The Marvels was a forgettable and poorly executed addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It had all the ingredients for a great Marvel movie, including Nick Fury, Space and the nerdy teenager who just got their powers, but it also had next to no emotional development, odd writing choices and no effect on the greater MCU until the baffling after credit scene that was completely undeserved for such an anticlimactic film.
The Marvels opens with Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) destroying the “Supreme Intelligence ”, an AI that runs Hala, the home planet of the Kree. This leads to a civil war between the Kree people as their planet starts running out of basic resources like air, water and light. The Kree leader, Dar-Benn, comes into possession of a quantum band, the same kind of quantum band, or bangle, that unlocked Kamala Khan’s powers in Ms. Marvel. S.A.B.E.R (Strategic Aerospace Biophysics and Exo Linguistic Response) becomes aware of an anomaly caused by this, and Nick Fury sends Monica Rambeau to investigate, as this has messed with the jump point network. At the same time, Captain Marvel is investigating a jump point Dar-Been opened. When they touch them at the same time, Carol, Monica and Kamala all switch places. Whenever they use their powers they switch places again. They end up fighting Kree in Kamala’s living room and destroying much of her house without being able to see one another because they switch places every couple of seconds. After this debacle has ended, Fury and Monica visit Kamala and her family, and when Kamala tries to show them her powers, she swaps places with Captain Marvel, who is flying towards Earth. After Kamala nearly dies, due to her lack of flight-based powers, Monica explains her theory of “quantum entanglement”. Essentially, she thinks that when she and Captain Marvel touched, the jump point anomalies created by an identical quantum band of Kamalas, tangling their powers. Now whenever they use their powers they simultaneously switch places. Despite tension between Captain Marvel and Monica, they and Fury agree to take Kamala and her family up to space. Kamala then goes with Captain Marvel and Monica on a small series of adventures. They save some Skrull refugees, learn how to use their entangled powers effectively and go to a planet that Dar-Benn is attacking by siphoning water to Hala, where the inhabitants communicate solely through singing. As one of the bizarre subplots, Captain Marvel reveals that she is married to the prince of this planet for legal reasons, which leads to a five-minute-long musical sequence. Eventually, the team deduces that Dar-Benn is targeting and attacking planets important to Captain Marvel because she blames her for the decimation of Hala’s resources. They are able to stop her and catch up to her before she can complete her plan of stealing the Earth’s sun, however, she briefly gets a hold of the other quantum band and creates a giant rift in space and time. Dar-Benn is killed by this, and when Kamala gets both bands back, the quantum entanglement has been destroyed. Monica goes into the rift to close the hole but discovers the only way for her to close it is from the inside, which she does, trapping herself in an alternate universe. Captain Marvel goes to Hala to fix what she ruined and uses her power to restore their sun. Kamala returns to Earth and quickly recruits Kate Bishop into the team that will likely become the MCU’s version of the Young Avengers.
The after-credit scene was the only exciting part of the entire movie. Monica wakes up in the alternate universe she closed herself into after the final fight with Dar-Been to the face of her (alive) super-powered mother, who clearly does not recognize her. That is where the camera cuts to Hank McCoy, also known as X-men member, Beast. Beast explains to her that she is in an alternate reality and casually mentions Dr. Charles Xavier.
The fact that Marvel could produce a movie that is so inconsequential to the rest of the MCU, followed by the official entrance of the X-men is astounding and remarkably frustrating. Releasing an unasked-for and boring movie is not made up for by thirty seconds of fan service. The plot managed to be both overly complicated and completely flat. There were moments of tension, followed by emotional monologues by both Captain Marvel and Monica that had next to no build-up or context for the audience to care about. Having watched the first Captain Marvel and WandaVision, the conflict between them that a large portion of the movie revolves around, felt paper thin. There was also at least a solid 15 minutes wasted on a musical sequence and a subplot about Nick Fury’s alien cat’s kittens eating crewmembers of the spaceship to make room on an escape pod. The only moments of desperately needed comic relief came from Kamala and her family. Without her occasional quips and panicking, the movie would have been completely unbearable. In my opinion, the MCU needs to pick one thing to focus on (multiverse, quantum realm, time travel, etc.) and get its act together with the future Avengers movies that will be released. There are too many storylines going on right now, which is why their movies keep ending up with just enough plot to wrap up a few people’s character arcs, but not enough substance to affect anything else in the universe or be worth the viewer’s time. Barely salvaging the movies with a long-awaited deep cut to the comics isn’t going to work forever, and it certainly is not enough to keep the mainstream audience interested. If they don’t get their act together and refocus the overarching plotline, The Marvels may be marking the beginning of the end for the MCU.
