The Marvels
Director: Nia DaCosta
Writer: Nia DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik
Based on: the characters by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr. (Monica Rambeau), Roy Thomas and Gene Colan (Captain Marvel) and Sana Amanat, Stephen Wacker, G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie (Ms Marvel)
Cast: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Samuel L. Jackson, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Leila Farzad, Abraham Popoola, Lashana Lynch, Tessa Thompson, Daniel Ings, Hailee Steinfeld, Kelsey Grammer
Part of: Marvel movies
Seen on: 22.8.2024

Plot:
After a strange energy spike that affects the space travel jump point network is measured, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) asks Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) to investigate. At the same time, Carol’s niece Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) also does some investigating while doing repairs on her space station. And Kamala Khan, aka Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) is in her room in Jersey City when the family heirloom giving her her powers is starting to glow. Next thing they know, their powers are entangled, they switch places when they use them and they are right in the middle of the long war between the Kree and the Skrull.

I had a lot of fun with The Marvels that balances action, comedy and character work really well to give you entertainment of the finest.

I was sad that I had to miss The Marvels in the cinema, and I think I would have enjoyed seeing it on the big screen with a crowd even more than I did alone at home. That being said, I really did enjoy it, mostly because the cast and director DaCosta nail the tone and the character dynamics. At the heart of the film are the relationships between Carol, Kamala and Monica. That in itself is already a small miracle (I will not be making a marvel pun here, thank you very much) – was there ever an action film that focused foremost on three female characters, two of them being women of color? What is more, it also does right by all three of them.

True, Carol is at the center and the relationship least explored is that between Kamala and Monica, but all three pairings get to stand on their own, independently of each other. Larson, Parris and above all Vellani are really great, and it was just joyful to watch them interact, even when things get a little heavier (they don’t get too heavy, though – it is a comedy foremost).

The action scenes are well handled and less confusing than I thought they would be, giving the place switching. Kamala’s family is simply a delight. And they really do make the most of Goose – cat, or rather flerken bonus indeed. Nick Fury is limited to a few quips but I can’t really bring myself to regret that given the wealth we get with the other characters.

I have to say that this feels like the first Marvel movie that is not made for Comic Bros but still delights in being a comic adaptation. (Eternals has a bit of that not for Comic Bros feel, but very little of the delight.) It’s often silly in the best sense – and the MCU could stand to have more movies like it.

Summarizing: marvelous (okay, I couldn’t get through the review without any pun at all).