Recent Movie: The Marvels

The Marvels is the first movie that makes me think the MCU might actually be over. Not because it's bad—it is, in fact, quite charming and enjoyable, solidly mid-tier Marvel, and near the top of the pack for a post-Endgame movie. And not even because it has been a box office disappointment—though in the conversation surrounding this underperformance, not enough has been said about how it represents less a reaction to the movie itself, and more the accumulated fatigue of an audience burned out by Eternals, Ant-Man 3, and a slew of underwhelming Disney+ shows. No, the reason I think The Marvels might be the beginning of the end is that, beyond litigating its dismal box office performance, no one is talking about it. And there is, to be clear, a lot to talk about here. As little as five years ago I think this movie would have unleashed the kind of discourse tsunami that we saw in the wake of Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron, Civil War, or the first Captain Marvel. But now, crickets. This franchise might be able to survive a few underperforming movies; I don't think it can survive movies that nobody is interested enough to talk about.

Fittingly for a movie that more or less requires familiarity with not just its prequel, but the TV series WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, The Marvels begins in media res. Somewhere in deep space, a sinister-looking woman, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), uncovers a bangle that appears to be the twin of the one that unleashed the powers of Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a New Jersey teenager who idolizes Carol Danvers and has modeled her superhero persona on her. In other parts of space, Carol (Brie Larson), and her goddaughter Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), a former SWORD agent granted superpowers by Wanda Maximoff, are investigating damage to the network of space gates that, apparently, we were meant to know exists in the Marvel universe, when both they and Kamala are blasted by some energy. The blast entangles the three women, causing them to switch places whenever they use their powers. In short order, Kamala is floating in space in Monica's spacesuit, Carol is surprising Kamala's family in their living room, and both Monica and Kamala are repeatedly dropped into a battle Carol was having with Dar-Benn's Kree soldiers.

It's all rather rushed, even before it becomes clear that Carol has a history with Dar-Benn that is also related to her failure to return to visit Monica and her mother Maria (Lashana Lynch), as she promised at the end of Captain Marvel. But The Marvels's fleet-footedness is actually one of its assets. The feeling of being dropped in the middle of the action seems fitting given the predicament our three heroines find themselves in, and results in some extremely effective and exciting action scenes. It's particularly rewarding to see Kamala segue almost instantly from panic, as she's plunged into a fight scene in three separate locations, to enthusiasm—like Vellani herself, she seems more than ready to be called up to the big leagues. (Monica, alas, is relegated to the role of the film's straight woman, reflecting Kamala's enthusiasm and Carol's troubled history without developing much personality of her own.)

There follow a whole host of extremely satisfying set-pieces, of the comedic and thrilling variety. Kamala's protective, no-nonsense, deeply loving family (Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh) end up roped into the action, striking a perfect balance between awe and practicality. A training montage sees the three heroines—or, the Marvels, as fangirl Kamala insists they should be called—learning how to fight when at any moment they might be pulled into a completely different situation, which involves a lot of juggling and jump rope. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) regains the more laid-back, sardonic personality he had in Captain Marvel, cheerfully supporting all three women, whether by giving Monica some tough love when she struggles to use her powers, or visibly delighting in Kamala's entry into the fray. In a reminder that a character like Carol, whose stories are set on a cosmic scale, would encounter a lot of weird settings and situations, the trio visit a planet whose inhabitants communicate only in song, where Carol had previously made a diplomatic marriage to the heartthrob prince (Park Seo-joon)—a pulpy touch that reminded me of comics runs like Tom King's recent Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but which the MCU has largely avoided.

It would all be a lot of fun, if not for the genocide. Every act break in The Marvels is punctuated by Dar-Benn showing up to steal the natural resources of another planet, culminating, of course, with Earth. But instead of being a hissable, larger-than-life villain, Dar-Benn's evil schemes turn out to have a dark geopolitical grounding. Her homeworld, Hala, is dying after decades of civil war—a war launched after Carol destroyed its ruling entity, the AI known as the Supreme Intelligence, as she promised to do at the end of Captain Marvel. The Marvels eventually comes to seem like a litany of Carol's failures. She shows up on a Skrull colony in pursuit of Dar-Benn, and scuttles peace talks that might have saved the planet. She promises the singing prince to protect his homeworld, but is quickly overwhelmed and forced to flee. (At the end of the movie, after Dar-Benn's defeat, we are reassured that both planets have been saved, but this feels like a last-minute addition, in recognition of the fact that viewers will have been sitting uncomfortably for half an hour, reeling from the tonal whiplash of going from planetary destruction to an amusing scene involving Carol's pet flerken and the soundtrack to Cats.)

Misbegotten as it was, the recent Secret Invasion at least paid some lip service to criticizing Nick Fury for cavalierly interfering in the running of whole societies with seemingly no thought given to the long-term consequences of his actions. No such criticism is passed of Carol. When she confesses to having caused a war that impacted the lives of billions, it's in the context of explaining why she bailed on Monica—which is to say, it's treated as a source of trauma for her, not something she did to others. Another movie might have done something with this revelation and Kamala's until-then uncomplicated idolization of Carol, but instead she is used—like much of the younger generation of Marvel heroes—to normalize the more established hero's flaws, concluding that she should "let Carol be a person" instead of fangirling all over her, as if that were the problem. It's a choice that also further shortchanges Monica, who might have offered a counterpoint to Kamala with her own, more mature take on her former idol, but who instead merely offers Carol comfort and understanding—all the more troubling given that she was introduced enabling another problematic white woman.

When you consider the uproar that greeted even the possibility that the first Captain Marvel might function as air force propaganda, it's stunning that there has been simply no discussion of how the character's second movie reveals her to be a war criminal—a particularly hapless one at that, who needs to be reminded by Monica that she has cosmic powers that can be used for more than just fighting, and which might be relevant to repairing the damage she's responsible for. In some ways, however, this silence is understandable. It mirrors the attitude of the film itself. Which ends up making The Marvels seem inessential—not because it's comedic, but because it won't take its characters seriously. Like most recent MCU projects, The Marvels is full of promise for what's just around the corner. At its end, Kamala contacts Hawkeye's Kate Bishop (Hailey Steinfeld) with the offer to form a junior super-team; Monica ends up in an alternate universe; and the X-Men rear their heads yet again. But that proliferation of potential characters and story—which feels, by this point, almost overwhelming, so many promised movies and storylines that it will take a decade to pay them all off—means nothing if the MCU can't handle the heroes it's already got. I think audiences are beginning to sense that.