'The Marvels' Unites Marvel's Large and Small Screen Heroines
Marvel Studios may have finally figured out how to work Disney+ shows into cinema offerings.
By Jason Goldman-Hall
Marvel Studios may have finally figured out how to work Disney+ shows into cinema offerings.
By Jason Goldman-Hall
It seems a bit off-target to praise Marvel Comics’ most powerful Avenger, a fighter pilot with the (at times literal) power of a star, for being grounded, but that’s exactly what I appreciated most about my absolute favorite superhero, Carol Danvers, and her latest outing, “The Marvels,” the first film in the cinematic track of the MCU to actually use and rely on the lower-stakes TV offerings.
At its heart a story about legacy, expectations and found family, “The Marvels” teams Carol (Brie Larson) with her biggest fan, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), who goes by Ms. Marvel, and her “niece,” Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). They face off with a fairly generic Marvel villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) as she plots to steal vital resources from other planets to bring life back to the desolate planet Hala, in a fiendish plot lifted directly from Mel Brooks’ classic “SpaceBalls.”
The movie has been divisive on the Internet, predictably angering and alienating the angry Youtuber demographic and entertaining comic fans and readers. But its real strength, which Carol also has to learn to do throughout the course of the movie, is how it leans heavily on its connections to the smaller heroes from Disney+’s “Ms. Marvel” and “WandaVision.”
Up until this point, the MCU’s actual use of the TV shows has been shoddy. We got incredible character development (and, I’d argue, a fairly complete arc) for Wanda Maximoff in “WandaVision,” and then she goes full Thanos and starts decimating realities in “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” to reclaim her family. The tone of the series, a mashup of classic TV sitcom tropes, was also completely abandoned.
In the same film, while “What If…?” had given us a powerful “heartless” version of Doctor Strange, “Multiverse” went with new, original evil Stranges.
But “The Marvels” actually gets it right. The Khan family’s down-home roots are still celebrated, their home in New Jersey serves as a set piece multiple times, and they later play integral roles, while preserving the humor and heart of their show, in the film.
On the same note, Monica Rambeau who debuted in 2019’s “Captain Marvel” as a child primarily played by Akira Akbar, is once again the brave scientist she was in “WandaVision,” a sort of government lifer with the drive to succeed in her job.
The creators of the film even make sure, as the Russo Brothers did with their massive “Avengers” films, to create scenes that echo significant elements of the stories that came before. Kamala, who witnesses the trauma of her family’s forced exile to Pakistan in the latter episodes of “Ms. Marvel,” is confronted with the need to save refugees from danger in one of the first major peril scenes in the film, and her reaction to the decision made by Carol speaks to the lingering impacts of that experience.
Monica also gets her echo scene, where she, once again the brave scientist, fearlessly approaches a malfunctioning space warp point and once again has her powers and body altered by the impacts of that contact.
And so although “The Marvels” didn’t give me the dark, gritty, war-torn cosmic movie I wanted for Carol’s second outing, it flew where its predecessors only stumbled, and showed that the MCU’s offerings, in any format, can form a tight, cohesive story.
At its heart a story about legacy, expectations and found family, “The Marvels” teams Carol (Brie Larson) with her biggest fan, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), who goes by Ms. Marvel, and her “niece,” Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). They face off with a fairly generic Marvel villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) as she plots to steal vital resources from other planets to bring life back to the desolate planet Hala, in a fiendish plot lifted directly from Mel Brooks’ classic “SpaceBalls.”
The movie has been divisive on the Internet, predictably angering and alienating the angry Youtuber demographic and entertaining comic fans and readers. But its real strength, which Carol also has to learn to do throughout the course of the movie, is how it leans heavily on its connections to the smaller heroes from Disney+’s “Ms. Marvel” and “WandaVision.”
Up until this point, the MCU’s actual use of the TV shows has been shoddy. We got incredible character development (and, I’d argue, a fairly complete arc) for Wanda Maximoff in “WandaVision,” and then she goes full Thanos and starts decimating realities in “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” to reclaim her family. The tone of the series, a mashup of classic TV sitcom tropes, was also completely abandoned.
In the same film, while “What If…?” had given us a powerful “heartless” version of Doctor Strange, “Multiverse” went with new, original evil Stranges.
But “The Marvels” actually gets it right. The Khan family’s down-home roots are still celebrated, their home in New Jersey serves as a set piece multiple times, and they later play integral roles, while preserving the humor and heart of their show, in the film.
On the same note, Monica Rambeau who debuted in 2019’s “Captain Marvel” as a child primarily played by Akira Akbar, is once again the brave scientist she was in “WandaVision,” a sort of government lifer with the drive to succeed in her job.
The creators of the film even make sure, as the Russo Brothers did with their massive “Avengers” films, to create scenes that echo significant elements of the stories that came before. Kamala, who witnesses the trauma of her family’s forced exile to Pakistan in the latter episodes of “Ms. Marvel,” is confronted with the need to save refugees from danger in one of the first major peril scenes in the film, and her reaction to the decision made by Carol speaks to the lingering impacts of that experience.
Monica also gets her echo scene, where she, once again the brave scientist, fearlessly approaches a malfunctioning space warp point and once again has her powers and body altered by the impacts of that contact.
And so although “The Marvels” didn’t give me the dark, gritty, war-torn cosmic movie I wanted for Carol’s second outing, it flew where its predecessors only stumbled, and showed that the MCU’s offerings, in any format, can form a tight, cohesive story.