Kamala and Monica were the humanizing factors for Carol. Remove them and you have something that is rote and paint by numbers.
Spoilers The Marvels grade and discussion
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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Honestly, for an MCU film it was pretty "rote and paint by numbers" anyway, way more then some of the older films that had accusations of that put against them. Like I said I think the movie is fine and I liked Kamala and Monica, but they either needed to be more essential to the plot or Carol needed to take their screen time and have another solo film. As it is its a decent but kind of forgettable MCU film, which to be fair is also how I'd describe GotG v3, which still puts them way above Quantumania at least.
I can't wait to see it again now that's it on streaming.
But the whole point of the movie based around their relationship and how they effect each other, so getting rid of Kamala and Monica complete destroys the entire movie.
Yes she was the best part of the whole thing.
I also finally saw The Marvels this weekend. On the whole, I thought it was good. I was expecting it to be at least entertaining, given those who had seen it said it was fine, but it exceeded my expectations regardless. I liked that they had the discipline to release a short(ish) MCU movie, as it didn't suffer from needless bloat in the same way as a lot of the recent MCU movies have. Better than Quantumania, better than Love and Thunder. Better than Multiverse of Madness. It was...good.
That said, I had several nits to pick:
That said, I had several nits to pick:
- I think the central character dynamic of Carol, Kamala, and Monica worked well until the third act, when everyone has a heart-to-heart that quickly puts to bed any simmering tensions between them.
- Monica needed better shit to do than to spit off technobabble. She was really underserved here overall.
- Kamala's family were overused here in general. I think their use in Act 1 was fine, but Fury taking them up to the space station for no good reason just felt contrived. Not to mention her brother. He played a smaller role in Miss Marvel, and he has a wife anyway who really should have been at least mentioned in passing. He should have just not been in the movie at all.
- Dar Benn didn't work for me as a villain. I think the motivation was fine, but the starting sequence of the movie should have been her flashback to the Supreme Intelligence being destroyed, seeing Captain Marvel from the perspective of a scared child. That would have set up her motivations much better. It's also worth noting that the heroes didn't defeat Dar-Benn - she kamikazed herself, and then they had to close the hole in the multiverse her actions had caused. IMHO this destroyed the dramatic tension in the third act.
- They're still giving Brie Larsen weak material to work with when it comes to Captain Marvel, and writing her kind of inconsistently. She came across as kind of goofy/unsure of herself in some situations here, as if they were trying to do the adorkable thing with her. It came across as overcompensating for writing her in the first movie as stoic half the time, and a deadpan snarker like Tony Stark the other half.
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His wife was mentioned in passing at least once during the first act and she was who he was talking to during the space elevator lift with the unauthorized video (albeit she wasn't seen or heard).
Apologies if I'm misremembering, but I thought she was an adult when the Supreme Intelligence was destroyed?
You're correct. I think he was just saying he would've framed that moment with her as a scared child instead (and at the beginning of the film instead of midway through).
My point is that they could be written out of the film and the only big change to the overall plot would be who closes the space fissure thing at the end. Kamala specifically literally only exists in the movie to introduce her bracelet (nega-band?) into the plot, and it could easily have just been something that was hidden on Earth and Carol had to find. It certainly doesn't "completely destroy" the movie to not have Kamala or Monica, in fact it barely requires a rewrite to remove them.
All that said I'm not saying I want Kamala or Monica removed, I'm saying that they needed to be much more essential to the plot then they were to justify why this wasn't a solo Captain Marvel sequel. I like Monica and tolerate Kamala, they just feel to me like they were added to the plot on a whim and not because they had any real reason to use them in the story, especially Kamala (at least Monica has a direct connection to Carol).
Basically, in my opinion for the film to go from a watchable/decent film to an outright good or great film it either needed those two characters to be written more into the plot, or removed to give Carol more character stuff.
Yep. Not sure how aging works in Kree, but that happened...30 years ago? So Dar-Benn could have easily been a child.
I think this was more intended as a character-based film than a plot-based one, as weird as that sounds for Marvel. The plot is pretty unimportant, it's just there to give an excuse to smash the three characters together and get them to figure out how to work together as a team.
If you did a straight-up Captain Marvel 2 with Dar-Benn and the portals thing, you could have the framework of the same story, but thematically and tonally it would be a completely different movie. A much worse one, IMHO, even if more tightly focused, because it would lose a lot of the levity on display here.
Here is a bit about how well the movie is doing on D+, I just skimmed it but didn't see any specific numbers though:
https://insidethemagic.net/2024/02/...ica-rambeau-mcu-brie-larson-iman-vellani-jh1/
https://insidethemagic.net/2024/02/...ica-rambeau-mcu-brie-larson-iman-vellani-jh1/
Well this film makes secret wars even more useless than it was.. which ..ugh.. seeing a happy Fury was better.
I liked the team up and they worked well together and Iman stole the show are she was genuinely happy all the way though.
But
I'd rather have a Captain marvel sequel with just her .. there is SO mush stuff in the comics for her to do..
Also.. the villian was one note and kind of crappy.. say what you will about the now defunct Jonathan majors but he was a good villian..
I liked the team up and they worked well together and Iman stole the show are she was genuinely happy all the way though.
But
I'd rather have a Captain marvel sequel with just her .. there is SO mush stuff in the comics for her to do..
Also.. the villian was one note and kind of crappy.. say what you will about the now defunct Jonathan majors but he was a good villian..
*Secret Invasion
(But I agree on that point)
(But I agree on that point)
This whole article is just "Here's some twitter users that liked the movie".
Meh. There were a few points in the movie I completely lost track of what was happening. Same Marvel movie we've seen so many times before. Kinda felt like a TV movie with a massive budget. Seemed to ignore secret invasion. Did like Bishop calling out that she's already 23 (the "Young Avengers" already being as old as some of the OG Avengers being a common comment, including by myself).
Already kinda forgetting what I did understand happening in it.
Already kinda forgetting what I did understand happening in it.
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