REVIEW — “The Marvels”

A follow-up to 2019’s Captain Marvel, Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios’ The Marvels is a light, fun, and freewheeling fangirl-powered space adventure.

The action gets going rather quickly and rarely lets up; a refreshing pace for often overburdened MCU entries. The sequel picks up immediately after the events of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, where Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) mysteriously crashes into the closet of her No. 1 fan Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), switching places with the superpowered teen in the process.

The film also incorporates S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), who herself was juiced-up with cosmic-powers in Disney+’s WandaVision. While spacewalking on a mission overseen by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Rambeau gets thrown into the mix with each Marvel, switching places with one another whenever they use their powers.

The trio are place-switching due to an entanglement with their powers caused by the film’s MacGuffin: a quantum wristband found by Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) that matches the one worn by Kamala. Together, the Marvels must wrangle the power-absorbing bangle from the Kree baddie before she opens up wormholes and untangles the universe.

You see, instead of being there on Earth for her young “niece” Monica and her best friend Maria (Monica’s ailing mother), Captain Marvel was out defending the galaxy and using her powers to thwart perceived threats on distant planets. One such threat was the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence. However, destroying it was a bad call that resulted in the death of that planet’s sun, the asphyxiation of its people, and the destabilization of the universe, setting Dar-Benn on her quest for revenge against Captain Marvel.

Can the ladies harness their powers and work together to become a marvelous team? Well, of course they can. However, their episodic journey to get there often feels a bit sporadic as it shifts between scenes of fangirling, sing-speaking, codename-workshopping, escape-podding, cat-herding, and butt-kicking. All the jumping around can be jarring; yet, these femme fatales are clearly having a blast, which keeps the energy up and the audience invested.

Fresh from her own Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, the real-life fan-turned MCU scene-stealer, Iman Vellani, makes her big-screen debut as 16-year-old Jersey City-native, Kamala Khan. Vellani is a revelation. She elevates every scene she is in with her expressive face and natural comedic timing. Parris once again shines as Rambeau and acts as the film’s emotional core, and Larson’s Danvers softens into a much more playful and endearing hero in this installment. Meanwhile, Jackson delivers another signature performance as the unflappable, no fs-given Nick Fury.

Directed by Nia DaCosta, the high-flying action adventure also includes a promising Young Avengers tease as well as a mid-credit set-up for the anxiously awaited introduction of some X-citing Fox-Marvel characters. Well worth the price of admission. 3/5

Rated PG-13 with a runtime of 1 hour and 45 minutes, The Marvels opens in theaters on November 10, 2023.