A month after its premiere, the new Marvel Studios blockbuster 'The Marvels', localized as 'Captain Marvel 2', barely crawled to $200 million at the global box office. How bad is it for Carol Danvers and her two new partners, and are there any positi...

'The Marvels' is already the 33rd film in the eponymous cinematic universe, and that's very symbolic, because the comic book movie can only recoup its budget with divine help. Such a massive failure should finally open the eyes of Disney management to the fact that superheroics under the Marvel Studios banner have veered off course and gotten completely lost after 'Endgame'. At least we hope so.

What's the plot?

A malfunction occurred in space. One of the jump points (a portal allowing ships to leap through space and time) opened near Earth. The great Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who leads the organization 'M.E.C.H.' ('S.H.I.E.L.D.', as we know, cracked and couldn't hold up), sends Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) to investigate and simultaneously calls Carol Danvers, better known as Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), who is somewhere deep in space. Danvers encounters the same jump point and decides to touch it, while Monica does the same. At the moment of contact, the women miraculously become linked, also dragging into their team a young Pakistani-American superheroine from Jersey City, Kamala Khan, alias Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). Now, if the characters use their superpowers simultaneously, they swap places.

The blame for these swaps lies not only with the portals but also with a certain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) — the leader of the Kree race, who dreams of avenging Captain Marvel (whom the Kree call the Annihilator) for destroying the Supreme Intelligence. Its death led to a civil war and an ecological catastrophe on Hala (the planet has no atmosphere or water, and its main star is nearly extinguished). To fix the situation at home, Dar-Benn decided to find the Quantum Bands (one of which belongs to Kamala), with which she can steal the necessary components to restore Hala. An important condition: she must take water, atmosphere, and light with heat only from worlds dear to the Annihilator, because otherwise she can't get revenge.

Remember, Captain...

The first film four years ago grossed over a billion dollars at the box office. How did it happen that the second part turned out to be so uninteresting to everyone? The question is quite complex, but one of Marvel's main problems is the success that went to their heads. Disney producers suddenly decided that if they release agenda-driven films for a certain segment, it would be interesting to progressive audiences and, consequently, profitable.

However, for the most part, films like 'Black Panther' and 'Captain Marvel' worked because their releases came before incredibly important crossovers ('Avengers: Infinity War' and 'Avengers: Endgame' respectively), so you could put virtually any project in those release slots, and it would almost certainly gross huge amounts. Plus, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was at its peak then, releasing 2-3 films a year, whereas now it's definitely in a state of declining interest without a major news hook (for example, 'Wakanda Forever' would hardly have been a successful film if Chadwick Boseman hadn't died).

In 4 years, a lot has changed (sounds like we're not talking about movies): series and specials appeared in the MCU, the superhero market became oversaturated, Disney increasingly chased agendas instead of interesting stories, and audiences began to cool off toward new projects, causing box office, viewership, and ratings to slide. And 'The Marvels' seems to have become the quintessence of everything that's happened since 'Endgame'.

The new project of the cinematic universe turned out to be the shortest (1 hour 45 minutes) and set a box office anti-record in the US for its opening weekend (only $47 million) in its entire history. Honestly, I feel sorry for the people who, with enthusiasm after another time, decided that things weren't so bad for superheroes and that they could believe in them again, and then saw this film. 'The Marvels' is exactly the case when the viewer gets hit in the face with reality, then crashes to the ground with a bang and disappointment.

Evgeny Belousov

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Open material

It seems that approaching the film with understanding and full preparation is the lot of true fans, because the picture is a sequel to four projects at once: the film 'Captain Marvel' and the series 'WandaVision', 'Ms. Marvel', and 'Secret Invasion', among which only the show about the Scarlet Witch and her beloved can be considered worthy of attention. The rest, of course, is for fans (fans of top-notch cringe). And although there is no overtly clumsy agenda in the new film, it's still noticeable how saturated it is with it, raising the question: maybe a poorly made and uninteresting girl power movie is not what comic book fans need?

The dead captain was pushing for bravado here

In 'The Marvels', almost everything is bad: from special effects to the script. The creators constantly surprise viewers by showing how a film with a budget of $200+ million can look cheap and shoddy. Green screens and cardboard sets just jump out at you and look even worse than in the cartoonish 'Quantumania' (although, it would seem). The technical aspect is at some incredibly low level, given the scale and scope of comic book movies. There's a moment in the film where Ms. Marvel is wearing a costume, then she swaps places with one of the heroines, and when she reappears on screen, she's already in casual clothes. Did they really not catch such a routine moment during editing? Or did she quickly change somewhere on another planet?

What happens in the film looks like some banal set of superhero movie templates that director Nia DaCosta failed to make work at all. The idea that the heroines swap places when they use their powers is quite amusing, but it's implemented very poorly. In the scene where all three alternately fight in Kamala's family home with Kree representatives, the fight itself is very drawn out. Who would believe that three super-girls endowed with incredible abilities (especially Danvers) take so long to fend off just two soldiers, given that a few minutes earlier the Annihilator wiped out almost an entire army in a second? Action for the sake of action looks extremely ridiculous.

If it were possible to characterize the comic book movie with one phrase, it would be 'very forced.' Almost everything here is forced: the training scene where the heroines learn to swap places properly (although there was potential in that); the hugs and 'playing as one team' because there's no chemistry between the actresses (and where would it come from with such a script?); the sudden change in Captain (or should it be Captainess?) Marvel's image from an arrogant and perfect woman to a rather vulnerable heroine suffering deep down from past mistakes; another universe-threatening menace from an annoying and terribly acted villainess. The very existence of the film is very forced. If it hadn't been made, nothing would have changed, essentially. Or rather, the world would have one less cringey film, and no one would be upset.

In fairness, I want to say that the comic book movie has a couple of decent moments and jokes. The presence of Nick Fury (even if softened and not as cool) and Goose the Flerken make the film slightly less bad, and given that there are many more Flerkens in the sequel, there are also a few more pleasant moments. It's clear that cute cat-like aliens are a great lever for 'aww' manipulation, but it worked, so watching CGI cats is a pleasure (that's where the entire budget went). Otherwise, 'The Marvels' looks like a fanfic written by Kamala. Very formulaic, chaotic, incomplete, with a bunch of incomprehensible elements and a hope that something tolerable will come out.

The characters rush rapidly through locations to an uninteresting resolution, even stopping by a planet led by a costumed Korean star Park Seo-joon as Prince Yan, where everyone communicates exclusively through songs, but even this location is not properly explored and is abandoned in favor of somehow leading to the film's weakest finale and its credits, where all the most interesting things are hidden (though it's not like it's anything incredible, as it used to be).

What's the bottom line?

In essence, with our review we just admitted that we are racists, sexists, and homophobes who chose the 'dark side.' At least the director called those who criticize the film that, because she is confident in the quality of the released product, which means it can't be otherwise. Only it turns out that almost the entire MCU fanbase consists of terrible people who refused to embrace her comic book movie with open arms. 'The Marvels' looks as if it was vomited up by a Flerken cat along with its fur, and Disney producers decided to show it off to the whole world, sincerely not understanding why no one wants to watch. Forgive us, but if Marvel Studios continues to push this line, they have bad news coming.