The Marvels (2023)
The Marvels acts as an experiment: was it possible to take content and characters who had mostly been explored in the streaming space and transition them to the big screen? As confirmation of this, two of our three leads are streaming original characters, suggesting the film is checking if we did our Marvel homework.
The movie is weakest in one of the areas that matters most: fight choreography. The fight sequences are sluggish, perhaps limited by the film's gimmick of our characters switching places. The blows traded in combat feel like two sabres seeking one another rather than their opponent. Editing is exceptionally bad during fight sequences, cutting at all the wrong moments and creating odd lulls.
This is a problem of huge proportions for The Marvels as the gimmick hinges on flawless, thoughtful, creative editing. But the problem is more general as the editing outside the fight scenes is also poor. Jarring cuts at unnatural moments leave the audience feeling uncertain about what's happening. In this way, the film seems to have learned some unfortunate habits from its streaming material.
The villain may be the worst the franchise has ever experimented with. Every visual component is repellent, such as her monochromatic and boring costume and the distracting bits that were put around her teeth. But even the performer lowers herself to the occasion, with comical over-the-top facial expressions and unearned melodramatic delivery. The reviewer found one close-up shot of the villain to be so distracting that they burst out laughing in the middle of one of the film's "intense" fights. Again, we are given a streaming-quality component, our villain, in a product meant for theatrical release.
Aladna, the grotesque, warrants mention. We are presented with a whimsical planet where people sing to communicate. We're then locked in with them. The songs are monotonous and obnoxious, the costuming and make-up even more so. The reviewer also notes a strange uniformity in the vision of Aladna, as if it is perhaps trying a bit too hard to be picturesque. The section is also just a tonal mismatch; the characters are there to warn of impending destruction, and they simply walk, skip and frolic along with the dancing morons. This resembles a sequence from a streaming show, being so lackadaisical in pace and existing mostly to waste time.
It should be noted as a small positive: there are jokes throughout; some of them even make you laugh. Iman Vellani, contradicting the negative association with the film's streaming source, is a consistent joy. Her character and her family remain likeable, and their moments of family squabbling generally provide good comedy.
More than Marvel's pink coat of paint or cute cats, The Marvels needed good structure, tight and creative editing, and disciplined and well-timed choreography. These are cinematic qualities. Instead, we got a long episode of two different Disney+ shows at once. Everything about this film betrays it as a product of Marvel's streaming age, when quantity was high but quality was low. Perhaps setting the new benchmark for "Marvel slop," The Marvels is reserved almost entirely for hardcore fans.