I rolled out of bed after a rough night of bad dreams, threw myself together as usual, took my meds, and as I realized I’d put on one of the two Captain Marvel t-shirts in my closet then thought about things for a moment, a plan emerged for my day: I’d go see The Marvels.
In a movie theater. I’ve not been in a movie theater since… early 2020. (That was for Birds of Prey.) My decision process went something like:
- The movie’s been out for a little bit now, and the reviews are… mixed. (No, I’m not going to dig into how much of that is the same type of dudes as last time hating on a supers movie about ewwww, girls.) I don’t care about the reviews themselves but I care about the odds that the theater won’t be busy.
- I’d be aiming for a mid-week matinee, which should also help keep the crowd levels down.
- I could wear my Flo Mask which is the best face covering option I have available and is the… least uncomfortable for long duration use.
- This would get me out of the apartment for a few hours, and boy do I need to do that more. (My original plan for this vacation week involved outdoor photography hikes, but the “atmospheric river” nixed that idea entirely. Sigh.)
I arrived a bit earlier than intended (I walked from apartment to cineplex) and sat around in an empty silent theater for a while. (Regal doesn’t do quite as much repetitive pre-roll nonsense as they used to, or maybe it’s just midday matinees that escape the worst of it.) After a couple of loops through a set of a few terrible TV commercials and some movie trailers (none of which, come to think on it, I can remember at all other than the new Aquaman)… the main event commenced.
So, enough preamble: How was the flick?
Whoops, more preamble: I enjoyed the first Captain Marvel movie. I enjoyed the WandaVision TV series type thing (during which the character of Monica Rambeau gains her powers). I (mostly) enjoyed the Miss Marvel TV series type thing. (Look, “prestige streaming show” stuff is weird, okay?) Thus was I well-primed with the basic information I needed about the three lead characters going into this film. I point this out now so you understand that someone who hasn’t “done the Marvel homework” might have a wholly different level of enjoyment from mine. And that’s valid!
Anyway: How was the flick?
Fun. It was fun.
Our introduction to Kamala in this movie involves her daydreaming, shown to us via animated doodles, about getting into adventures with her favorite hero, Captain Marvel. The tone’s being set. We can relax in the knowledge that this is first & foremost meant to be a light-hearted romp. While it doesn’t always remain so, and there are a few heavy moments that get kind of glossed over in a weird way, this mission statement generally holds true for the almost-two-hours of runtime.
My first thought after exiting the cinemaplex was that this truly is a comic book movie, through and through. Which, yeah, duh, it’s a Marvel movie, what did I expect? But I mean that at the core, The Marvels is an adventure yarn which operates on comic book logic and comic book priorities. That’s not a complaint! “Does what it says on the tin” is what I hope for out of an adventure yarn, after all. You have an antagonist who wants to do bad things (from our heroes’ perspective) and our heroes need to stop those bad things. Our heroes also need to work out some interpersonal baggage, solve some puzzles, and learn to work effectively as a team. The puzzles and situations and solutions are pure comic-book-y goodness and don’t try to go any deeper than necessary to move events along.
That’s not to say it lacks any heart or depth, just that the movie chooses to never let any single event bog down the wheels of plot motion. I think some of the hand-waving is a bit glib and a couple of events feel like they should have been given a bit more downtime for processing. Also, a big revelation near the end is less “shocking” than it is “yes, the audience has been thinking this for a while now, Carol” and… hmm. (Keeping this light on spoilers, let’s just say that the primary antagonist’s motivations are kinda valid? Yeah.)
I’m not sure how it could’ve been handled better without turning the whole film into a somewhat grimdark installment, which is not what I wanted so I’m glad it’s not what I got. So… eh. Your mileage may vary.
The plot itself is… well, comic-book-y. But that’s not why we’re here, no. We’re here to watch Kamala Khan (the perfectly cast Iman Vellani) and her family (who I’m glad are brought in from the Miss Marvel show, as they’re so important to who Kamala is) deal with interplanetary superpowered shenanigans at the side of her lifelong hero Carol “Captain Marvel” Danvers and the heroine without a codename, Monica Rambeau, and the fact that the movie riffs on the codename thing is hilarious if you know at least a bit about the character’s print history. Oh, and Nick Fury’s here, because Sam The Man and his superhero-class snark levels are always welcome.
Also, Goose. I gotta mention Goose.
In other words, I’m here for the characters and this movie delivers. It’s just so much fun! Everyone has their moments, the two Marvels (and Monica) quickly settle into a great groove, and on the whole this is everything I could’ve asked for from my first movie theater experience in nearly four entire years.
Also there’s a dance number, which on paper seems like it should be terrible, and yet.
I’m not wild about the way the obligatory final showdown plays out, since it seems to ignore actual stated, cogent advice regarding a certain plot element and it also takes an obvious, well-worn set of plot steps that I kept hoping they’d subvert expectations on, but… well, you can’t have it all, sometimes. Everything works out in the end, more or less, and that’s how that goes.
The tail end of the movie proper calls back to a very specific early MCU moment and it’s a delight on several levels. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Is it a great movie? Eh. It’s a fun movie, and the wobbly or rough bits aren’t enough to drag it down. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and if you enjoyed any or all of the previous MCU installments featuring the primary trio of characters, you probably will too.
Now, about the “credits cookies.” There’s one right after the main title sequence (which Marvel always puts at the end of the movie instead of up front, and I still have very mixed feelings about that), and nothing in particular afterward. There’s… a momentary sound effect at the very end of the actual credits roll but it’s not something you desperately need to stick around for. (It’s basically kind of a joke.)
But… that main “credits cookie” is either a really big hook into a really big part of Marvel comics that, ahem, we haven’t seen in the Em Cee Ewe up to this point or it’s a gigantic red herring. Fun, though. I do recommend sticking around for that, at least.