Marvellously Flavourless

So I went ahead and watched The Marvels. I'm a Marvel completist, what can I say. That's how they get you. Well, it's how they get fewer and fewer people. I wasn't expecting the movie to be good but I didn't expect its mediocrity to make me so sad.

Bob Iger blamed the film's problems on a lack of oversight by busy Disney executives. Which is funny because too much studio interference is to what people usually attribute the flaws of MCU films. The Marvels does feel relatively cohesive in its voice. The trouble is writer/director Nia DaCosta and her co-writers Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik have delivered something that feels out of touch with human experience.

People die, planets are ravaged, suns are destroyed, and ironic comments are made and casual jabs about celebrity and wardrobe float around. Care about these characters, the movie tells us, but don't worry, you don't have to care that much. Even if you want to, we're going to discourage it.

Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel is the best part of the movie. She actually manages an interesting performance but she's kept at an emotional distance like everyone else. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) tells her, "Don't talk to those people," when Ms. Marvel remarks to a crew of enemy goons that she doesn't have the power of flight. Could this be the beginning of exploring the snobbishness which Brie Larson can't seem to suppress? It would have been kind of nice if they made it part of the character instead of just an accident of Larson's personality. Alas, it seems more likely just another manifestation of the filmmakers' inability to emotionally engage.

All the space stuff feels like dim echoes of Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor Ragnarok, the ironic visual noise now an unsatisfying centrepiece in the absence of the emotional core of story about people. It is much like The Eternals, the other Marvel movie directed by a woman. Some would say this is a sign women can't direct superhero movies. Maybe it's a sign Disney executives don't know how to hire directors.

The Marvels is available on Disney+.

If Everyone's a Marvel then No-one's a Marvel

I don't plan on seeing The Marvels in the theatre but I will watch it on Disney+. I'm an MCU completist at this point and, as much as I hated Captain Marvel and feel absolutely nothing for Monica Rambeau, I did kind of like the first couple episodes of Ms. Marvel.

I was surprised to see Stephen King post this on X yesterday:

How can a guy so good at writing perverse characters not in the least understand people gloating over a movie's failure? I don't personally feel a desire to gloat over it but I will admit to feeling some relief. It's like an election where people vote with their dollars; maybe Disney will finally get the message audiences can't be taken for granted. You can't manipulate people into liking something just because you release it between, and connect it to, two very popular movies as they did with Captain Marvel.

Critical rhetoric about the tendency to prioritise message over entertaining storytelling has migrated from a small segment of internet personalities into an increasingly wider pool. I'd say that's only part of the problem. I think there's a basically cheap look to the productions and the characters often lack dimension. These are products of the same problem that has plagued Disney since the death of Walt Disney--there are too many cooks in the kitchen and too many of them, as a frustrated Bob Dolman remarked when trying to write the Willow series, don't know what they're doing. So we get things like Quantumania in which Evangeline Lily is cgied into saving the day despite it making no sense on any level. Or the latter portion of the Ms. Marvel series which steered the show away from a somewhat engaging teen superhero story into one where the star herself seemed to become bored by the rushed, brow-beating storytelling congealing around her.

It's frustrating seeing what used to be a a series of, on the whole, effective films turn into a creaky, overburdened sled on which dozens of greedy clowns have tried to cram themselves as it goes downhill. Yeah, it feels kind of good watching it finally crash into a tree.