I’ve been a fan of Marvel ever since I was a little girl. I remember growing up idolizing Spider-Man but always wanting to see more of Black Widow or any of the other female superheroes. So, when “The Marvels” hit theaters, I knew I had to see it immediately.
“The Marvels” is the movie in a series following the adventures of Captain Marvel as she travels through space to protect the cosmos. The movie revolves around 3 heroes: Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Ms. Marvel after their powers become intertwined, forcing them to swap locations whenever their powers are activated.
The movie was overall relatively well received with a 61% from critics and 85% from general viewers according to Rotten Tomatoes. Personally, I think this rating was incredibly fair and even represents my own opinion on the movie.
General viewers get to enjoy everything we’ve come to expect from Marvel with flashy fight scenes, interesting villains and a relatively easy to follow story line. The fights were incredibly dynamic and were still easy enough to follow despite the constant teleporting from whenever they used their powers at the same time. The villain was easy to understand with good motives that left me unable to truly hate her. While the story line had some parts that I feel left more to be desired, those were still overshadowed by the overall good plot.
Where I feel the movie truly shines is the character interactions. Every time the characters interacted with each other, it felt genuine and dynamic. Kamala’s parents reacted like normal parents would and Kamala herself felt like a real teenager as she fan-girled over Captain Marvel. The way Captain Marvel grappled with her past failures and the unintended consequences of her actions felt real and made it easy to sympathize with her. On a more lighthearted note, Nick Fury’s constant quips and everyone’s reactions to Goose the not-cat always raised the mood and served for a quick laugh.
The movie’s main flaws have to be its rather harsh tonal shifts and how generic it is as a superhero movie. While the tone shifts don’t completely ruin the experience, it can be incredibly jarring to have a super dramatic scene where some characters accept death immediately followed up by a silly, dramatic scene full of singing. The movie itself was also a very generic Marvel movie overall. The plot was exactly what I expected, the characters’ development was predictable from the beginning, and any scene that was more surprising was more comedic than it was necessary to push the plot forward.
On a more positive note, the movie did a good job of catering to more hardcore fans with how it connects to the rest of the Marvel universe without requiring you to have that background.
Monica is a character from Captain Marvel’s backstory who’s featured in the first movie, but you can still understand her past with Captain Marvel without having seen that movie. The more dedicated fans will also recognize Kamala from her debut as Ms. Marvel in her show, aptly named “Ms. Marvel.” While having watched the show previously will give you a deeper understanding of her character and her past, it’s not necessary to still understand her character as she is presented in the movie.
Overall, I had a great time watching “The Marvels” and would wholeheartedly recommend the movie to anyone. While it felt like a pretty generic Marvel movie, it was still a great watch with dynamic characters, flashy fights scenes and an exciting, easy to follow story line.
