Review: The Marvels

 The Marvels explode with light.

I’ll start this The Marvels summary with a quick recap on our principal characters in case it’s been a while for you. We have Captain Carol “Marvel” Danvers. She was exposed to energy from the Tesseract and given phenomenal power. She fought for the Kree for a while before remembering who she was and then flew into space to defeat the Kree Empire. Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Carol’s BFF Maria Rambeau. She became an astronaut and agent of SWORD. She was grounded after returning from the Blip. She was sent in to investigate the Westview Hex created by a grieving Wanda Maximoff to give her a life with the late Vision in WandaVision. Traveling through the Hex’s barrier multiple times seems to have given her light based powers similar to her ‘Aunt’ Carol’s. And finally, there’s Kamala Khan, star of Ms. Marvel. This Captain Marvel fangirl received a bangle from her grandma in Pakistan. The bangle unlocked dormant powers in her, giving her the ability to cause hard light constructs. It made her a target for the Clandestine. They’re alien beings from the Noor dimension, banished to Earth due to some crime they committed. They wanted the bangle back to return home, and even killed Kamala’s great-grandma, another Clandestine, to get it. Kamala stops them, as opening a portal between dimensions would have killed people. She then returned to New Jersey to protect the last of the Clandestine, a boy her age named Kamran, from Department of Damage Control goons. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Our story begins with the image of a dying star and a large Cree Ship flying through hyperspace. Side note, still love the hexagon shaped holes in space that FTL travel creates. It’s a neat image. The Kree land on a planet and go to a well. They dredge up a casket from beneath the planet. Dar-Benn, former Accuser (Judge) of the Kree and current Supremor and the villain of our story, uses her Universal Weapon (big hammer) to crack the casket open. She digs out a golden bangle from the debris and snaps it on. She’s filled with a purple energy. She digs through the rubble more but can’t find the other bangle. She says that they were forged as a pair. Her assistant says it must be buried somewhere else. Dar-Benn asks where.

 

We cut to Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, ignoring homework to work on a fan comic of her teaming up with Captain Marvel saving New Jersey from alien invaders. Her daydreams are interrupted by her mother saying it doesn’t sound like she’s doing homework. She flops onto her bed, in her costume for some reason, and says that she’s getting on it. Her bangle starts glowing with the same purple light as Dar-Benn’s. (I assume she’s in her costume now to match the post-credit scene from her show where she was wearing it just before the twist) There’s a blinding flash.

 

We cut to earlier that day. Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel is on her ship. She’s using the Skrull memory tech as shown from Secret Invasion to review her memories in an attempt to piece together what she lost. It also gives us flash backs to Captain Marvel if you haven’t seen it in a while. Kidnapped by the Kree after gaining superpowers, forced to work as a soldier for them, rediscovers who she is, bonds with her BFF Maria and her daughter Monica, before flying into space to take the battle to the Kree. That happened 30 something years ago, FYI. She gets up and gets a call from Fury. She jokes about ignoring it but puts him on. Fury, from his SABER command ship, asks if she noticed a surge in the jump-point system. Carol says she didn’t see anything. Fury tells her they traced the surge back to MB-418 and is wondering if she’ll check it out for him. Fury says that Monica will send her more info as they get it. Carol is shocked to hear that name, but Fury reminds her she’s not the child she remembers.

 

Outside SABER’s ship, Monica is helping to make repairs. To fix a particular tricky problem she flies out on her own.

 

Carol reaches MB-418 and radios Fury that she sees something. At the same time, Fury sees Monica floating out. She’s going to towards a jump-point portal that isn’t completely closed. Monica and Carol hear each other but both try to avoid talking to each other. Carol finds a jump-point, it’s open but in a jagged way, like it’s stuck. Fury is unable to tell either of them to stop before they touch some of the energy leaking through. We get a cut shot of Carol and Monica being touched by the energy as Kamala’s bangle glows, a bright flash, and all three women swap places. Monica crashes on MB-418, Kamala floats away from the jump-point near SABER and Carol crashes into Kamala’s closet. I feel like Carol has it the weirdest, just because the room is covered in pics of her. Kamala floats towards and crashes into SABER’s viewing platform and sees Nick Fury and geeks out a little. Fury asks who the hell she is.

 

Carol is obviously a little weirded out to be in a Pakistani family’s house, almost as weirded out as Muneeba, Yusef, and Aamir Khan are to see a random white woman come from their upstairs. Carol compliments their living room, tries to fly away but instead switches with Monica. She’s back on MB-418 and in the middle of a fight. How fun. Carol beats up some guards and asks one what Dar-Benn is doing. The guard calls her Supremor and says she’s already on Tarnax. Carol says to watch and throws him. She flies out to her ship and tells Fury that the Kree are going to attack Tarnax. Fury reminds her that the Kree are going to Tarnax as part of an Armistice with the Skrull. If you didn’t watch Secret Invasion, that’s what the show led up to, the Kree reaching out to the other big concentration of Skrulls.

 

On the SABRE ship, Monica has returned and is debriefed by Fury about her switching with a girl named Kamala Khan. Moncia is confused as there’s nothing in Kamala’s, or hers, to allow for that. While this is going on, Kamala is trying to explain to her parents what happened. While the Khans all know about her powers, they seem reluctant to believe Kamala had nothing to do with that white woman in their house. Kamala is starstruck to hear Carol was in her house and completely forgets she’s in trouble because of it.

 

Carol approaches the Kree ship on Tarnax, cloaks her own ship and flies in to investigate with her Flerk Goose. Goose looks like a ginger tabby cat. On the planet side, the armistice has begun. Supremor Dar-Benn and Skrull King Dro’ge have begun negotiating. Dro’ge says that the treaty she gave him isn’t what they agreed to discuss. Dar-Benn gives us a brief history of what’s happened to the Kree since Captain Marvel. Carol, it seems, succeeded in destroying the Supreme Intelligence. It was the Supercomputer that ruled the Kree empire. The power vacuum that created lead to a massive civil war that polluted their planet, somehow mortally wounded their sun, and left their planet of Hala as a ruin. Dar-Benn promises to put t Skrull in their proper place in the Kree Empire and to help them relocate. She’d hate to have anyone planet side when she strips the atmosphere.

 

On the ship, Carol is spotted, called the “Annihilator” and goes to blast the guard, but swaps out for Kamala when she uses her powers. Kamala is obviously freaked out to be on an alien ship with an orange tabby. Goose eats some of the guards with her tentacles, which freaks her out more. She throws up a shield to protect her and Goose, and they swap with Monica. Monica uses her powers to become intangible and survive and energy blast. Kamala freaks out explaining what happened to her parents and Goose barfs up the guards it ate. Kamala tells her family to run. Carol, meanwhile, is riding a space elevator down to Earth with Fury and explaining the situation. He’s concerned that she just decided to touch glowing mysterious shit, his words, and tells her not to do that again. She causes her hand to glow and that minor use of power causes her to swap with Kamala. The Khans, meanwhile, are fighting Kree with whatever they can grab.

 

A fight on three planes of action begins the space elevator, the Khans house, and the Kree ship. Over the course of the fight, each woman swaps with the other as they use their powers, but not uniformly. Sometimes they’ll get a few bits of power use before swapping. I’m not trying to keep track of it because it’s confusing. Just know the Khans house gets wrecked. Monica is the first one to figure out that power use seems to be the key, telling Fury as he shoots the last Kree and telling her it’s a strong theory. On the Kree Ship, Carol sees a meeting going on. And Kamala helps her family clean up and keep the Kree soldiers contained. She’s obviously in massive trouble. Fury and Monica arrive at their front door.

 

As Fury and some SHIELD agents take out the Kree, Monica show Kamala some of what they’ve got on her high-tech tablet. Oh, and we get the SABER acronym, Strategic Aerospace Biophysics and Exolinguistic Response. Monica does her best to make monitoring Kamala does not seem problematic and says that they both have light based powers, which is why she thinks the switching is happening. Kamala asks what Monica’s codename is, she says she doesn’t have one, and Kamala promises they’ll workshop it. Kamala shows off her powers, causing her and Carol to switch. There’s an awkward moment where Monica and Carol stare at each other and Yussef points out they look nothing alike. Muneeba reminds him families are complicated. Fury tells Monica to fill her in and it’s awkward as hell. Monica explains that their powers plus the jump-points entangled their powers, they swap places when they use their powers at the same time. Carol realizes that’s probably not great and goes to fly off. She swaps with Kamala when she’s about two miles up. Monica is forced to fly to try to save her, which is hard due to the fact when she’s flying she’s intangible. They grab each other and Kamala makes an energy barrier around them. They swap just before crashing.

 

Monica and Kamala are held by Kree soldiers. Dar-Benn decides that the Annihilator’s appearance means they need to accelerate their plans. She snaps on the bangle and tries to blast them, but Carol flies in. They try to fight Dar-Benn, but her bangle lets her absorb Carol’s power, which isn’t great, and they swap places when they use their powers. Dar-Benn leaps out of the ship and Carol and Monica follow, Carol swinging back to grab Kamala.

 

Dar-Benn says that the Skrull have betrayed the Kree for “bringing the Annihilator” and for that she uses the bangle and her Universal Weapon to open an unstable jump-point. Carol tells Emperor Dro’ge they need to evacuate now, and he points out that they’ve nowhere to go. The Marvels help with the evacuation as best they can. They are able to help the Skrull reach their escape pods. They’re forced to leave a lot of them behind as the planet collapses quickly. Carol is blunt when Kamala questions abandoning people, saying that they need to save who they can.

 

On Carol’s ship, she sends a transmission to a friend to help the Skrull. Dro’ge blames her for what happened but is willing to take their help. It’s not like they have anywhere else to go. Her friend turns out to be Valkyrie, who is offering the Skrulls safe harbor in New Asgard. They portal away, leaving the Marvels.

 

… Oh, if it wasn’t clear, Monica has gone by Captain Marvel in the past during a time when Carol was MIA, Dead or otherwise disabled, which is why they called the movie The Marvels. She goes by Spectrum most often.

 

On Hala, the Kree take off their breathing masks and breathe clean air. Dar-Benn describes what happened when Carol flew in 30 years ago and destroyed the Supreme Intelligence. She believed she was setting the Kree free from a tyrant, but she ended up creating a massive power vacuum that led to the civil war that destroyed their planet. Dar-Benn says that she’ll bring them back to glory. Her assistant Ty-Rone tells her that she needs more power if they’re going to reignite their sun. The amount of power she’d need to channel through one band would destroy her. She’s ready to die to do that and says they’ve no time to look for the other bangle.

 

On the ship, Carol is doing some repairs when Monica joins her and helps. They catch up, Monica mentioning that she got her powers going through a witch hex and that after the Blip she and all other astronauts were grounded. It’s why she was there to begin with. She asks Carol why she never came back. Carol says that she didn’t realize what she was getting into, and things sort of snowballed after destroying the Supreme Intelligence. People needed her, and Monica rather tearfully says that they needed her. Later, Kamala comes in and Carol apologizes for speaking so harshly to her during the evacuation. They reintroduce themselves, and Kamala fangirls out for a minute. After, Kamala reveals that she thinks that Dar-Benn is making the weird jump points via the other bangle, showing off hers. Carol says that that’s a Quantum Band, an ancient artifact. Carol explains that the bands were used to make the jump-point network according to Kree Legend. Monica thinks she’s using the Quantum Band plus the Universal weapon to force energy through and make the unstable jump-points. Kamala says that she saw star charts on the ship, but can’t remember details. Carol grabs the Skrull memory bands and tells them this’ll let them watch their memories.

 

They put on the headbands and review memories. They quickly find the star chart, but things go off as the women’s memories get entangled. We see that Carol visited Maria during the Blip and learned that her friend’s cancer is back. Maria asks her to look after Goose and her house, just until Monica gets back. They pull the bands off, and Monica tells her to never do that again. Kamala, realizing that Monica’s mom died during the Blip, makes them both hug Monica. Monica explains jump-points, stable points in space time that allow FTL travel without breaking space-time. But the more points you make, the less stable space-time becomes, so if Dar-Benn keeps popping unstable holes in the universe bad things happen. They try to figure out why Dar-Benn is doing this, and more importantly where their next target is. Since the Kree Empire used to encompass about 25% of the Milky Way, that’s a big area. Kamala points out that using a jump-point is weird when bombs are an option. They realize that Dar-Benn used the jump-points to steal resources to restore Hala. She mentions they’re also suffering a drought and when Kamala says the next planet probably has water, she realizes it’ll be Aladna. It’s about 99.6% water. Carol says she hasn’t been to the planet, but says it in a weird way, making it clear to the other two she’s been their before.

 

When Kamala reaches out to her parents via the ship’s communications array, Muneeba tells her she is NOT going on a space adventure. They’re riding the space elevator back up SABER base with Fury and Goose. Her parents insisted on going with to get Kamala. They had another surge in the network while this was all going on and because of that they really can’t risk the jump to get Kamala back or the power-based swapping. Carol and Monica promise to keep Kamala safe in the meantime. Muneeba promises she’ll kill Carol if anything happens to her. Goose barfs up more things and they all note the Flerk looks ill.

 

On the ship, Kamala pesters Monica with hero names, but she’s not really for any of them, even her actual one of Spectrum. The women begin practicing with their power swapping. It’s a really good montage as they work on coordination while swapping. They also learn that it’s activating the powers that causes the swap, if they keep the power going after the switch it stays on.

 

On SABER Base, Yussef is helping a crewman consider saving for retirement. I didn’t know he was an accountant until this point. There’s a power surge and the crewman go to look. There’s a large fleshy ‘thing’ in the internal systems.

 

The Marvel’s jump to Aladna. They land on the planet side and Carol tells the other two to be cool, she’s kind of famous here, and not question what is about to happen. She says this while wearing a very weird headdress, so doubtful. As it turns out, the people of Aladna communicate exclusively through singing. I’m very disappointed because it feels like they’re going to do a Bollywood dance number, but they never go all the way. They’re led to the palace and Carol’s legal husband Prince Yan. Carol is princes of this society but she insists this is all diplomatic. They’re announced to the court as the Marvels, and Carol ends up dancing with Prince Yan. Carol somehow changes into a Captain Marvel themed dress and dances with him for a bit. As they dance, Monica asks how many chapters of the Captain Marvel fan fic is this inspiring and Kamala says so many. The number ends by Carol saying they need to talk. It’s revealed that Yan can speak, he’s bilingual, and Carol asks for some fight clothes.

 

Back at SABER, they’re examining the alien pod they found. They don’t know what it is, but maybe it’s a bioweapon. The ship detects 29 new objects. Oh no.

 

The ladies come out in their fight suits. There’s a good bit where Monica complains about these tassel things which is 100% part of her canon costume, ripping them off and saying it’s too much. Yan tells them to stay close but out of sight while they handle this. They’re going to try to keep switching to a minimum and the older members of the Marvels will go for the bangle. Dar-Benn’s ships arrive and she meets with Yan. She orders Yan to kneel, he says no, and Monica dives in to intercept her energy blast. They knock Dar-Benn away from the main fight an jump her, but she knocks Monica and Carol away with the Universal Weapon. Kamala is left alone and a little perplexed but Yan tells her to use her scarf, which works like a whip, neat.

 

Dar-Benn returns to her ship and prepares to open the jump-gate but Monicas jumps her. They knock each other around before Carol asks to be tagged in. She blocks a hammer strike and tells Dar-Benn no to, but she says it’s already too late. Kamala uses her powers in a fight and ends up switching with Carol, revealing to Dar-Benn that she has the other bangle. Monica tells her to run to the ship, Kamala does but swaps out with Carol part way through her run. Dar-Benn grabs Carol and forces her to touch the bangle, draining power from her and then blasting her away before opening the jump-gate.

 

The concussion of that attack causes a shockwave through the network, disabling the Space Elevator at SABER. And worse, half their evacuation pods also went down.

 

Monica crashes to the ground in time to see the jump-gate open and drain the water from the ocean. Monica and Kamala return to the ship and now knowing swapping isn’t an issue, Carol starts wrecking shop. Monica takes off with the ship, ordering Carol to join them, but she’s got a few Kree ships to break first. She flies in and takes over, Monica say she’ll get the jump-point ready but Carol insists she can dodge them. Carol refuses to let another planet die because of her, but Kamala activates the jump-point teleporting them away at the last second.

 

The women disembark and hash things out. Kamala apologizes for taking them away, saying she’s sure that Carol could have handled things if they weren’t entangled. Carol tells her to not be like her, and explains to the others how this started. Namely that she didn’t realize removing the Supreme Intelligence from the Kree wasn’t an auto fix. She blames herself for causing the Hala doomsday. Monica realizes that Carol never came back because she didn’t want Monica to see her as ‘the Annihilator.’ Monica says that’s not how family works, that she wants her in her life. They all make up just in time for an unstable jump-point to open. Carol says they need to find Dar-Benn. Monica says she could be anywhere, but Carol has realized she’s targeting places important to Carol, and there’s only one left.

 

SABER’s ship starts shaking with another break in the jump-point network. Fury joins some of his crew and learns that they only have 15 escape pods to evacuate 350 people. Which only feat about ten people max. Fury tells them to fill as many as they can and then come up with a plan B. The Space Elevator starts burning. Fury gets a fire extinguisher and finds Goose with a bunch of the eggs. Turns out, she’s the one laying them. This is part of the Flerken breeding cycle. Fury grabs one of the hatched kittens, and just barely misses losing his other eye to Flerken claws. The baby gobbles up a desk and is told there’s only one escape pod left… and Fury has an idea.

 

The Marvels arrive at SABER and see the place overrun with cats. Kamala hugs her family. We learn what Fury’s plan is, to use the Flerk to swallow all the crew and then stuff the cats in the escape pod. Carol points out they’re literally herding cats. Then the funniest scene in the movie happens, the crew all running from the Flerkens while an automated message tells them to let the Flerkens eat them, all played to “Moonlight” from Cats. I laughed so hard at this scene in the theater. They stuff the escape pod with Flerk kittens. Monica, meanwhile, figured out where Dur-Benn is. The Kahns and the last of the Flerkens are taking the ship down. Monica tells them Dar-Benn is at our sun.

 

At the sun, Dur-Ben opens the unstable jump-point and starts siphoning off the sun. Damn.

 

Kamala tells her family she needs to help the other Marvels. They wish her luck, Aamir having the best one, saying she needs to come back because he can’t go back to being an only child, not with these two again. Fury offers to take the Bangle to keep it from Dar-Benn, but Kamala knows they need both to seal the gate. Can they save the day? See the movie to find out.

 

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Post credit scene. Monica, lost in a whole new dimension wakes up to finding her mother, Maria, sleeping wrapped in a blanket watching over her. She’s overjoyed to see her, but it’s revealed this isn’t the Maria she knows, as Hank McCoy aka Beast walks in and explains how Binary here found her. Binary, Maria Rambeau with Marvel-like powers asks who she is.

 

The good. I think Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani have great chemistry. These two play off each other well, partially because I think Iman is as much a Brie Larson fangirl as Kamala is a Captain Marvel fangirl. Teyonah is great as Monica in this, we get that she’s justifiably angry at Carol for being gone so long but still also wants her back in her life. It leads to good drama. Samuel L. Jackson’s Fury is great, and it was fun to see Monah Kapur, Zenobia Shroff, and Saagar Shaikh back as the Kahns again. Their bits were some of the funniest in the whole MCU. I liked the villain’s plan, overall. Using technology that she doesn’t understand to try to fix her dying planet, solid plan with endless ways it can backfire. The effects are great, and I liked seeing the dangling plot thread from Ms. Marvel the show wrapped up with the other bangle being found. Really wondering how the Noor got their hands on one, but maybe Ms. Marvel season 2 will cover it. I give it credit for also being on the shorter side. They could have tried to milk this one, but the hour and a half runtime I think is perfect for the story they wanted to tell here. Also, teasing the Champions or Young Avengers by having Kamala redoing Fury recruiting Iron Man at the end of Iron Man with Hailey Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop? Brilliant.

 

The bad. I think while Dar-Benn’s plan was good, and Zawe Ashton is giving her best, the character herself is pretty bland. Generic angry zealot that’s willing to kill billions to save millions. MCU has done it before and in better ways. I was, again, disappointed that we didn’t get a Bollywood style dance number on Aladna. The set up was there, but they just didn’t go for it.  

 

So yeah, I had fun with this. I think that this one didn’t do so hot as compared to other Marvel films is unfortunate. There’s nothing glaringly bad about the movie. The thing that hurt it is, lets face it, misogyny. This movie has three women leads and the villain is also a woman. There is a loud demographic that’ll hate it and scream about it. I think a bigger factor was the lack of promotion. The whole build up to this movie was during the height of the actors and writers strikes. Really hard to sell people in a movie when everyone tied into the movie can’t talk about it due to union solidarity. Its not amazing, by any stretch, it’s fairly average on the scale of the 30+ MCU projects. The low box office is disappointing as it’ll just convince some suits higher up to not take more chances with women lead Marvel projects. Or so I fear. Hopefully that’s not how it’ll pan out, but we’ll see. So yeah, I had fun with this one, and I hope others did too. Have a good night, everyone. 

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