The Marvels review: A warm, endearing and relatively low-stakes adventure

At the onset, let me declare that The Marvels brings together such a number of crossovers, it could be dizzying to those uninitiated into the ever-expanding labyrinth that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first time Captain Marvel made it to screen, finally, was a solid ten years after the launch of the MCU with Iron Man (2008). It was also the first time the MCU had a standalone film for a woman superhero. The Marvels picks up strands from Captain Marvel (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and TV series such as Ms Marvel (2022), WandaVision (2021), and Secret Invasion (2023), to give you a superhero women-led racially inclusive team up. 

There is Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) herself, the teenager Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) in her big screen debut after a successful series-run on Disney+, and Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) whom we last saw as a child in Captain Marvel. The three women have similar powers that allow them to bend light and various laws of physics. 

The battle between the alien races the Skrull and the Kree we saw in Captain Marvel has now reached critical point. Carol’s actions on the Kree home planet of Hala in her debut film has caused catastrophic damage to the environment. To them, she’s no hero. They remember her as “The Annihilator”. Out of this carnage rises a fanatic would-be saviour of her people Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). Dar-Benn is determined to restore her planet to its old glory, and for that she’s prepared to destroy the time-space fabric of the universe. Her attempts also have a bizarre effect on Carol, Kamala, and Monica, who are teleported to each other’s locations (even if it’s in outer space) every time one of them uses their powers. The only way out: team-up and beat the angry alien lady laying waste to the universe. 

Amid all this, Monica, who is the daughter of Captain Marvel’s late best friend, has grown up to resent her Aunt Carol whom she blindly adored as a child. Kamala is meanwhile still the Captain Marvel superfan we love from the Ms Marvel series. She’s still busy protecting Jersey City with her powers and locking horns with the very particular kind of ‘extra’ness that only South Asian parents seem to practise. She now has to help stop the universe from collapsing in on itself.

Kamala’s Pakistani-American heritage was explored well in the Ms Marvel series. At the heart of this young mutant superhero’s story was the bloody history of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition. In a comic book and superhero movie industry that is predominantly composed of white male characters, Kamala’s live-action debut was a solid move towards inclusivity. Though Marvel Comics’ attempts at diversity and representation isn’t a recent development, it is primarily the success of Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) directed by Ryan Coogler that enabled such diverse stories to translate to the cinematic realm. With The Marvels, the MCU finally has a film directed by a Black woman. 

Like Ryan Coogler, The Marvels’ Nia DaCosta is a young director, who came to direct a MCU movie with only a handful of previous films to her name. But both their work represents necessary fractures in American movie-making. DaCosta’s previous film The Candyman (2021), co-written with Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope) is as much a bloodcurdling example of good horror movies as it is an ode to the Blaxploitation era of Hollywood. Her Candyman was a spin-off of the 1992 film of the same name. 

The Blaxploitation era refers to a specific period in Hollywood filmmaking of the 1970s, its echoes apparent in the 80s and early 90s as well. As the Netflix documentary Is this Black Enough for You?!? (2022) dryly observes, films from the Blaxploitation era, or Black-exploitation era, starred and were directed by Black people. But these films were made on shoestring budgets by big Hollywood studios. The studios hoped to make money off Black audiences who did not see much representation of themselves on screens, without investing much into it. But Blaxploitation films would rupture, radically, the way lead male heroes and Black women were shown on screen. Across genres, from supernatural horror to pot-boiler crime thrillers, the era produced work that would go on to be heavily co-opted by white directors, who did not have to similarly grapple with budgetary restraints. 

DaCosta’s Candyman took on the weight of this history and it would, even in the midst of stomach-churning horror, highlight the overlaps between gentrification and race in Chicago. It would ask you to rethink how supernatural urban myths are born, and what victims of race or gender or any other marginalisation are at the hearts of these myths. 

With The Marvels, the director does not attempt to bring up such heavy subjects. In fact, despite the universe-ending threat presented by Dar-Benn, the film doesn’t really make you feel like the stakes are particularly raised. This aspect isn’t singular to The Marvels either. Across the MCU, films and series seem to be struggling with villains who don’t manage to carry much menace about them, though all of them seem determined to blow up the universe with a starting point on earth. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), both struggled with similar problems, for example. 

Since Thanos (Josh Brolin), last seen in Avengers: Endgame, it’s becoming harder to take the villains seriously in each new MCU production. Coogler superbly circumvented this flaw by building a self-contained Black Panther universe with two excellent antagonists — Killmonger (Michael B Jordan) and Namor (Tenoch Huerta), both of whose angst is rooted in the real-world wounds of enslavement and imperialism. DaCosta tries something different. It’s okay if the stakes don’t feel high. The story is really of three women, forcibly united by their powers. Each of them also has to battle their own demons.

Of all the things to love about Kamala, and there’s a lot which I’ll get to in a minute, the best is that she’s a nerd. She loves her artwork and her superheroes. She squeals with excitement to be part of a new adventure. Kamala is each of us who grew up happiest when sequestered safely in fantasy and science fiction worlds. Kamala is the kid for whom the ultimate nerd fantasy — of the mysterious wizard who will send you on a magical quest or the strange superpowers drawn from an ancient object — really came true. The Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland offer similar sentiments, but it feels different when the character is not white. 

Kamala mumbles ‘bismillah’ before fighting to protect her fragile planet. Her father offers Islamic prayers in the midst of a chaotic ride from outer space to earth while Nick Fury (an ever-sauve Samuel L Jackson) throws in an ‘amen’. A mix of Urdu and English flows easily between her family and Kamala. She wears her Muslim identity with all the endearing joy and confusion of a teenager growing up to decide whom she wants to be. In our universe, where the threat has never been higher across the world for Muslims, The Marvels is a precious counter to all the Islamophobia. 

Iman Vellani has already proved herself the perfect live-action Kamala Khan in her own series. She doesn’t disappoint in The Marvels either. Her bring-100-percent-enthusiasm-and-social-awkwardness-to-every-scenario take on Kamala remains thoroughly enjoyable. 

Brie Larson appears a little out of her comfort zone in the many comedy tracks that all Marvel movies seem to demand. Carol’s hand in the literal apocalypse on Hala is never properly addressed and is brushed away with a little too much convenience. As is Monica’s anger with her honorary aunt. After all, from Monica’s view, Carol abandoned her and her terminally-ill mother to go off and be an inter-galactic superhero. Again, her anger is hurriedly packed away for the sake of the story. 

In both regards, Carol’s race adds to making us feel as if there are different rules when you’re white, even if you’re the first woman superhero in the MCU to be marketed the way Captain Marvel has been. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) series, featuring Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), at least made a commendable attempt to address similar flaws in a white male hero like Captain America. Hopefully, future iterations of Captain Marvel will pursue these concerns as well. 

The Marvels is, all things considered, a wonderfully fun film. The stakes may not be very high, but the sheer energy of the actors and the joy of seeing Black and brown women celebrated so lovingly on screen, make the film impossible not to like.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.