Oy. What a train wreck.
This film is bad in the worst possible way: It’s embarrassing.
An embarrassing waste of its cast, and a new low for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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| Our heroes — from left, Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) — watch with horror, as this story's Big Bad embarks on planet-killing activity. |
Clearly, she doesn’t.
The so-called script she cobbled together with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik is a mess: unstructured, uneven, random, laced with glaring hanging chads, and sporting a deus ex machina finale that I defy anybody to explain.
Which is a genuine shame, and a lost opportunity. Iman Vellani’s bubbly Kamala Khan was a delightful presence in 2022’s Ms. Marvel limited series, and Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel has been a high point in the MCU since her debut in 2019’s Captain Marvel.
Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau debuted as a little girl (Akira Akbar), niece of Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel), in the 2019 film; Monica reappeared as an adult in 2021’s WandaVision miniseries, during which she gained the powers she’s still learning to control, in this new film.
DaCosta & Co.’s core plot builds on events from Captain Marvel’s 2019 debut, when she rejected her role as a ruthless member of the tyrannical Kree empire, and — wanting to ensure that the Kree never would threaten another world — later destroyed their home planet Hala’s Supreme Intelligence (AI writ very bad).
Alas, that supposedly righteous deed had dire consequences. Hala lost its oceans and breathable atmosphere, and its sun died, leaving the planet in perpetual darkness.
(Why taking out a super-computer would cause such celestial havoc is left unaddressed: merely the first of this script’s woefully under-explained details.)
This Kree therefore vowed revenge on Captain Marvel, whom they dubbed “The Annihilator”; their increasingly dire plight also exacerbated a long-festering war with the shape-shifting Skrulls, whom she helped find a new home world.
The story begins as Kree ruler Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) — known as the Supremor, wielder of a nasty-looking war hammer — finds a long-sought cosmic bracelet that further enhances her powers. A quick cut to Kamala — at home with parents Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) and Yusuf (Mohan Kapur), and older brother Aamir (Saagar Shaikh) — reminds us that this is the twin of the bracelet that gave her powers as Ms. Marvel.
Monica, meanwhile, has become an astronaut/scientist member of SABER, an Earth-orbiting facility commanded by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Dar-Benn’s activities in Kree space have destabilized a nearby celestial “jump gate”; when a space-suited Monica gets too close ... that’s when the fun begins.
The subsequent melee is the film’s sole high point: a clever and exciting skirmish assembled with rat-a-tat intensity by editors Catrin Hedström and Evan Schiff. Captain Marvel’s powers get entangled with those of Monica and Ms. Marvel; whenever two or all three use them simultaneously, they immediately trade places ... even across the entire universe.
The result is three simultaneous and wildly energetic sequences — taking place on the Kree mother ship (where Captain Marvel initially starts), the Khan family’s living room, and Earth-space outside the SABER facility — as all three women pop in and out of each locale, all the while battling Kree soldiers that get caught up in the fracas. (Cue the impressive mess made of the Khans’ home.)
If only the rest of the film lived up to these few minutes.
Dar-Benn plans to create new (unstable) jump gates in order to make Hala habitable again, by stealing the atmosphere, oceans and sun from three different worlds. She begins on the Skrull home world Tarnax; the resulting devastation, and our heroes’ paltry efforts at evacuation, evoke the similarly heartbreaking plight of today’s Palestinian civilians.
(An unfortunate coincidence, since this film finished production long before the current Israeli/Hamas war erupted ... but terrible optics, nonetheless.)
Dar-Benn’s next stop: the primarily ocean world of Aladna, where Captain Marvel sorta-kinda is the princess to the realm’s Prince Yan (Seo-Jun Park) ... and where every glitzily dressed citizen communicates solely by singing and dancing. Suddenly we’re in a bizarre Bollywood-style production number: as clumsy a jump-the-shark moment as I’ve ever seen.
It simply Does. Not. Work.
Aladna’s ultimate fate, after this atrocious, happy-clappy interlude, is left to our imaginations. (Seriously? Did an entire sequence get left on the cutting-room floor?)
And don’t even get me started with what ultimately occurs on Fury’s SABER facility, thanks to Captain Marvel’s feline flerken, Goose: even more silly and preposterous.
Larson, Vellani and Parris try to make the most of this chaos, but it’s an uphill struggle. Vellani’s enthusiastic Kamala is charming, never losing her teenage fan-crush on Captain Marvel, despite these increasingly dire proceedings. There’s also a nice acknowledgement of lone-wolf Carol’s realization that it’s important to have family ties; a warm bonding sequence aboard her ship is well handled by all three actresses.
And, yes; Jackson’s Fury can be counted on for some choice one-liners.
DaCosta’s mostly wretched efforts here notwithstanding, the biggest problem afflicting recent MCU entries is the escalation of powers, and each character’s random strength or vulnerability, as a given scene demands. The Hulk once was the ne plus ultra of raw strength and fury; then subsequent heroes and villains had to be ever-more powerful, resulting in universe-manipulating berserkers such as Thanos; and now we have a character who literally can re-ignite an entire sun. What’s left?
Humanity is lost along the way, with reasonably well-crafted characters such as Kamala overwhelmed by stuff ’n’ nonsense.
The MCU is in a death spiral, with The Marvels even worse than 2023’s already disappointing Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vo. 3.
They should’ve stopped with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame...
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