To recap, my position on
The Marvels at the end of 2023:
1) I'm definitely not seeing it in the theater, but
2) I'll definitely see it if it streams on Disney+ before my ranking deadline, which it did not, which is okay because
3) I'm feeling kind of backlashy toward Brie Larson, for reasons that may be valid but might align me with people I don't want to be aligned with, and besides
4) Not seeing it would allow me to finish watching Ms. Marvel on Disney+ before I see it.
But really, what I worried people thought when I didn't rank it was "He just doesn't want to see it cuz there's girls in it."
People who know me know that's not the case, but I'm thinking about all those people who don't know me.
So to atone, I watched it last night on International Women's Day.
It's only been a tradition for me to watch a movie to celebrate International Women's Day for one year. Last year I finished off my best picture nominees by watching Women Talking, which hadn't yet been accessible to me on my ranking deadline, and that experience had a good ending. I say "ending" because I thought the start of that movie was stilted, but I came around on it pretty strongly by the time it reached the finish line.
No such finish for The Marvels, but I will say that it also went up for me a half-star by the end. Unfortunately, instead of that getting it up to the four stars Women Talking received, it got it up to only 2.5.
The Marvels has been streaming on Disney+ for about a month now, and considering that I've watched two 2023 best picture nominees as well as one other 2023 film that wasn't nominated for anything, the lid was officially off the prohibition against watching movies from the previous year in the wake of closing my list. In fact, I'd already been eyeing it for a viewing for several weeks now. Once a Marvel die-hard, always a Marvel die-hard, I guess -- even after consciously acknowledging that Marvel movies don't carry the likelihood of success with me that they once did.
The thing is, there was one thing holding me back: Finishing Ms. Marvel, as I said n point 4 above that I intended to do.
To recap that one, we started watching it as a family not long after it debuted in the middle of 2022. But after about two episodes, the kids admitted they weren't drawn in by it. My wife and I were disappointed, but not enough to continue watching it on our own after they went to sleep for the night.
I did try to pick it up again last month, to prepare for the Marvels viewing that I didn't care enough about to prioritize a viewing in the theater. I guess that was too much preparation for too many things I didn't care enough about. A pause of 18 months fatally sapped my interest in finishing Ms. Marvel. I'd watch halves of episodes before either falling asleep or moving on to something else, and in the halves I did watch, even though I watched them consecutively in terms of the narrative, I felt myself confused about what was happening.
And then I realized a simple thing: I'm not in a place right now to be a Marvel completist both in terms of Marvel television and Marvel movies. It's enough to be a Marvel movie completist, which I am again now. Stuff may have happened in Hawkeye and Secret Invasion and She-Hulk that has some bearing on these movies, but I've gotten by without watching those shows. Ms. Marvel would just be the same.
And in truth, the only thing I probably needed to know that I didn't get from three-and-a-half episodes of the show was that Kamala Khan did indeed come into her powers and that the members of her family survived the experience. Which is what I would have guessed before I watched one minute of the first episode.
Okay let's get back to this movie.
It's fine. I have no interest in getting all hatery and saying how it's a disaster. It's competently made and I didn't find the characters grating in any way. I have actively positive thoughts toward Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and especially the delightful Iman Kellani as Ms. Marvel, essentially our viewer surrogate in this film. They did their level best to try to make both the actress and the character a bit more accessible in terms of Larson as Carol Danvers, surely absorbing some of the backlash that involved Larson being difficult to work with and feeling too arrogant about her character's powers. But I still caught her posing with a superior look on her face one too many times for my liking.
There's a problem that remains with Captain Marvel, which is that she is, by some descriptions, the most powerful character in the entire MCU, and yet you can't have a protagonist who doesn't have vulnerability. I must admit that I didn't work very hard to piece together the plot of this movie and whether it made sense or was satisfying, but I had a hard time feeling like Carol was in danger at any given moment. At the same time, they have to specifically not have her use some percentage of her powers to solve problems so she doesn't just fly into everything and zap a supernova at it, which it seems she is capable of doing. By being too strong, the character has possibly unsolvable problems in terms of building stakes and creating tension in the narrative.
I did like the bit about how the three main women switch places, though again, I didn't really understand how or why it was happening and what the rules were. Therefore, I couldn't tell if the gimmick was being used cleverly or fairly. The enjoyment I got there was purely surface level.
Then I will also admit liking the scene with all the newborn cats, which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it, even if that whole joke is the sort of thing we've already seen in four Men in Black movies.
So let's drop the qualitative analysis of the movie for a moment and see how it does as a viewing on International Women's Day.
I feel like there is something smart in the construction of this movie as being divided between three main female characters. Even though more women may be more triggering for the wrong segment of the public, Marvel has not been catering to that segment of the public for years, if ever. What it does for people who are less extreme in their anathema to heroines is it divides it equally between three characters, rather than providing a monolithic single character against whom to expend your negative thoughts. To some this is just woker and woker, but again I say, those people can go suck an egg.
I also do think there is something useful about the movie in terms of being post the most obvious subtext of any movie involving female superheroes: namely, the chip on its shoulder about being able to do anything a man can do. We've had enough female superhero movies now that those original gestures are now too simplistic of a goal in this type of movie. As with any representation hurdle we must overcome, the first step is to overcome it, and to tell your audience that you are doing so in no uncertain terms, so they're not too thick to get it. Then, you get to a point where the representation alone is enough and you don't have to draw extra attention to why you were fighting for that representation in the first place.
I think The Marvels is in that spot, which is good. The fact that it doesn't totally succeed -- in fact, that it doesn't even succeed enough to earn the minimum three stars for a recommendation -- isn't on the women, or on director Nia DaCosta, who does a good job with the material in terms of her specific responsibilities. (Though she does share the writing credit with two other women, and that particular trio may not do their job as well as the trio they are writing about.)
No, The Marvels is a disappointment because 33 MCU movies have raised the bar to impossible heights in terms of what qualifies as something new or interesting. Even the trio of female superheroes is not particularly new, in the wake of that famous scene in Avengers: Endgame where all the female Avengers assembled on the battlefield to walk together in slow motion. And space? I feel like fully half of the ongoing MCU properties are now set in space, even if it is outer space-resembling inner space, like in the last Ant-Man movie.
I'm glad I watched it on International Women's Day, though, if only for the benefit of that hypothetical bean counter I often reference, who may be taking note of spikes in streams and may correlate that to a day dedicated to women. I still want to appreciate women, even if I didn't appreciate this movie as much as I'd hoped.
