The first teaser trailer for The Marvels just dropped, and the response has been all over the spectrum (get it?). The comments on the official Marvel Entertainment YouTube’s video of the trailer has been mostly positive and excited, while comments on other channels’ reposting of the trailer have ranged from “this is definitely one of the movies of all time” to “this is more proof that the best years of Marvel are behind them” to “this looks like a total mess”.
I’m ideologically opposed to the death of creativity that the Marvel Cinematic Universe perpetuates, but The Marvels looks… fine! I think the central mechanic of the movie’s three leads swapping places every time they use their powers is fun, could lead to some interesting scenes and would make for great fights. Iman Vellani is very likeable in this, though her constant ‘ohmygods!’ might get grating after an hour. There is the flerkin (the cat), Ghost, a fan favourite. The contrast in personalities between the three characters also looks fun, with Vellani’s rookie playing against Brie Larson’s leader and Teyonah Parris’ right-hand woman.
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It’s certainly more interesting than, say, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which waspoorly-received by criticsbecause of its bad writing, alongside everything else about the movie which was bad, which was most of it. The Marvels is colourful, has a Pakistani aunty and uncle (a set-up for peak humour if you’re a brown person like me), and actually seems to have a decent plot. But people hate Captain Marvel for various misogynistic and anti-woke reasons, and throwing a young Pakistani girl into the mix will only bring out the loudest, most racist Marvel fans. There’s always a deluge of“Marvel’s going woke”every time we get a movie that doesn’t focus exclusively on a bunch of white dudes in costumes.
I might actually watch this one, though definitely not in cinemas. There’s no chance that it’s going to be a blockbuster hit – it has far too much stacked against it – but it might still have a better showing than Quantumania or Eternals, just based on the draw of the story alone. Then again, I’m not sure there’s much reason to even keep watching the MCU at all apart from a strong, pervasive feeling of FOMO and maybe sunken cost fallacy. You’ve already invested all this time in the series, so why stop now? If everybody else sees it, will you be the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?
Marvel die-hards might go see this movie out of pure momentum, but overall, it’s still going to be mediocre at best. That’s a shame, butthat’s the nature of the MCU– keep dipping into the same well, and get nothing new from it. It’s also far enough from the main storyline that it’s not a must-watch, it relies on two television shows and a movie to understand it, and weirdos really hate Brie Larson. It doesn’t feature any big, famous talent, apart from K-drama sweetheart Park Seo Joon, who is apparently really pulling in fans although he’s in a relatively minor role.
Let’s just be honest with ourselves – the movie does not look like a total mess. It looks like less of a mess than the only other Marvel movie that’s already been released this year. It’s still going to get hate, despite most likely being entirely mediocre. If we’re going to treat anything with vitriol, let it not be The Marvels which probably won’t deserve it. Let it be the MCU, which does.
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