On Nov 10, 2023 Marvel’s newest film ‘The Marvels’ made its debut in theaters. This movie is the sequel to the original ‘Captain Marvel’ film released in 2019 and continues the story of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Similar to most productions of the franchise, it is full of action packed adventure, lovable and powerful characters, and is sprinkled with moments of comedic relief. Unlike other Marvel films, ‘The Marvels’ has struggled significantly and has faced harsh criticism since its release.
On its opening weekend, the film brought in $47 million, making it the worst performing movie the MCU has released in 15 years. Although it is generally considered to be a highly successful film due to the income it brought in, most films released by Marvel make hundreds of millions of dollars on its opening weekend, making ‘The Marvels’ a flop of the franchise.
Since the franchise launched, it has become one of the most successful franchises to be released on screen, having its productions set new records performance wise. If this is the case, why would a film from this franchise perform so poorly?
Over the years, as Marvel continued to release new films, most were accompanied by a variety of spin-off series following the events of the movie. An example of this can be seen in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and the mini series of ‘Hawkeye’, ‘WandaVision’, and the new film ‘Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’. These productions follow the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame’, setting up new characters and storylines within the franchise.
Going back to the question, why did this film perform so poorly? The movie is centered around Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel), Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), and Monica Rambeau being thrown together after a ‘Jump Point anomaly’ was caused by the main antagonist, Dar-Benn, ripping open holes in the fabric of the space-time continuum, which in turn caused the three’s powers to connect to one another. This is after Captain Marvel destroys the main villain, Supreme Intelligence, in the first ‘Captain Marvel’ movie sending Dar-Benn’s planet, Hala, into chaos by destroying the energy of their sun, causing Dar-Benn’s need to save Hala.
The three ‘Marvels’ team up to stop Dar-Benn from destroying other planets in order to save her own, despite their powers being connected. As they face Dar-Benn throughout the film, throughout many of their main encounters, there are moments filled with comedy when faced with a serious situation, offsetting the plot as a whole. There are also a lot of jumps in setting, not fully letting the viewer settle before the next event occurs.
At the end of the film, the Marvels defeat Dar-Benn, saving the universe from collapsing, and restoring order in all other planets, at the cost of Monica Rambeau, who ‘sacrifices’ herself in order to seal the holes made by Dar-Benn. At the end of the movie, Captain Marvel saves Hala by using her powers to power up its sun again, saving the people of the planet. By doing this, it defeats the purpose of Dar-Benn setting out to save Hala when the solution was in front of her the whole time, and therefore rendering the movie cliched. At the end of the credits, it is shown that Monica ultimately did not sacrifice herself, but instead traveled to another universe where a spin-off franchise of Marvel, the X-Men, resides. This is most likely to set up and introduce these new characters.
As a personal fan of the MCU, the movie was disappointing compared to previous films, seeing that it was mostly made to satisfy fans and further the plot of the franchise in order to get to the next point, not diving into the events and characters as deeply as others. While the actors performed well, it felt as if their characters didn’t have any true motive to fight for their cause, and they were put together in order to follow the Marvel comics the best of their ability, further trying to satisfy fans of the comics.
‘The Marvels’ can be seen in theaters, and will later be put on Disney+ once it has made its trip through theaters. Rated PG-13, it runs for a total of 105 minutes.
