After I left the theater with my nieces upon watching The Marvels, I asked them to give me their thoughts on the film.  I specified that I wanted something beyond the generic, explaining that simply saying something along the lines of, “I thought it was good,” is not really an opinion.  I sweetened the deal by telling them I will include what they have to say in this review, which I will later do.  For now, the gist of their words on the matter are that they found it to be fun.  I agreed with this sentiment.  They, like many of my family and friends, think I dislike every movie I see, and thus were shocked to hear that I enjoyed it.  While it is true that I can be critical, as I have said about the quality of other pieces of cinema, I am an idealist and I want what I see to aspire to something better.  Concurrently, I perceive a stereotype around such stances, conflating morality with a lack of humor.  The Marvels is not Lawrence of Arabia (1962), thankfully, but it manages to strike a balance between light-hearted and serious that made the overall experience enjoyable.

There is one immediate knock against The Marvels that had one of my nieces asking in the opening scene as to what is happening, and it is that it is helpful if you have seen the Disney+ Marvel series related to this production.  I prefer films to stand on their own, but reserve the right to withhold this critique if I am at least entertained.  The pertinent shows here include WandaVision (2021) and Ms. Marvel (2022).    The former will help you later in understanding Captain Monica Rambeau’s (Teyonah Parris) abilities, but the latter is specifically referenced at the start when Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), the latest ruler of the Kree Empire, finds one of the Quantum Bands.  She has sought out this piece of powerful jewelry since Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), known the universe over as Captain Marvel, destroyed the Supreme Intelligence (Annette Benning), their computer overlord.  Because of this, the Kree home planet Hala has been dying, and Dar-Benn believes the bands will help restore her world.  The idea here, and it is best not to think about this too much, is that they allow her to open up holes in space and time, steal natural resources from other parts of the universe, and drop them unto Hala.  Monitoring the power anomalies these efforts produce is Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), doing so from a space station orbiting Earth.  When the surge is detected on the planet where Dar-Benn locates one of the Quantum Bands, he sends Carol to investigate given their established history from the previous movie.  Again, not my favorite narrative device, but I digress.  At the same time, Captain Rambeau, an old associate of Carol, is working on the same space station as Fury.  She notices that a jump-point (how people travel the vast distances between stars in Marvel) is behaving strangely, and goes to take a closer look during a spacewalk.  This is where having watched WandaVision would help.  In the same instant, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), the newly minted New Jersey superhero known as Ms. Marvel, sees her Quantum Band, the twin of the one Dar-Benn possesses, begin to glow.  Somehow, this all means that their powers became intertwined, teleporting them to wherever one of the other two is located whenever they are activated.  It also means three different things going on simultaneously, which would be tedious to completely describe.  The basic gist of all this is that they get sucked into each other’s situations, meaning they must alternate fighting bad guys in vastly different areas of the galaxy.  It takes some figuring out on each other’s part before they realize what is going on and manage to land in the same spot.  This happens to be where Carol had been busy fighting Dar-Benn’s henchmen a few solar systems over, to say the least.  They also learn a few things from this confrontation.  The first is that the constant switching places whenever they use their abilities makes it difficult for them to fight.  Secondly, Dar-Benn’s use of the band makes her on par with the great Captain Marvel, who is the strongest person in the known universe.  This is proved when they attempt to stop her from taking the atmosphere of the refuge world of the Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting aliens that Carol has been protecting for decades.  It demonstrates to our three heroes that they need to learn to work together, which they spend some time doing while also attempting to learn about Dar-Benn’s plans.  They are successful in divining their adversary’s next move, a water planet where Carol became a princess in the un-filmed past.  What goes less well is their attempt to stop her, which is to say that Dar-Benn is able to take all the water from another planet and transfer it to Hala.  What is worse is that they know Dar-Benn is targeting places that have significance to Carol, meaning that Earth is next on her list.  Captain Rambeau, Carol, and Kamal return to Fury’s space station in time to evacuate it.  They then head to finally put an end to Dar-Benn, which they do, but not before she manages to tear a hole between dimensions that threatens to break down barriers between realities.  To mend it, the other two blast Captain Rambeau with the energy she needs to accomplish this task.  Unfortunately, it means that she gets trapped on the other side, and is lost to Carol and Kamala.  With the day saved, Carol gives the Louisiana home owned by the Rambeaus to Kamala’s family, but not before using her powers to restore Hala’s sun.  Meanwhile, Kamala travels to New York where, in the final shot, she recruits Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), the new Hawkeye, to be a part of a team . . . but that is apparently for a future movie.  There is also a mid-credits scene featuring Captain Rambeau waking up in a universe where her mother is alive and seemingly a part of the X-Men.

There is one key element missing from my description thus far of The Marvels, and I will let my nieces explain it to you. My eldest has this to say: “It was a very very good movie.  It was very funny and fun to watch.  Me personally I thought the cat squid things were the best part of the movie.”  Her younger sibling echoed these sentiments, “I thought this movie was so good.  I thought this because [it] was so funny and funny entertaining.  I also loved the cats that [ate] people.”  You may have noticed that there is no mention of cats in my previous paragraph.  Technically, there are no felines in the movie.  Rather, there are creatures called flerken, who look like our common household pets, but have tentacles that spring from their mouths and bottomless pits for stomachs.  There is something to be said here about why my nieces would be drawn to these monsters and the nature of sequels.  I do not know about you, but one thing that annoys me when it comes to the second iteration in a franchise is when they attempt to be too much like their predecessor.  Yes, Captain Marvel (2019) had a flerken in it, and the Kree and Skrulls played a role.  Further, I also took my nieces to see the 2019 installment, and they were less moved by it, probably because it had far fewer flerken in it.  How do you make the next one better?  Have more of an original idea from the first in it.  I never thought I would be laughing hysterically as dozens of tiny flerken kitties ran around a space station devouring the crew for their protection as I did in The Marvels.

Speaking of being entertained as I was with The Marvels, I find that the more I enjoy a film in this manner, the less I take notes.  In this case, the page I began on my phone to jot down my thoughts remained blank.  This can be problematic as I use this to orient my Catholic perspective on a given movie.  Also, when I have a tough time doing so, it usually means that I was so offended that I did not bother to write anything about it.  In this case, I am having difficulty thinking of anything deeper beyond the selflessness of our protagonists.  Yet, let us examine the word “superhero,” a label for which all three of our main characters qualify.  They each have their moment when they are willing to put themselves in harm’s way for the benefit of others.  Christianity’s first commandment, as Jesus says a few places in the Gospels, is to love God above all people and things, including yourself.  That is an automatic selflessness, a call to give yourself to something bigger than you.  It is through that love of God that everything else flows.  The next commandment Jesus iterates comes back to us as individuals, but extends to everyone around us.  He tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  It is in seeing the actions of the title team through this lens that you can see God at work, never mind their abilities.  They are trying to save others, and our willing to risk their lives to do so.  They also do not seek the destruction of their enemies to do so, and there is a telling scene where they attempt to reason with Dar-Benn at the end.  If we take this logic into our own lives, and practice what Christianity preaches in this regard, I believe the world would be a much better place.

With recent Marvel productions, there has been a sense that they have been fumbling around to try and find a new identity.  I am not sure if The Marvels establishes a purpose for the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).  Whatever it is that it does, I had a good time watching it do it.  I think you will have the same experience.