The Marvels is an aggressively bland movie. It does strive to please a very specific audience, but I'm not sure if that audience is tuning in, at least enough to justify the ginormous budget. There's a wacky musical sequence, plenty of cute cats, a prince played by a Korean actor with the good looks of a K-pop idol, and allusions to a popular queer ship coming true... I like a lot of that (except for musicals and I'm not much of a shipper), but the movie is just too cutesy and inconsequential to have any staying power. It isn't funny enough either, even though the flerkens are equally hilarious and adorable, particularly in one scene that's almost shot as a horror film, but starring sweet fluffy animals and the stakes of a below-average Marvel movie. This doesn't look or feel like a Nia DaCosta film, that's for sure. Oh and the villain... What a waste, Dar-Benn goes down as one of the least interesting MCU villains ever, if not THE least interesting. The Marvels is certainly better than Quantumania, but at least Quantumania was so bad that there was something to latch onto. I don't think I'll remember anything about this film two weeks from now and that's a shame. I do love the Khans and I'd like to see more from them, Kamala and her family are super likable and there's potential for more.
The mid-credits scene though... I went to see this film for that scene and I'm not disappointed in the slightest. What a triumph, a dream come true even. Hopefully, Marvel can cash the check it's promising, after all, what really matters is the MOVIES and these little morsels of hope won't mean anything if the main events continue on such shaky and unsatisfying ground.
