The Marvels has arrived in theaters and the writing is on the wall: this one isn’t doing so hot. The critics haven’t cared for it, the box office is very disappointing and it’s not going to be a good ride, probably. But I don’t care about any of that. I very much enjoyed this film and had a good time at the theater!

Movie Rating: 8/10 – Very Good

I am an unrepentant Marvel fanboy. I have enjoyed pretty much all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe output, with probably Secret Invasion being the only stinker in my opinion. I was prepared for The Marvels to live up to all of the negative hype, but it was a blast! It was funny and entertaining, and well worth a short, breezy watch. I have never missed an MCU movie in the theater and I’m not about to start anytime soon.

Join me after the jump for my full thoughts on The Marvels. Expect FULL SPOILERS for the film. And feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

6. A very enjoyable film

I had a lot of fun with The Marvels. It’s a very breezy movie, as I said above. Very light in content and tone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’ve got three great lead characters, and then they’re sent on a fun space adventure. They fight a bad guy, have a small musical number, learn about one another and then kick bad guy butt. The jokes are really funny, and not too in your face. The drama is just dramatic enough. The stakes are big, but also low key. And I really, really enjoyed the cameos.

I can tell the editing was a bit overdone. And I suppose the villain doesn’t really leave a big impression. The finale battle with Dar-Benn is over rather quickly. But these are mere nitpicks for an otherwise very good film that I very much enjoyed watching. I firmly believe most of the dislike levied at The Marvels is due to people eager to see the MCU fail. Like Ken Brockman reacting to the Poochie episode of Itchy and Scratchy. So nuts to the haters. I very much enjoyed watching The Marvels and don’t have any major complaints.

5. The three leads were the best part

Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Iman Vellani easily make the movie and carry it around with them the entire time. I liked all of them from their previous appearances, and they work so very well together. They bounce off each other nicely and have an easy, entertaining chemistry. The movie doesn’t delve too deeply into their personal connections, but there’s enough to hang a movie on. I would have liked more of their camaraderie to have come out in the third act, but again, that’s just a minor nitpick. They were all stellar heroes and a lot of entertaining to watch together. I think the switching places thing was a weird choice, in general, for a plot…but it’s far from the weirdest comic book plot in the world. And it served the purpose of keeping all three of them together.

4. Especially Kamala Khan

Ms. Marvel is a great comic book character. Iman Vellani was the perfect casting for the live action role. Her TV show was one of the best on Disney+. And she’s great in the new movie. Vellani is a true star and a delight on screen, fully inhabiting the character and just being an entertaining person to watch. I think her costars were also entertaining, so she wasn’t alone in carrying the film. But she was great nonetheless. And I really, really hope we get a season two of the Ms. Marvel show sooner rather than later.

And, obviously, I was super excited by that Young Avengers scene at the end of the movie.

3. The cat scene is sublime

The scene where the flerken are eating the SABER officers, set to the song Memory from the musical Cats, is perfection. That was straight hilarious from beginning to end. I’m not sure why the flerken also couldn’t eat the Khan family…but that’s neither here or there. It was a funny scene, came at the right moment, and really tied all the storylines together nicely at that point.

2. I would have liked more

I’m no expert on cinematography or anything along those lines, so I can’t exactly explain or even really understand how choppily this movie was edited. I’m just going to trust all the better experts when they say that’s what happened. The director, Nia DaCosta has said she wanted to keep the movie under 2 hours, which is fine. I don’t need all Marvel movies to be 3 hours long. But I could have used some fleshing out of various scenes. Like, what happened to the water planet? They just abandon all the people we just met. And I thought the trailers showed a bigger dance number. Why didn’t we get that? And the ending could have used more scenes of the main three interacting more, just talking through what they were doing in defeating the villain. Some scenes could have used more fleshing out and more character interactions, is all.

1. I don’t want the X-Men to come from an alternate dimension

The mid-credits scene was amazing. Thankfully, I wasn’t spoiled, so seeing Beast just walk into scene and be a full character was awesome! But he’s voiced by Kelsey Grammar, and he looks like classic cartoon Beast. He also exists in an alternate dimension, that Monica traveled to at the end of the film. This is not how I want the X-Men to join the MCU. I don’t want the FOX X-Men movies to transfer over. I don’t want the X-Men to be a fully formed superhero team in an alternate universe that gets merged with the main MCU. I want Marvel to be smart enough to come up with a way to bring them in organically to the existing MCU, and I want the fandom to be cool with it. Impossible, I know. But alternate timeline X-Men is such a dumb idea.

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