The Marvels Review

The Marvels is finally out. This is something that I have been waiting for a while now as the release date was delayed. There is always hate on the internet but I am very happy to say that haters on the internet are very very wrong. This movie was fun and sweet and the most like phase 1 & 2.

Let’s be very clear that there will be oh so many spoilers in this review so if you have not seen it yet then stop reading and come back. This is your only warning.

My overall impressions of the film were great. It was funny. It was fun. And it was the most cohesive film we’ve gotten out of phase 4 (with the exception of Guardians 3 of course).

One thing that I really appreciated is that the humor didn’t feel forced. There were no jokes for the sake of jokes. Everything was true to the characters and situations we were given. All of the funny was very organic and that is something that is refreshing for the MCU as of late.

I LOVED the character interactions in this movie. Kamala getting to meet her hero Captain Marvel was very sweet. But it was also very real, she has a few moments where she realizes that her hero might not be everything she hoped she’d be. But then Carol really lives up to expectations. And then we have Carol and Monica. These interactions make me cry. Monica has some animosity towards Carol because she went off world and never came back, and Carol was terrified to come back because of the death she’d caused. Monica reminds her that family doesn’t waver so easily and we got this really beautiful moment between them.

One of the best parts of the movie is that you didn’t need any additional context. Ms. Marvel and WandaVision are fun additional watches but they aren’t necessary to understand this story. The writing does a great job of giving the audience exactly as much as they needed to know without being too expositional or making the audience feel like they were missing something.

Literal hours before we went to see this movie I was complaining that phase 4 had done everything to set up the Young Avengers but had done nothing with it. AND THEN at the very end of the movie we had Kamala Khan pop in on Kate Bishop to ask her to start a team with her. Now I really love the way they did this in the MCU. Kamala is that kid that’s just happy to be there. So her being the one to go to the other kid superheroes and start her own team. It was also super adorable.

And of course we have to talk about this end credit scene. Not only do we get to see Maria as Binary but we get the introduction of the X-Men. The X-Men is something most of the fan base has been waiting for with baited breath, but the question has been how are they going to introduce a whole new sector of superheroes without retroactively making the previous phases suck. Well the only real answer seems to be the one we’ve settled on, they exist in an alternate reality.

Overall I give the film an 8.5/10. The only real flaw in the film is that the end could have been a little more fleshed out and we could have taken a little more time with it. I appreciate that Nia DeCosta wanted to keep it under 2 hours but I don’t think the audience would have even noticed if it was 10 minutes longer. The other thing I really need to mention is that it actually felt like a comic book movie BECAUSE Kelly Sue DeConnick (otherwise known as the savior of Captain Marvel) was a consultant. You should absolutely be consulting with comic book writers when writing comic book movies. That is why the movie was so good.