The Marvels

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://www.firstshowing.net/2023/review-nia-dacostas-the-marvels-is-a-solid-mid-tier-mcu-movie/ "The Marvels is a film that showcases some of the well-known strengths and weaknesses of the MCU. It struggles with script and editing issues that hinder its narrative cohesion and character depth, besides an unnecessarily short runtime that doesn’t help its villain. Fortunately, it excels in its ensemble cast and their chemistry - Iman Vellani is the clear MVP - creative action set pieces, impressive visual effects, stunning costumes, and well-timed humor, which all together push the movie into safe harbor. Nia DaCosta offers a light, entertaining superhero blockbuster that may fall short of greatness, but leaves room for improvement in future installments of the franchise." Rating: B

When Kree ruler "Dar-Benn" (Zawe Ashton) unearths a powerful bracelet, she unleashes a power in it's sister being worn, decoratively, by the enthusiastic but a bit annoying "Kamala" (Iman Vellani) and next thing we find chaos ensues. It appears that her new powers connect her to "Danvers" (Brie Larson) and her slightly estranged cohort "Rambeau" (Teyonah Parris). When they use their powers they find themselves transported into each other's shoes - causing mayhem all over the place, especially at the family home of the rookie superhero who is as yet unaware of just quite how powerful her shiny amulet is. "Dar-Benn" is out for revenge. After "Danvers" destroyed the AI that controlled their planet, it has gone into terminal decay and so she decides to reinstate her world by stealing the atmosphere from one world, then the water from another - where they only speak in song, so perhaps no great loss - before deciding to borrow the sun from Earth to reinvigorate their own failing star. With a little help from "Nick Fury" (Samuel L. Jackson) the three have to galvanise their powers and focus on thwarting this dastardly design before it's too late. Now there is nothing even remotely original in this. It's all join the dots Marvel adventure with the usual pyrotechnics, spectacular visual effects and thinnest of stories. The denouement is never in doubt and actually feels rather rushed after a first half hour of repetitive combat scenes that don't draw breath but don't really entertain either. Larson is a natural actor (she reminds me a lot of Grace Kelly) but nobody here really has much by way of dialogue to work with as we see this film manoeuvred into the path of another franchise that it would appear destined to join with next time. Barbra Streisand makes a surprise (vocal) appearance during quite an innovative scene herding cats and simultaneously saving people, but I found the rest of this to be same old, same old and though shorter than we are used to, it's still all a bit old hat. Looks good, but I doubt that you'll never remember it.