Movie 17 - The Marvels (2023) , Dir. Nia DaCosta.
The Review contains spoilers, read at your own risk.
Just saw the movie today (17/11/23) and was absolutely Marvelous. It is easy to follow and fun to watch.
The movie follows the trio of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Paris) and Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) as they come together to fight a villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton).
The movie starts of with a fun and well choreographed action scene, every time they use their powers they switch positions. Every time it happened it was shown flawlessly and nothing looked choppy. The reactions when they were in an unknown place is an honest reaction and not some over the top reaction. For example when Kamala changes places with Carol who is fighting someone with the cat Goose, Kamala's reaction to the cat unleashing its tentacles and eating the enemy was perfect because that is the reaction that makes the most sense when you see something that scary.
The action and the camera shots was smooth with no weird angles or movement. The CGI which is there a lot of is done quite well. The character of Dar-Benn is an interesting one and well written character as she has a set goal and a strong reason to her wanting to achieve that goal. Which makes her a strong villain.
The chemistry between the trio is on point. Kamala's energy and happiness is contagious, she is a huge fan of Captain Marvel and seeing her fan-girling over her is fun to watch. She also has a good amount of character development in regards to working as a team and understanding the weight of certain decisions. The scenes with the trio discussing plans and just simply talking is hilarious and feels very effortless.
Also all the cats were cute and the line "Stop running and let the flerkens eat you" was absolutely hilarious.
Also Valkyrie’s (Tessa Thompson) cameo was alright, didn’t give too much hope for future appearances, it was fun to see her.
Some of the issues i have are with plot is certain parts that are unclear and require more information. The scene where Carol destroys the supreme intelligence is shown could be shown earlier on when it is revealed that Dar-Benn is behind of all the attacks. It is revealed towards the end but if it was told to the audience earlier it would make the story more coherent and also let us know why the Kree are calling her the annihilator and why the want to kill her.
Another issue i had was the involvement of the Skrulls, Marvel just showed us the Skrulls in Secret Invasion (TV, 2023) and the story was not great. In the show Skrulls were shown to be very powerful but had no impact overall on the existing world, showing them again and making them loose their home again is becoming repetitive.
The show also couldn't decide how to portray Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), they keep switching between strong and weak which was very inconsistent and hard to follow.
The Marvels did a much better job with Nick Fury by putting him in a setting he is comfortable with and is in command i.e. on the S.A.B.E.R. space station as the guy in charge.
The scene with Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) is a good setup for the Young Avengers story line by being in the same tone as the movie. The mid credit scene with Monica, Beast from X-Men and a version of Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) was interesting but an issue arises when and if The Marvels does not perform well in the box office. There is a huge chance this story might be ditched if so.
Majority of the bad reviews i am seeing is just hatred for the women without giving a reason as to why. They are blaming Marvel for being woke when there is a high chance that they have not seen the movie and making assumptions based on biased reviews. They are essentially incapable of forming their own opinions.
Overall it's a fun and refreshing Marvel movie that has a good balance of humor, character development and action and also much more easily sets the future for stories like the Young Avengers and the MCU version of the X-Men. 8/10
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My next review is going to be The Killer (2023)
Check this out on Medium.
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