Week-to-Week: The Marvels is everything wrong with the MCU (and a lot of fun)
History will remember it as the end of an era, but the narrative's a bit more complicated
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Note: Given the evidence available, I’m guessing not everyone has seen The Marvels, so I’m going to avoid spoilers.
I’ve seen every recent installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the Thursday before it opened, but The Marvels was an exception. And no, it wasn’t because of a lack of interest—I was out of town for a conference on Thursday, and waited until I was home on Sunday night to see the film.1
And there’s no sugarcoating it: we arrived at the mall multiplex to find a mostly empty parking lot, no concession line, and probably about 20 people in an 8pm Dolby Cinema screening. Even if I hadn’t seen the headlines about a series-low opening weekend at the box office, the facts on the ground told the story.
Or rather, they told “a” story.
What’s struck me most about the postmortem to The Marvels’ poor performance is how many stories are playing out at once. There’s the “homework” narrative, where more casual fans are drifting away from the MCU after feeling like they fell too far behind in an interconnected story; however, there’s also the alternate issue that Phase Four struggled to articulate meaningful connections between most of those films and TV series, generating no momentum in the wake of Endgame. How can the MCU be both too connected and not connected enough? Probably the same way that fans who have become invested in the extension of the MCU on Disney+ are also being conditioned to simply wait the extra 45 days and watch the movies in the comfort of their home where they’re enjoying shows like Ms. Marvel.
It’s a fitting discursive moment for a film that is also, by its design, trying to be many things at once. It’s ostensibly a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, insofar as its (thin) villain is directly inspired by actions Carol took in response to the events of that film (although the fact we only learn about that in flashbacks in this movie is a problem). It’s also a followup to both Kamala and Monica’s television stories in Ms. Marvel and Wandavision, respectively—this is especially true in Kamala’s case, given that her family makes up the bulk of the supporting cast and her bangle gets MacGuffinized in the villain’s plot. And by the end of the film, The Marvels is also revealed as a direct building block for at least two future MCU plans, with Kamala and Monica both encountering characters that will play a role in the franchise’s future.
I’ve seen some discourse that The Marvels’ failure relative to Captain Marvel’s huge box office run is tied to its choice to not simply focus on making it a sequel to that film, but that is an extremely unserious position to take. First, Captain Marvel’s success is deeply connected to its place between Infinity War and Endgame, when huge audiences were eager to do homework—its performance was not replicable in a different climate. However, the other problem is that while Endgame may have encouraged Captain Marvel’s success, it didn’t actually give Carol Danvers any meaningful momentum. The one thing The Marvels isn’t is a true followup to Endgame: while projects like Hawkeye and Wandavision used the immediate aftermath of that film to tap into the wealth of narrative within, you’d barely know that Carol was even involved.2
In addition, the period nature of Captain Marvel—yes, a movie set in the ‘90s is “period” now, I’m mad too—creates a similar problem that Captain America faced, but this time there’s no Bucky to solve it. Dar-Benn is technically serving the same role here, a threatening premise that forces our hero to face their past, but there’s such a huge difference between “best friend you thought died but was really being reprogrammed as a killing machine” and “random woman who you dropped a building on when you were raging out against a supercomputer that was tied to a pretty forgettable villain in the first place.” I suppose we can’t say for sure whether a true sequel to Captain Marvel would have faced this problem more successfully, but I’m not convinced there was really enough material to support one, so I’m not shocked the brain trust looked at the situation and said “let’s bring in Kamala and Monica.”
Another part of the discourse around The Marvels has been the response from people who did see the film: it’s the latest MCU film to earn a “B” Cinemascore, which was unheard of before Eternals back in 2021 but has now become a pattern alongside Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder’s B+. Now, Cinemascore is not a serious metric, and I don’t really place much credence to it. However, as I left the film, I was curious to hear how it had scored, because it reflects a very particular audience of people who are choosing to see MCU films in the first weekend. This used to be a larger group, but a huge part of it has been siphoned off—as noted above—either because they’ve fallen behind on the Disney+ content or they’ve shifted to Disney+ as their primary engagement with the franchise. And when you combine that with the general decline in “generic” moviegoers, the people who generated that $46m opening weekend were probably the toughest crowd this movie was going to face.
And so as far as The Marvels goes, I’m far more interested in how “normal” people respond to the film when they hear the word of mouth and make it to the theater sometime in the next few weeks, or catch it when it arrives on Disney+. Because—I know I’ve buried the lede here—I thought The Marvels was a lot of fun. As someone who liked Ms. Marvel and Wandavision, I appreciated getting to spend more time with Kalama and Monica, and the buddy comedy vibe as the three worked out their interconnected powers was an enjoyable way to spend 100 minutes. And while it’s true the film is “burdened” by MCU connections, it never feels like it—I refuse to accept that anyone who didn’t see Ms. Marvel won’t be immediately won over by Iman Vellani’s enthusiasm, and while Monica’s character is stuck as a bit of a buzzkill there’s a basic emotional strength to her reunion with Carol that sells the situation. And even if this is ultimately a pretty thin Carol story, I like the lighter version of the character Larson discovers in this new environment, and it’s certainly an improvement for Nick Fury as well after the disastrous Secret Invasion.
And so while I may not know how the opening night crowd responded to it, it seemed to be on the wavelength of the Sunday night group I saw it with. And really, this movie is perfectly situated for that more casual fan—I can see how it could disappoint the diehard Thursday/Friday crowd, and I know the connections to projects you haven’t seen might be a barrier, but I really think families looking for an option over the Thanksgiving holiday are going to settle on The Marvels and have a darn good time at the movies. Whereas Thor: Love and Thunder was a tonal misfire, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was kind of a slog, I’d argue The Marvels is mostly pretty good at being the movie it wants to be.
Is that movie perfect? No. Does that movie embody many of the crises facing the MCU project writ large? Absolutely. But the way it’s problematically positioned nonetheless creates a fun time at the movies, and perhaps the central problem with the MCU is that they’ve forgotten about this primary goal.
Episodic Observations
It will be interesting to see where Disney lands on the theatrical window for this. With the holidays upcoming, there’s an argument that it could find its audience in theaters similar to Elemental, which tripled its opening weekend with strong legs in the summer. But Disney has also historically liked to use the Christmas holiday as a time for ritualized viewing, and so a Christmas/New Year’s launch would be within the 45-day window that they’re contractually obligated to. I imagine a lot will depend on how it performs over Thanksgiving.
The criticism that the version of Nick Fury here has almost no connection to the Nick Fury of Secret Invasion—which happened before this, we are left to presume with no clarity—brings us back to the stupidity of Marvel creating films and TV shows tied together where no one was even attempting to create continuity between them; the same thing happened with Wandavision and Multitverse of Madness. However, given that Secret Invasion was bad, and the funnier Nick Fury here is good, I wasn’t mad about it. The MCU reckoning is going to create a lot of films/series that get retroactively turned into “Marvel Spotlight” projects, and that’s fine by me.
Disney doesn’t do “Top 10” rankings or anything like it, and I doubt Nielsen is really able to pick up on it, but I’ll be interested to see what viewership of Ms. Marvel looks like this month. Whereas it felt like Wandavision was a real cultural zeitgeist moment, Ms. Marvel really wasn’t, even though I’d argue it holds up better than most of the Marvel TV projects (benefitted by being an origin story).
I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, since evidence strongly suggests lots of people who will enjoy this movie didn’t make it to theaters this weekend, but I will say that I was a bit disappointed when AMC’s popcorn bucket promotion for The Marvels basically spoils a key part of the climax? Like it’s not a huge problem, but it’s a fun element of the story that I figured out ahead of the film because of the concession stand marketing.
As far as non-Marvel goes, I enjoyed the first two episodes of A Murder at the End of the World enough that I’m going to keep caught up so I can avoid spoilers when editing Alex’s reviews, which is maybe my highest endorsement? I know the first two episodes being an hour long will delay getting us all on the same page, but Alex’s reviews will be waiting for you, and he even wrote them separately so you can read one and then come back to the second for the discussion after.
I won’t be able to get to a formal review of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters ahead of its Friday debut, but as contributor Noel Murray—who’ll be back to cover Fargo next week—pointed out in the comments of my last newsletter, the first two episodes really take their time articulating the overall arc of the story. I’ll probably write next week’s newsletter about the premiere, and about the dynamics of a franchise-extending series in the same moment where the MCU is buckling under the impact of *checks notes* overextending itself with franchise-extending series.
I went back into my records, and best I can tell the last film I didn’t see on opening day (Thursday or Friday) was Ant-Man and the Wasp, which I saw on Saturday night.
I suppose technically speaking the fact that Monica was blipped means that the film is a followup to Endgame, but that’s pretty thin.
Me really only tuned into Ms. Marvel to see how many Jersey City locations they used (me moved out here when Sesame Street got to gentrified), and me was won over by Iman Vellani and watched whole thing. (Fun JC location fact: while Kamala's' high school is based on real JC high school, they used elementary school for establishing shots because it have parking lot across street where it presumably easier to set up cameras)
And me went into Marvels with low expectations, even knowing so much of anti-hype was just angry nerdbros, and me thought it was very fun night out at movies. But me agree it felt like lot of flashbacks were to Captain Marvel 2 movie that we not get to see.
Me would argue that problem with Captain Marvel as character is that she both overpowered, and not have demonstrable character flaw like Tony Stark's arrogance or Thor's insecurity or Banner's unease with being Hulk. Carol determined and kind of closed off. Which make sense for Air Force pilot who had memory erased, but it not that much fun to watch. So pairing her with someone incredibly fun to watch make perfect sense.
And that kind of sum up whole movie. On one hand, you have genocidal world-ending plot. On other hand, you have tentacle cat and planet where everyone sings. And me have seen reviewers complain about those wild shifts in tone, but me thought DaCosta handled those well — it stopped movie from being either too leaden or too frivolous. Best Marvel movies (and maybe just best movies full stop) manage to be very dark and very funny, sometimes at same time.
I had a blast with The Marvels and have been so disheartened by the discourse, which talks *around* the movie a lot, but not *about* the movie. And the movie was incredibly fun! Yes, there was some wacky stuff in there, and not all of it worked, but the humor was great, the relationships between the three were great, the action was great, and Iman Vellani (and Kamala's family) stole the whole thing. Ms. Marvel is one of my favorites of the Disney+ shows precisely because it feels like a breath of fresh air and I felt that here, too. It's such a shame more people won't see it because of the dreaded Discourse.
I do think both The Marvels and Captain Marvel were hamstrung by a bad story choice: wiping Carol's memory. In the first movie it left her blank, giving little for the audience to hook into in the character, which is a real problem when we should love our lead. It's mystifying that they continued with that here, not restoring her full memories. Yes, part of this is Brie Larson, sorry to say, but they could easily have fixed this problem and just...didn't. And her lack of memories wasn't even relevant to this story! Bizarre.
Still, I think The Marvels will be one of the movies that will be an enjoyable rewatch on its own (a la CA: TWS) unlike a lot of these. I'll see it again!