The speed with which the Marvel franchise is expanded is amazing. Here we have a ‘girlpower’ Marvel.
So far there has been one “Captain Marvel” movie, which I happen to have seen. Captain Marvel is actually Carol Denvers. Captain Marvel has quite some abilities, even on a Marvel scale. She can just take off and fly through the universe without imploding or problems breathing. She seems to have unlimited ‘light energy’ which she uses for fighting. While flying, she can fly through a space ship like a missile. Captain Marvel is more of the comic book type hero with superpowers than many other Marvel characters.
In “The Marvels” we again meet Monica Rambeau who Captain America met when she was a little girl in the previous movie. Introduced is the adolescent Kamala Khan. That part of the story is somewhat like that of “Blue Beetle“. A child of an immigrant family also has superpowers and the protective family makes a few extra jokes. Are these kids introduced to appeal to a younger audience?
“The Marvels” has a ‘new joke. Captain America, Rambeau and Khan prove to switch places once one of them uses their powers. This brings odd scenes in which one is fighting and suddenly another is part of that fight while the other ends up in a teenage bedroom. Once they get a hang of how they can use this anomaly you get some over-the-top fighting scenes reminding of “Ant-Man” who continuously grows and shrinks while fighting.
Of course there is a ‘bad person’ doing ‘bad things’ which need to be stopped. Needless to say that for a while that adversary is stronger than the heroes, but not until the end.
In the previous “Captain Marvel” we got to know “Goose” which looks like a cat, but which is actually a “Flerken”. “Goose” has been written into the story quite a bit here, amusingly so.
“The Marvels” is -like most other Marvel films- amusing. It may actually be the first Marvel film in which actually comic book type scenes are introduced in the beginning. For people who have not yet seen the dozens of other Marvel films, the references to other films are shown in flashbacks. This also seems to be a (somewhat) new element.
Anyway, Marvel action.
