The Marvels, which dropped on Disney+ on Wednesday February 7, is a film way too many people (including avid Marvel fans) unfairly slept on during its theatrical release in November of 2023.
The film has the ignominious distinction of being the first “flop” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The reasons for its poor performance have beaten to death and we’re not here to re-litigate them including the beaten to death concept of Marvel burnout.
This column is here to provide you, the person who has not seen The Marvels yet, five solid reasons why you should head over to Disney+ and give this film a chance. Often times when a film does poorly at the box office we write it off as a “bad film” and not worth our time. While sometimes this is in fat true, this is not the case with The Marvels.
If you enjoyed the Captain Marvel film (or any of her appearances in the MCU), or were captivated Teyonah Parrish’s Monica Rambeau in WandaVision or Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan (whether on her Disney+ series or in the comics the actress has penned), you definitely owe it yourself to go higher, further, and faster with these three. The vibe, the action, the heart and humor they embodied in their previous roles are all here and amplified to even greater heights.
Now is The Marvels a film without faults? No, of course not. There’s definitely parts of the film where you can tell things were reshot, the villain is once again undercooked, there are obvious lines were either cut or ADR’ed in to fix issues in the film and there’s a decent amount of emotional storytelling that get left on the cutting room floor.
Was there potentially a better movie here? Potentially, yes. However, at the end of the day The Marvels embodies everything we love about superhero and comic book cinema. It’s a visually dazzling, laugh-filled, action-romp with a good heart, big action and implications in the wider Marvel Multiverse.
5. It’s Essential to the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: We have to be super vague about this because the two end credit sequences might be some of the best Marvel has produced in quite some time. We’ve seen some cool end credit sequences recently with Brett Goldstein debuting as Hercules in Thor: Love & Thunder or Charlize Theron appearing as Clea in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. However, they were just that “cool scenes” and neither feel like they’re going anywhere (yet).
The two end credit scenes in The Marvels have massive, “future direction of the MCU” implications that might be executed sooner than we think. These two scenes feel like there’s a direction for the future of the MCU — things that are much more grand and concrete than we’ve seen post-Endgame.
Also, the final end credit sequence will absolutely have your mouth on the floor.
4. Nick Fury Redeemed: Secret Invasion was a B-A-Double D bad. Not even the almighty Samuel L. Jackson could save that project from the absolute mess it was. Luckily, we see Nick Fury (it’s just Fury, mom) return to the same lovably grumpy, eye-patch and pistol wielding “fun uncle” vibe that was such a breathe of fresh air in Captain Marvel.
3. It’s Genuinely Funny: The whole “Marvel humor” issue is way overblown. Now, it’d be disingenuous to say that Marvel has not undercut emotional scenes with humor or some jokes (e.g. Thor and Malekith sliding down a restaurant window in Thor: The Dark World) have just been fall out terrible. However, the humor hits more than it misses in this writer’s opinion. The Marvels has a wonderful, charming humor to it, and this in thanks to the cast of Ms. Marvel. Saagar Shaikh, Mohan Kapoor and in particular Zenobia Shroff (who plays Kamala’s mom) are wonderful as Ms. Marvel’s mostly supportive and extremely stressed out family. No matter the situation, these characters never stray from who they are and this comes into sublime conflict with Nick Fury. In fact, Fury has better chemistry with the Khans than literally anyone from Secret Invasion.
Our triumvirate of super heroines are also a source of great comedy (more on them later) especially one completely out of left field scene involving Carol Danvers and Prince Yan (Park Seo-joon) that while literally having you question what is happening with this film in the best possible way.
However, the biggest and best joke revolves around our favorite Flerken, Goose and an iconic Broadway song.
2. The Action Sequences: Action sequences were always going to be tricky in this film — especially since the three leads will swap places at any given moment when they use their powers. Director Nia DiCosta and the effects teams employed here do a brilliant job of seamlessly incorporating these jumps into the action sequences. The result is a high-energy, high entertainment sequences in the first part of the film and a more bad ass, and suspenseful sequences in the finale. Vellani and Parris, who didn’t get involved in much physical hand-to-hand fighting in their respective shows, more than hit the bar Brie Larsen set throughout her run in the MCU.
1. The Chemistry Between the Three Leads: The selling point of this entire movie was Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau working together as a team — and it was the right selling point. Individually, each actress is terrific in their role. Larsen is the obvious star of the film, but she definitely takes steps back and allows her co-stars to steal the movie. Teyonah Parris delivers the best overall performance as she hits these great emotional moments as well as delivers some great under her breath/throwaway one-liners. Iman Vellani, however, is the unquestionable star of the film. She’s delightfully hilarious in fangirldom, she’s a consistent source of hope and optimism. At the same time that youthful hope and naivety is weaponized to become source of suspense and fear every time she enters a fight scene.
Together, these three cannot help but look like they’re having an incredible time together onscreen and their “training montage” is one of the highlights of the film as it’s just a pure scene of three people having fun together (while also advancing the plot). The chemistry between the three is so palpable that you definitely want to spend more time in their universe (in the film) and in future adventures as well.
In short, if you felt burned by Quantumania or Secret Invasion or if the Madame Web reviews have you bummed out, head over to Disney+ and check out The Marvels. It’s genuinely fun, sincere and thrilling entry into the MCU.
