Marvel studios productions released their newest film The Marvels on November 10th, 2023. There is some backstory that is required before this movie. The movie focuses on three main characters: Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel), Monica Rambeau (Photon), and Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel).
Carol Danvers, or rather Captain Marvel, is an extraterrestrial warrior for the Kree civilization. She finds herself caught in the middle of an internal and external battle between her memories and the Skrulls (a feuding alien civilization). She learns that she was brainwashed to forget her human life before getting taken by the Kree. With the help of Nick Fury, Maria Rambeau, and Goose the Cat, the ex-Airforce pilot harnesses her superpowers and fights her captors. We were also shown that her contribution to the planet was the reason for the Avengers Initiative.
Since then, we have seen Captain Marvel appear in multiple Marvel films, including Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Shang-Chi Legend of the Ten Rings end credit, and The Marvels. The Skrulls also reappear in the show Secret Invasion, using their shapeshifting abilities to infiltrate and live on Earth.
The second superpowered woman is Monica Rambeau, also known as Photon. Monica’s first appearance was in WandaVision when she gained her powers through entering and exiting The Hex that Wanda created as a barrier into the town she lived in and created. Powered by grief magic after being bombarded by extra-dimensional energy produced by an energy disruptor weapon, Monica Rambeau gained her powers of energy manipulation, absorption, and manipulation, and as it appears in the movie, phasing.
Kamala Khan is the one of the newest additions into the Marvel universe. Kamala Khan stars in her own show, Ms. Marvel, which shows how she gained her powers and how she trains to use them. Her powers have changed since the comic book’s appearance. Her powers include the ability to manifest with crystalline purple energy and create matter. Instead of her stretching abilities in the comics, Kamala can conjure fields of energy for defense, shooting, blasts, and creating hovering. platforms to walk in the air. The powers come from a bangle bracelet passed down in her family for generations. During the finale of Ms. Marvel, during the post credit scene, she sees shining purplish energy coming out of her bracelet. Intrigued, she reaches to touch it, and as a result, gets blasted through the wall. But instead of Kamala getting back up, we see that she has seemingly switched places with Carol Danvers, or Captain Marvel, Kamala‘s idol. Danvers’ hands are now glowing a purple light like Kamala’s powers. The movie pretty much opens up after that.
The movie itself was very well written. The relationship and interactions felt genuine. With Kamala being 16, the other two women protect and shield her from danger. Not only that, but all their time together felt natural. The fight scenes in my opinion were some of the best, up there with Captain America and the Winter Soldier. The fight sequences were carefully constructed to showcase their interlinked powers. Their newfound abilities make their fights have a bit of a learning curve to them. They change every time they use their powers, so that means that they must anticipate each other’s movements while fighting for their own lives.
This movie is criminally underrated, even though it just came out. The people who rated it badly rated it for the wrong reasons. For example, people say Captain Marvel was emotionless. If you paid attention to the movies, you’d see that the lack of emotion related to the fact that she is ex-military and was one of the only women in her group at the time. She wasn’t allowed to show emotion then, and she wasn’t allowed to show emotion even after she got kidnapped and was put back into the special ops for the alien race that she now lived with. In addition to that, her memory of her past life was wiped. She was taught that emotions are dangerous and lead to a lack of control. And after all of this, you find out that she is still trying to recover memories from over two decades ago. These hating fans also say Kamala is too whiny. How would the average 16-year-old react to being thrown into a space war and meeting an Avenger who they look up to most? They would probably react the same. No one had a problem with a teenager fawning over their mentor when it was Peter Parker and Tony Stark.
When watching a Marvel movie and comparing, you must look at all the previous movies equally, and I don’t believe that people have done that. I think they had an unchangeable opinion long before they watched it. I, however, was willing to take everything into account. That being said, this movie is one of the top Marvel movies in my opinion. It had humor, amazing action, darkness, and light and dark to all the characters, new and old. It also had a very thought provoking end credit scene. To judge for yourself, you can watch the movie in theaters and in a few months on Disney+.
