The Marvels

After freeing herself from the tyrannical control of the Kree, and helping the Avengers save the galaxy from the genocidal agenda of Thanos, Carol Danvers, the space-faring superhero known as Captain Marvel, has been busy trying to keep the cosmos safe. But when unintended consequences of her actions create a vengeance-driven villain bent on wreaking havoc across the stars, her attempts to stop the wicked wrongdoer causes her powers to become entangled with two other superheroes.

But!

Before we get into the film itself, first we need to go over a bit of nerd history that maybe you won’t give that much of a shit about, but too bad, so sad, it’s my Substack, so we’re gonna talk about it…

The Original

The original Captain Marvel was published by Fawcett Comics in 1940, created by artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parker. Young Billy Batson, upon speaking the magic word "Shazam!" (An acronym that stood for: Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury, the gods and heroes of legend who are the source of his superhuman wisdom, strength, stamina, power, courage, and speed), lightning strikes, and he is transformed into the adult superhero Captain Marvel.

The character went on to become the most popular comic book superhero of the 1940s, outselling even Superman comics. He was also the first comic book superhero to ever be adapted to film, appearing in the 1941 Republic Pictures serial, Adventures of Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel being so popular really chapped DC comics’ ass, as they were the publisher of Superman, and finally in 1953, they sued Fawcett, claiming a copyright infringement, alleging Captain Marvel to be a rip-off of the big blue Boy Scout. DC buried Fawcett in legal fees, and in the end, Fawcett surrendered their rights to the character and its universe to DC. DC shelved Captain Marvel for years, and eventually integrated him into their own comic book universe, alongside names like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Flash, and Aquaman.

Cut to years later… the modern era, and the Age of the Superhero Movie, where Marvel beats DC to the silver screen with their own very popular version of Captain Marvel, establishing the name in the public eye. This is pretty much why DC officially changed the character’s name to Shazam, in order to differentiate him in his movies from the already established MCU movie version.

I suppose it was a smart move to change the name. Trying to hold onto it would’ve been a losing battle, but their decision to change the name to Shazam is really stupid, as it means the character can no longer say his own name without either turning into Captain Marvel, or back into Billy Batson.

So dumb.

DC went on to make a pair of movies about “Shazam.” The first was okay, but the second was truly awful, and it bombed. Also the star is generally an unlikable asshole—even more so than Chris Pratt, but for the same basic reasons—so that last terrible film was probably the last time the Normal People World will ever see the original Captain Marvel.

Au revoir, Big Red Cheese!

Meanwhile, across the street from the DC Comics office…

The first Captain Marvel for Marvel comics was an alien warrior from a race called The Kree. He was named Mar-Vell. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan, he first appeared in 1967. He was a military officer of the Kree Imperial Militia sent to observe Earth, with an eye toward the Kree eventually conquering the planet. Mar-Vell ultimately defies the Kree Empire, and is branded a traitor.

From then on, Mar-Vell protected Earth from all alien threats.

At one point, he was revamped to do a body-swapping thing, as a nod to the original Captain Marvel, between him and the official groovy teen/gopher/cheerleader of the Avengers, Rick Jones. A few years after that, Mar-Vell developed inoperable cancer, which is a hell of a thing to do to a comic book character. Somebody in comics must have really hated him, probably because of his stupid helmet hair. That’s why I hate him. Anyway, his death was chronicled in Marvel's first large-format graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel, which was published in 1982.

After that, there were at least a half dozen different characters to carry the name of Captain Marvel. A couple of them were humans, but mostly they were all aliens of various races, some from alternate futures, and a few with secret agendas.

The seventh and current Captain Marvel is Carol Danvers.

Created by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan in 1968  as a girl sidekick to Captain Marvel, she was known as Ms. Marvel for a long, long time.

She came into her own eventually, especially after Mar-Vell’s death, joining the Avengers. Then, for an even longer time, Carol Danvers was dead, after having been weirdly killed in a fight between the Avengers and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, when the mutant power-leech Rogue lost control her powers and consumed Carol, which gave Rogue super-strength and flight, and also, her guilt over that death drove her to join the X-men and become a hero. It wasn’t for years later, for vague narrative reasons that are still unclear to me to this day, that Rogue decided to journey through the Siege Perilous, a kind of hand-mirror/dimensional portal thingy, and as a result, she and Carol Danvers were separated, which allowed Carol to return to life in the Marvel Universe.

These kind of things happen fairly regularly in comics…

Then, in 2012, two things happened for Carol Danver’s new series, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by Dexter Soy, that finally allowed Carol to be all that she can be. The main thing was that she finally assumed the mantle of Captain Marvel, which was a long time coming and well-deserved, but it was the second thing that was a true stroke of genius…

They finally gave her pants.

She was now safe to do high kicks.

But within this whole rigamarole of Kree warrior legacy that dominated the character known as Captain Marvel, there was also a human named Monica Rambeau.

Created by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr. in 1982, and originally based on Pam Grier, Monica Rambeau was outside of the whole Kree legacy/cosmic powers thing, having gained her super powers after being bombarded by extra-dimensional energy produced by an energy disruptor weapon, as you do. She’s long been a mainstay of the Marvel Universe, if not a star, having led the Avengers at one point, and has also appeared on other teams regularly, including Nextwave...

It’s pretty obvious at this point that she was only named Captain Marvel as a place holder so that DC comics wouldn’t be able to claim sole possession of the name, as it was eventually taken from her to return it to the whole Kree legacy thing. This led to Monica joining the small club of awkwardly codename-less characters as she tried on and discarded a series of generic codenames like Photon, Pulsar, and Spectrum, on and on, a litany of garbage names that didn’t stick.

She’s pretty cool though…

And then there’s Kamala Khan.

Created in 2013 by editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson, and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie, Kamala Khan is a teenage Pakistani-American from Jersey City, who became Ms. Marvel after her idol, Carol Danvers, decided to take on the name Captain Marvel.

She has body-morphing abilities, meaning she can stretch like rubber, kind of like Stretch Armstrong, which is maybe the grossest power ever. Luckily, the MCU version has different powers, where she is a latent mutant who uses a magical bangle, given to her by her grandmother, to create pink-glowing constructs out of hard light, meaning she can make crystal weapons and shields out of thin air.

Kamala is not only Marvel's first Pakistani-American Muslim protagonist with her own comic book, she’s also one of a select few of new characters who not only stuck around after her debut, but become an A-list name. This is a very exclusive club that includes names like Wolverine, Deadpool, Harley Quinn, and Miles Morales. It’s not something that happens often, Wolverine debuted in November 1974, just to give you an idea of how rarely this happens with new characters.

She’s basically the new Peter Parker for a new era, the most popular current version of that classic comic book archetype, the modern-day teen with “real world” problems whose life isn’t made any better by gaining superpowers.

And her show streaming on Disney+ was fun and cute and charming, which only made her more popular as a character.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m sure you’re saying, thanks for the info, but that’s a buttload of comic book jibber-jabber, Jon… what about the movie?

That’s a fair question, I have gone on for a bit…

If you’ve been here a while, you probably already know my oft-stated position on comic book movies, probably from when I mentioned it in the other MCU movies I’ve reviewed here, films like Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Iron Man 3, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Simply put… I like them.

A lot.

To me, the films of the MCU really are the best version of your basic mainstream Hollywood action/sci-fi/fantasy matinee pic. They’re generally fun and funny. They do the kind of cool shit I like. I’m into the costumes and powers and all that kind of stuff, especially when it’s recognizably rooted in the source material of the comics, of which I am a big fan. I love how the films overlap, connecting in a big web of stories, and the culmination of The Infinity War and Endgame films was so satisfying. I loved it. Plus, the films of the MCU have the notable and actually pretty laudable bonus feature of being character-focused, often creating cinema icons that people love, which is obviously a big part of why they’re so successful.

Now, there are some people out there who complain about all of that stuff I just gushed about. It really grinds their gears that it is what it is. Yes, it’s fair to say that these films are nothing but fluff, but the people who act like being fluff is some kind of inexcusable failure unique to the MCU are all people who have already decided that they hate this stuff in general, usually because films like this are something not aimed directly at their own interests, and yet, despite this, other people continue to like the films. This really sticks in their craws. As a result, whining about how much they hate these films, how victimized they are by the films’ very existence, becomes their whole personality, so they seek out the conflict, they seek out the contrarianism. They interject into strangers’ discussions.

It’s weird and tedious, but that’s nerd fandom and movieheads in a nutshell.

Weird and tedious.

I’m not saying that this kind of weirdo butthurt is unique to MCU haters either, it’s not, especially amongst nerd fandom and movie heads, but the point is, these people are always thumbs down, whether they’ve seen the latest film or not. It’s never about engaging with the art, it’s about their agenda, and it’s pretty easy to recognize at this point. You’ll recognize it by the immediate frothing lip spittle and escalation of tone whenever the subjects comes up.

So be aware of that kind of shit.

To me, after decades of hanging out in these fandom spaces, making that kind of thing your entire personality seems to be the haven of intellectually lazy privileged babies. I mean, just stop paying money to see them, if you hate them so much, you stupid assholes…  Now, these folks might counter, and claim that I basically do the same thing, but on the pro-MCU flip side of the coin. If that makes them feel better, that’s fine with me, but keep in mind, I’m not saying these films are the best things ever, just that I enjoy them.

This is my very long way of saying… I was totally into The Marvels.

Of course I was. It was a blast. It’s not my favorite MCU film, but of the thirty-plus films that make up that shared universe, it’s in the top half. It was a good time. But I understand if you might want to take that with a grain of salt.

Still, I had a great time.

It was fun, charming, and quick moving. The cast was great, especially our three heroes. Iman Vellani, who plays Kamala Khan, really is fantastic. She could be the lynchpin of the whole next phase. The action was good, the designs were great, and the stakes were well-defined. Plus, the story has a good link to the rest of the MCU, and I really love how they’ve been expanding the Cosmic/Space end of the MCU, at the same time they’re bringing street-level heroes forward too. Bottom line, it was all around fun. I also loved that Kamala’s bangles turned out to be the Quantum Bands, a mention that definitely means something to comic book nerds, but… I’ll save the rest of you from my digressing down that particular rabbit hole at this point, you’ve already put up with enough from me in this review.

Also, there were tons of space cats, so I definitely loved that.

I will say that the villain, Dar-Benn, was one of the blander ones. I can understand why they go for less flashy villains in some of these film, they want to showcase the heroes more, but still… this is Captain Marvel’s second bland villain in a row now, so I’m really hoping they give us a better foil in the inevitable capper to this trilogy.

That is… if there is a third film, as The Marvels is the first MCU film to really underperform at the box office. Some folks might try to claim that the crown belongs to Ant-man 3, but that film had the eighth largest grossing domestic box office of the year, over John Wick 4, Creed 3, and the latest Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, the Fast and the Furious, Transformers, Hunger Games, Scream, The Flash, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Some folks will point to this, the first film in a 30-plus mega-franchise to somewhat underperform domestically, as proof that the Superhero bubble is finally burst. That could be true. Me, I lean more toward the fact that COVID isn’t over, despite what the easily duped dipshits and bootlicking slaves to “the economy” want you to believe, and certain industries have just never fully recovered, and movie theatres is one of those industries. I used to take days off to schedule mutliple movie watches in a single day at the multiplex, but I haven’t been in a movie theatre since February of 2020, and I have no plans to return. But to be fair, that’s not just because movie theatres are an airless hotbox of other people’s rank COVIDy mouth funk, but also… movie theatres kind of suck. Unless you go to certain boutique theatres with certain likewise movie-focused crowds, the chances are that your presentation will suck, the facilities will suck, and your experience will suck as it’s interrupted by assholes who can’t hear, assholes who can’t whisper, asshole who apparently came to the movie to talk about their day with their friends, assholes who are incapable of staying off their phones, assholes who brought their bored, dumb, loud children, and also… just plain assholes, are pretty high, and the workers are definitely not paid enough to give a shit either. It was a problem before COVID, and as the effects of the Pandemic impact the movie theatre industry, it’s only gotten worse, and the cost more dear. This terrible experience will most likely cost two adults, seeing an evening show and having snacks, somewhere around $60. Where’s the value?

Hmmm… Lot of shit grinding my own gears today apparently…

Anyway… so, who knows. Hopefully there’ll be a third Captain Marvel. Kind of like a lot of things these days, we’ll have to see what happens in a few years, maybe it’ll be armageddon, or maybe it’ll be a rose garden. In the end, all that really matters here is whether or not you enjoyed the film or art or whatever, and me? I did.

Basically… if you like the MCU, then you’ll enjoy this one.

Otherwise, as a last little nerd-out to finish off my admittedly somewhat excessive ramble… the film ends with Kamala showing up at Kate Bishop’s house, talking about putting together a team, and I can’t pretend like I’m not excited. It may never come to fruition, but there’s no doubt that the MCU is already filled with potential young heroes, most of whom show up in the comics as part of the Young Avengers.

A new team? A disparate group of heroes and wild personalities drawn together by fate and circumstances and the ill deeds of nefarious villains, forcing them to find a way to work together so that they can save the world?

This is the kind of shit I love.

Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel. Kate Bishop, the new Hawkeye. Riri Williams as Ironheart, the new Iron Man. The Scarlet Witch’s twins, Tommy and Billy Maximoff as Quick and Wiccan. Kid Loki. Skaar, the son of the Hulk. Cassie Lang as the size-changing hero Stature. The dimension-hopping ass-kicker America Chavez. And Eli Bradley as Patriot, the grandson of the original Captain America.

That’s already a great team.

And that’s not even mentioning Thor’s hammer-wielding daughter, Love. Or the Black Panther’s young son, Toussaint. Or Phyla-Vell, the young girl on Rocket’s new team of Guardians of the Galaxy.

There’s a myriad possibilities out there, my friends, and I, for one, am excited to see what may come of them.