The original Ant Man cast tends to be the Marvel film most associated with a lack of taking itself so seriously. The jokes, the crew of Michael Peña, TI, and David Dastmalchian felt more like a comedic sketch than a slice of the Avengers puzzle. The film was endearing and contributed to the overall universe building of Marvel’s strategy. As the story of the Multiverse became more convoluted Ant Man lost its appeal. The film tried to maintain some levity, but with the original crew sidelined for a trip to the Quantam Realm, Quantammania felt overdone and disconnected.
This is understandable. The film going community got a healthy helping of Marvel on Disney+ and watching became a task to hopefully keep up instead of a spectacle in theaters. The specialness of Marvel was lost in the downsizing and overload of shows which didn’t quite connect the universe as well.
The arrival of The Marvels hinged on having seen WandaVision and Ms Marvel. Both of those shows were fantastic but placing them behind a paywall meant the introduction to Captain Rambeau becoming a Marvel and Kamala Khan taking the helm as Ms. Marvel meant a lot of people didn’t see those shows.
The opening weekend of The Marvels suffered, not from a bad film, but from the disjointed manner of introducing the main characters and the distance between Captain Marvel and The Marvels. The film was up against a lot. Add in a female, multiracial led film, with a female “villain” in a segment heavily geared towards men and opening weekend was understandably down.
Film attendance isn’t helped by financial constraints. Families have paid for students to come home from college in a few weeks and food prices are through the roof. Combine this with the expectation that movies exit theaters and stream within weeks and the poor numbers for The Marvels make perfect sense. But, don’t think that the film is not good.
If the viewer saw Wanda Vision and Ms. Marvel (Secret Invasion wasn’t really a necessity) The Marvels was perfectly executed. Kamala Khan and her family felt just as warm, funny and engaging as they did on the show. Kamala is very much the Spiderman of this new phase. There is a joy exuded in every scene and while things moved too fast in the film, the family ensemble was the only thing that grounded the film and provided a softness from Brie Larson’s stiff, cold, disconnected Captain Marvel.
Larson’s portrayal is in line with the story, but even when the film lands in Aladna (no spoiler here) as bright and fun as the scene is before the battle, which is still vivid and full of color, Larson is not very charismatic. One down aspect is how The Marvels had to explain through dialogue how Captain Rambeau and Kamala attained their powers.
The end credit opened the door of the Multiverse and delivered an introduction to a long-awaited aspect of the Marvel universe. The film was a good. I found myself head nodding to Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys and laughing whenever the Khan family was on screen. Captain Rambeau was a bit minimized, but she ended up playing an important role for the future films if they arrive sooner than later, but The Marvels is definitely worth the price of admission.
