You Look Marvel-ous?

Entertainment media is currently serving up a lot of stories about the low-earning opening weekend of The Marvels. But it looks like most of the people in my social media sphere saw it, so... wanna compare notes?

The Marvels is billed partly as Captain Marvel 2 and partly as Avengers 4.5-or-something, but what it really feels like is the sequel to the television series Ms. Marvel. That show was a bit uneven, but was enjoyable overall -- and most especially for the effervescent enthusiasm of its star, young Iman Vellani. That's exactly what this movie is: a bit uneven, but enjoyable overall -- with Iman Vellani being undeniably the best part.

One great challenge of the "superhero teamup" movie is trying to blend the different tones of the solo characters into one that makes sense. The Marvels approaches this mostly by making every other previously-seen-in-the-MCU character drift toward the tone of Ms. Marvel. And the movie is absolutely better for it. The MCU hasn't really been very fun (at least, on the big screen) for some time. It either hasn't tried to be (the dour and dull Eternals) or has been trying "too hard" (the candy-sweet Quantumania). But The Marvels centers a character who's just delighted to even be there at all, and allows the other characters to meet her in that emotional place.

Without that willingness to just "find the joy," we wouldn't have a movie with not one, but two major music-oriented sequences. (All apologies to James Gunn, but the second sequence takes the title of the most inspired "needle drop" ever in the MCU.) We wouldn't have a movie where the typical incoherence of a visual noisy fight sequence is somehow turned into an advantage, thanks to the core conceit of the plot. We wouldn't have such great "normal people in fantastical situations" sequences, as the movie finds a way to use even its non-powered characters in fun ways.

But while the movie is fun once it gets going, the setup is rather nonsensical. First, the villain's dual motivations to be a savior and exact revenge don't mesh well; she'd have a much easier time at the former if she weren't hell-bent on the latter. Second, the loose explanation for how the core three heroes are brought together works well enough for two of them while failing to explain at all how the third became involved.

The ending makes even less sense. It's a parade of things happening "just because" (because it's now time for the movie to end); the moment that problems become complications for the writers and not just the characters, they just magically disappear. Still, the biggest issue with most MCU climaxes is that they revolve around epic battles with impersonal stakes -- and this, at least, is not that. CG still abounds, of course, but the final showdown doesn't sprawl out of control.

So overall, I'd give The Marvels a B+. Surely, the low box office performance is going to make a bunch of people gather in a room somewhere to diagnose "what went wrong." I hope those people don't draw the wrong conclusions.