just sort of… happened, I was entertained but it never felt all that thrilling or big, it was just… fine.

Overall Thoughts:

The fact that Samuel L. Jackson is still hanging around the MCU is weird, but always welcome!

The Marvels was a perfectly fine hour and forty-ish minutes in front of the TV, with some fun character interaction and some decent superhero action, the only issue is this wasn’t an episode of a TV series it was supposed to be a big budget movie and in that sense it just didn’t have the drive or gravitas. Not bad, but not great either.

The Marvels arrive in Earth’s orbit and after helping Fury and Kamala’s family evacuate the S.A.B.E.R. station (by intentionally getting the crew swallowed by Flerkens so they can all fit in the two remaining escape pods) they confront Dar-Benn and have themselves a three-on-one but Benn manages to get her hands on Kamala’s band and fly off into the space and use both Quantum Bands open a massive rift to swallow the Sun at the cost of her life. Luckily Monica immediately figures out that if Captain and Ms. Marvel all fire their energy into her at once she’ll be able to close the rift, which they do, and she does! The only issue is that she needed to be on the other side of the rift and this particular rift opened up to an alternate universe. Captain Marvel is understandably upset at losing the daughter of her old close friend and finally makes good with the Kree by reigniting their sun with her powers (something she didn’t think about doing until Monica mentioned it…)

A funky three-on-one showdown! (Not sure how it’s “funky” but that’s what I wrote!)

Everything returns to normal, except Monica, who wakes up in a strange room with her Mum alive and in a new superhero suit and no idea who she is, only to then be seen by none other than Hank “Beast” McCoy (Kelsey Grammer) who remarks she must have come from another reality but finds that hard to believe before leaving via a classic FOX X-movie-verse X door. So I guess the alternate universe Monica fell into was (one of the) FOX X-verses, which is fun. To be continued, and all that!