On Nov 10, Marvel Studios released its thirty third movie, The Marvels, amidst a run of mediocre projects. It’s no secret the MCU has been on a downward slope since the release of Avengers: Endgame, albeit with several great projects sprinkled in the post-Endgame era, but The Marvels just continues a trend of prioritizing quantity over quality.
My problems with this movie are the same problems Marvel has struggled with consistently: pacing, bad villains and an annoyingly long list of media which viewers needed to have watched to understand the movie. The pacing of The Marvels is too fast and with the movie being only 105 minutes (one hour and 45 minutes), everything happens too quickly. There’s no time for any real development to happen to the characters and when it does, it gets fast-forwarded for the sake of pushing the plot along.
Secondly, the villain is bland and provides nothing but a character for the heroes to fight. Marvel has always had this problem with bad villains, especially in their heroes’ solo films, yet they keep making the same mistakes. Oftentimes, Marvel villains either have no real reason for the audience to root against them, or they are not compelling enough to make the audience understand their motives and both apply to the villain here.
Marvel fans will still probably like the film because there is still a fun movie to be seen if you go into it with low expectations and a lack of critical thinking. Another thing fans will still enjoy about the movie is the general world-building that goes on in the film, adding to the expansive universe Marvel has already mapped out, but that’s half the appeal of these movies anymore.
However, my biggest gripe with this film is how inaccessible it is to the average viewer. I understand this is a cinematic universe where, ideally, everything connects in Kevin Feige’s grand vision. However, think of how many people won’t understand half of this movie’s background information considering the audience has to have watched two Disney+ miniseries, a full length Disney+ show and a movie from 2019 just to understand basic plot elements. Adding everything up comes out to 15.5 hours of content just to understand a one hour and 45 minute motion picture.
Overall, I give The Marvels a 4/10 for good performances from the main cast, a fun musical segment, a lackluster villain, poor pacing and general inaccessibility for average audiences. All of this culminates with the best part of the movie being a CGI cat. The Marvels is currently showing in theaters nationwide and should be released on Disney+ in the coming months after it leaves theaters. If you want to keep up with future developments in the MCU, their Twitter can be found at @MarvelStudios.
