If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I went to my public library’s local branch yesterday (as I write this) to pick up a few books I had on hold. Lo and behold, in the new movies section, I found a Blu-Ray of The Marvels (2023). If you’re aware of this film at all, you probably know about the controversy surrounding it.

The movie didn’t do well at the box office. This was attributed either to the sexist, racist, white supremist, patriarchal attitudes of (male) audiences or to the overdose of “wokeness” in combination with bad writing of the Disney-made movie.

When the movie was released on Disney+, there was a power surge of positivity for it on social media combined with harsh criticism for anyone daring not to like the movie for any reason (reasons being listed again as sexism, racism, white supremacy, and the patriarchy).

I dithered when I saw the Blu-Ray case. Did I want to avoid wasting one hour and forty-five minutes watching a movie that was probably a turkey or did I want to give it a fair chance? In the end, I settled for “fair chance.” I’ve viewed films before that were generally panned in the reviews but turned out to be, if not great movies, more or less “okay.” That’s what I thought about Captain Marvel (2019). Maybe “The Marvels” was just a victim of bad press.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. The wrist bands, which Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) calls “bangles” and which Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) calls Quantum Bands are based on bands first introduced in the comic book Captain Marvel issue 17 (1969).

The original (male) Captain Marvel is trapped in the Negative Zone, a region of sub-space that is the nexus point to everywhere else in the universe (first shown in Fantastic Four issue 51). He tricks Rick Jones (former partner first to the Hulk and then Captain America) into a lab and then into putting them on. When Rick slams the wrist bands together, he temporarily changes places with Marvel.

That’s the most recognizable part of the movie to me. Now let’s continue.

Remember when I said before that most movies that get a bad rap in the reviews are better than I expect them to be? Not this one. It was horrible. I actually felt embarrassed watching it. I can say that I made it through the entire film rather than turn it off a third of the way through like I did The Eternals (2021). That said, I was tempted.

The movie was probably made to be lighthearted and fun with only some serious elements. After all, Khan is an over-the-top teenage fan of Danvers, plus Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), so much so that her room is a shrine to the former. When Danvers switches places with her (remember the wrist bands), she “marvels” at Kamala’s decorations.

Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is the third “light-based powers” superhero in the movie (she has no code name in the movie, but in the comic books, she’s called “Photon” and a bunch of other names) and they form a team that must find the Kree villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) and stop her from using the jump point system to steal vital resources (atmosphere, water, the sun) from other planets to revitalize the Kree home world of Hala.

As I said, while the movie was intended to be lighthearted, about bonding, heroism, and family, it came across to me like a bad anime movie about “girl power.” My daughter watched “Sailor Moon” when she was young and I found that a lot more entertaining.

More recently, my granddaughters have been watching this animated series about a high school where the core population of girls are really from a “pony” universe, and they “pony up” to use their music-based powers. That’s the vibe I got from significant portions of “The Marvels.”

One example is the jump rope and juggling scenes. Yes, it makes since that because they all switch places with each other when they use their powers at the same time that they should practice and coordinate the switching, but it turned into a cutesy sequence of thumbs up “marveling” between them.

The water planet singing people is another cringeworthy sequence. On a planet in one of the Milky Way’s companion galaxies, very human looking people sing as their language and don’t understand the same words when spoken. Except they’re singing in English.

Danvers is married to their Prince (Park Seo-joon) which she goes to great lengths to explain to Kamala and Monica is a marriage of convenience (implying heavily that they’ve never had sex). Danvers and Prince Yan go through this whole singing an dancing routine that was terrible to behold before evil Dar-Benn decides to show up and steal their ocean.

In one scene, Dar-Benn is stealing the entire atmosphere of a planet where the exiled Skrulls have taken refuge. With all their powers, our trio is only able to save a handful of them. Carol calls in “King” Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) from New Asgard, who inexplicitly is dressed in a man’s dark suit and tie. Valkyrie agrees to transport the Skrull refugees back to Earth.

First of all, with all the power Valkyrie has, shouldn’t Carol have tried to recruit her to help stop Dar-Benn? Of course, Carol is feeling super guilty that she really did destroy the atmosphere and sun of Hala and feels she has to handle fixing everything alone. On the other hand, she’s already accepted the help (reluctantly since they’re entangled) of Kamala and Monica. It gets confusing.

Also, Carol and Valkyrie hug and touch and snuggle a lot more than Carol ever did with her “husband.” I remember reading that Disney considered making them an outright lesbian couple, but decided not to go through with it for fear of a backlash.

And when did Carol and Valkyrie get so chummy? Must have been in a movie or TV show I didn’t watch.

Then there are the cats. Well, they look like cats but they’re aliens. Goose is the original from the “Captain Marvel” movie. It took out Fury’s eye back then but now on some space station orbiting Earth, he seems very friendly with the beast.

Goose lays a bunch of eggs on the station that look like little pink brains and they hatch lots of other alien cats. This is when the station is about to be destroyed and they only have a couple of small transports to get hundreds of people out of danger.

Fury’s big idea is to let the cats eat everyone, get the cats in the shuttles, and then when on Earth, puke them up again. The cats eat you (or anything really) by shooting long tentacles out of their mouths. It’s pretty gross.

The “Marvels” help with the effort while the station crew understandably are running away from the people-eating cats. Kamala even goes around chasing people while holding a cat. That seems pretty sadistic considering everyone is running from the cats like teenagers trying to escape a mad slasher in a horror film.

The worst insult during this scene was the song “Memories” from the stage musical Cats was played. I saw “Cats” some decades ago with my wife in Long Beach and remember liking it…until now. Thanks for ruining that, Disney.

After Dar-Benn is destroyed as a consequence of wearing both Quantum Bands and Monica gets trapped in another universe, Carol decides to take Monica’s advice and use her powers to reignite Hala’s sun.

This has lots of problems. First of all, using a spatial jump gate to transfer air and water from one planet to another probably wouldn’t be as seamless as it looked in the movie. Also, stealing Earth’s sun wouldn’t replace Hala’s. In fact, without a breathable atmosphere, with no water, and with their sun having gone dark, I have no idea how life would be possible.

So Carol does “ultimate sacrifice” number two. Except it takes less than five minutes and she doesn’t even look winded after it’s over. She was worried that she’d never done something like that before, but there was no drama, no struggle, no “I’m not going to make it” moment. She just did it Mary Sue style.

I know Danvers is supposed to be the single most powerful being in the MCU and “the bestest evah,” but her powers are really inconsistent. There are times when she’s hardly able to hold her own against a few guys with ray guns. Now she’s reigniting entire stars. Go figure.

I could go on but why bother? The movie was confusing, disjointed, juvenile, and pointless. Monica made the “ultimate sacrifice” number one to save the universe and ended up stuck in an alternate reality with an alternate Mom (Lashana Lynch) and the Beast/Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer) in Professor Xavier’s “X-Men” mansion. That’s the mid-credits scene.

Oh, God I hope we don’t pick this up again in the upcoming film Deadpool & Wolverine. I’m really starting to hate Kevin Feige.

The after-credits “scene” is just the sound of one of the cats puking. It summed up “The Marvels” very nicely, though I think girls 12 and under would probably like it.

None of this makes me racist, sexist, a white supremist, or an evil agent of the patriarchy. It just means this film really needed a lot more attention to detail and to the story it was trying to convey. Even if it was going for the “youth” audience, it should have respected the viewers a lot more.