(Washington Insider Magazine)— I was able to watch The Marvels over Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+, because I wasn’t going to waste my money in the theaters on that. Looking at the film, it’s almost the same case as looking at Barbie. How did the filmmakers secure the funding for a low-point in the MCU such as this? I guess it doesn’t matter now because I didn’t really enjoy it either way.
The film, basically, works as an arch to introduce Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau together on the screen. This sounds like a great idea on paper but it ultimately seems like a failed attempt at doing something truly great. This movie runs and jogs through différent tones and speeds way too fast through its characters that we as audience members are never given enough time to sit down and appreciate the talents of the characters. It seems like another Marvel placeholder that was made because the studio had already signed on and were hoping that it would make a ton of money at the box-office.
The sad part is that all of this effort into making this film was for not because it flopped incredibly hard at the box office and apparently didn’t even make back its budget earning only $206 million on a budget of around $270 million which makes it the lowest-grossing MCU film to date.
What seems even worse is that it doesn’t pay proper homage to the characters that it’s based upon. Nothing seems cohesive in this story. It just seems like a series of mismatched things that get tied up together and packaged into Marvel surprise, but the only surprise here was on the people for wasting their time at the movies to see this trainwreck of a film.
Moreover, the villain Dar-Benn played by Zawe Ashton doesn’t live up to the expectations and hype when the film was being promoted. I doubt that anyone in the comic-book community knows who she truly is and probably makes any other less-than-stellar villains or poorly written villains look all the more superior to her and even when I was watching the film, I wasn’t sure if this lady was wearing a grill in her mouth the whole time and her motivations don’t even feel right. She wants to take over the world because Carol Danvers destroyed her planet earlier in a flashback sequence for some reason that I forgot.
To be fair, the actors do have good chemistry and give it their all, even if the material is incredibly deplorable and sounds like something written by a middle school kid for a play that they were putting on. As I was watching the film, the only humor that hit right was when Nick Fury was being used as comic relief. Any other jokes seemed like they were forced or went over my head. Not every light-hearted scene needs a joke. I don’t think Marvel has yet learned that lesson.
I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the people that saw this film went to sleep through it and I really wouldn’t blame them that much. If I’m going to be fair, Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania was better than this film and a lot more fun, yet somehow Quantumania got the Razzie nominations and not Nia DaCosta’s epic tragedy and tragedy by how bad it is.
This movie could have been so great. It could have been a formidable entry in the Marvel Universe, but it ended up being more of an obligation to do by the studios than a subversive film with compelling characters. Hopefully, Deadpool 3 does better over the summer.
