I didn't even know The Marvels had been released last week. With so much talk and rumours of release dates being pushed back, I stopped paying attention. If not for a chance mention on my socials, I might not even have got a ticket for today.
The Marvels unfortunately has had the lowest opening weekend of all MCU movies, and quite undeservedly so. It was a fun story (I liked it better than Quantumania), but perhaps the stakes were hugely disproportional to the battles that were mostly fought hand-to-hand in a champion takes all contest. And since there were three heroes against one villain, it didn't really seem like a fair fight. And for the most part, the villain was sort of fighting with one hand tied behind her (yes, her) back. Perhaps that was the point. Dar-Ben's backstory puts her in a position to want to do something to save her people, the Kree, from an impossible situation, but the odds are very much stacked against her. I understand the heroic courage that drives her, and the desperation plus revenge motivation behind her awful choices, but her approach to grand theft cosmos was doomed from the start. You can't save your people's homes by destroying other people's homes -- a very pertinent message for the crisis in Gaza right now.
The movie begins in utter confusion, reflecting the Marvels' own sense of what-is-going-on as they abruptly switch places with each other. Like us, they get dropped into situations with no context, either in the midst of hostilities, or bringing hostiles into previously peaceful locations -- specifically the Khans' living room which gets gratuitously wrecked in the process. It's fun to watch Mom and Dad Khan tag-teaming to fight off two fully trained Kree warriors, and not being very successful at it. In the aftermath, their house has a new skylight which wasn't there before. It's ok, Nick Fury's SABER will pay for the damage, I'm sure.
The confusion gets some clarity when people stop punching and shooting each other and start talking. Everything has to do with Kamala's family heirloom, the twin of which Dar-ben has found and is using to open unstable portals in space-time to aid her nefarious plan -- like Dr Strange stealing forbidden books from Wong's library, but on a much grander scale. It's the energy from these unstable portals that causes the location switching, which eventually they learn to coordinate and turn into a fighting advantage, leading to some interestingly choreographed fight scenes.
They are too late to save the first of Dar-Ben's targeted worlds, and it's uncertain if they do save the second or not -- a disturbingly unresolved plotline. It's also the world with what I felt as a silly, unnecessary Bollywood type culture thrown in just because. Gratuitous. Carol has personal ties with this planet just to raise the stakes a little, but I don't see that the Marvels did enough to save it. I hope we'll find out in time to come, but if that world perished, it'll be one more thing on Carol's conscience.
Of course, Dar-Ben targets Earth next, and it's for all the marbles. Monica does a heroic thing, and Carol gets a redemption. I thought they might use Carol's redemption act to de-power her so that she can be less OP enough to fit into the new MCU team-up storylines moving forward, but she still looks none the worse for wear after her cosmic feat of strength. And while Kamala gets to go home with a souvenir after her space adventure, Nick Fury (especially after the events of Secret Invasion) is going to be very unhappy with two new alien populations living on Earth, one of which he knows about, and one which he doesn't... yet.
But it's Monica's epilogue that is probably going to trigger the next phase of the MCU, if you stay and watch the end credits. There is one final end credits scene, but in my screening the screen went into screen saver mode and there was only sound. I couldn't see a thing, but the sound was unmistakable. Was it important? Probably not. Stay for bladder-holding bragging rights, if you want.
