Film Review - The Marvels (2023)

The Marvels is the newest Marvel Studios film and this time Nia DaCosta takes the directors chair from Anna Bowden and Ryan Fleck who directed the first Captain Marvel film in 2019, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teynoah Parris) find their powers entangled and they swap places with each other when they use them just as the Kree warlord Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) wants revenge on Carol.

The Marvels is not in any way shape or form a bad movie but its also one that at the end of the day isn’t really anything much either but before I talk about that I will talk about the positives and firstly Iman Vellani is wonderful in this movie, every moment she’s on screen you can’t help but love her as well as her family and those moments in particular were a lot of fun to watch.

Also the chemistry between Vellani, Larson and Parris is good as well but that sadly leads me into my first problem with this movie.

And that is this movie ultimately ends up wasting that chemistry as the films storytelling is all over the place, the power swapping ends up being confusing to watch for the most part and the times this movie tries to reach for sincere payoffs especially between Monica and Carol and their family history from the first film they fall completely flat because their either dismissed as a flashback moment or immediately followed up by a gag or something the scene sees as more important and to do that felt like a real waste.

What also feels like a waste is yet another Marvel Studios villain, I cannot tell you how utterly utterly utterly fed up I am with these movies just doing next to nothing with their villains, it has been one of the main reasons that I was never really in love with the MCU as a whole over the years even though I was not one of those who dismissed them out of hand as others have done but these types of films need good villains to properly work and more often than not the MCU films have not for me because of this very thing and more than once watching Dar-Benn’s plan I thought of 1987’s Mel Brooks comedy Spaceballs and not in a good way.

And lastly the Flerkens who had a nice moment in the previews for this movie that made me go “awwww look at the tussi pusses” barely feature in this movie and again feel wasted especially as Goose was a big part of the first film.

And so that was the Marvels and this movie feels like a waste across the board, a waste of talent, storytelling, villain and cute cats but this was not terrible but it wasn’t a movie that was all that great for me, 2 out of 5.