Deepanjana Pal
The Marvels is so shoddily written and generally lacklustre that most of the film feels like a setup for the mid-credit and post-credit scenes, which drop broad hints about the direction in which the MCU plans to go.
For better and for worse, The Marvels doesn’t let you linger with the Kree, dispatching them with a star cameo to what is hopefully a better place. The focus is on the new superhero trio of women, who must learn to use the challenge posed by the jump points to their advantage.
Even though it wasn’t actually written to be her story, The Marvels ends up to be the story of how Ms. Marvel evolves from being an endearing teenager from New Jersey to the successor of Iron Man’s mantle.
Dar-Benn, for instance, never feels like a genuine threat. Unfortunately, nothing other than Ms. Marvel and the flerkens actually works at either a narrative level or in terms of entertainment value.
The Marvels is actually marginally better than the drivel that Marvel Studios has dished out of late. Iman Vellani is good enough to be Marvel Studios’s next Robert Downey Jr. Given how low the bar is for the MCU, for now, that’ll do.