The Marvels

Nia DeCosta’s Captain Marvel sequel surpasses its predecessor.

BY JACOB NELSON

With “Eternals” being a long beautiful bore, followed by “Ant-Man: Quantumania” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” being messes, you get a studio that seems to have lost its mojo. And with the SAG-AFTRA strike that just recently ended, expectations for “The Marvels” weren’t very high.

The film should take into more consideration what viewers think of it at face value: a justified female-led/empowered superhero movie. It was far more than that. The premise which follows the movie’s threat Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) and her motive to open portals to cause jump points and a break in space/dimension that connects Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) with Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson). The space jump which serves as a source for the heroine’s power entanglement and switching of places only enhanced the coordination of the fight sequences, VFX, narrative strength, and story overlap, making the MCU feel more cohesive.

With the opening up of the multiverse, I appreciated the film’s broader connections to the Marvel universe, like the insights into the Kree and their planet “Hala” and Carol’s 30-year absence after Endgame. It was captivating to see their stories overlap, and getting to see the chemistry between the 3 was fun. The Marvels’ fleshing out Carol’s personality and adding layers and texture to Monica’s relationship with Carol was also a bright spot because of how thin that dynamic felt previously. And who could forget about Goose—fans of Captain Marvel’s cat are in for a treat!

The risks “The Marvels” take succeed more than they backfire, which is exactly the sort of promising energy the franchise has been needing that will get them going “Higher, Further, Faster, Together.”