From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
The character of Ms. Marvel was first created in 1977 in an attempt to ride the “women’s lib” wave of the 1970s. Marvel was always trying to appeal to broader markets, even if they were often ham-handed about it, and also have always at least stumbled in the direction of diversity.
And so Gerry Conway and John Buscema repurposed Carol Danvers—who had been a supporting character in Captain Marvel, as well as in CM’s introductory appearances in Marvel Super-Heroes by Stan Lee and Gene Colan—as a superhero in her own right. However, her own title only lasted a couple of years. The character was then part of the Avengers until she was appallingly written out in that title’s 200th issue in 1980. She was an X-Men supporting character for a while, powered-up and renamed Binary, joining the space-faring Starjammers in the 1980s, then returning to Earth and rejoining the Avengers (renamed Warbird) in the 1990s, before going back to the Ms. Marvel name until 2012’s Captain Marvel series by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Dexter Soy, when she took on the name of Captain Marvel.
The Captain Marvel name had hopped to several different characters over the years, starting with Mar-Vell, the Kree soldier seen in two issues of Marvel Super-Heroes and 62 issues of his self-titled series from 1967-1979. Mar-Vell died in Marvel’s first prestige-format graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin in 1982, and the name was then taken on later that year by Monica Rambeau in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr.
Rambeau was a harbor patrol officer in New Orleans who had an interaction with an experimental extra-dimensional device that gave her the ability to control the electromagnetic spectrum. She’s also a woman of color, a rarity in the superhero community, especially in 1982. She joined the Avengers, and became a mainstay of that group for a while, even taking a turn as leader of the team. She later gave up the name of Captain Marvel to Mar-Vell’s son, Genis-Vell, and took on the codenames of Photon (her current one), Pulsar, and Spectrum.
After Danvers took on the Captain Marvel name, Marvel once again made an effort to diversify, this time having the Ms. Marvel moniker being adopted by a Pakistani American teenager of the Muslim faith named Kamala Khan. Debuting in 2014 in the rather unmanageably titled anthology comic All-New Marvel Now! Point One #1 in the story “Garden State of Mind” by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, that led to her own title the following year. Khan was a human who was exposed to the Terrigen Mists that created the Inhumans and gained superpowers, and has become a mainstay of the comics.
Danvers and Rambeau were brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2019’s Captain Marvel, the former as the main character played by Brie Larson, the latter as a little girl who was the daughter of Danvers’ fellow Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau.
Monica was seen all grow’d up in 2021’s WandaVision TV miniseries played by Teyonah Parris, established as having been blipped between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame; Maria, established as having died of cancer during the Blip, was the founder of S.W.O.R.D. (an organization dedicated to gathering intelligence about alien threats to Earth). Monica follows in her mother’s footsteps, working for S.W.O.R.D. during the events of WandaVision.
Finally, Khan was introduced to the MCU in 2022’s Ms. Marvel TV series, played by Iman Vellani. Since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans TV series already did the Terrigen Mists thing, and since both those shows have been fobbed off into their own continuity separate from the MCU, they gave Khan’s character a different origin. She got her powers from a bangle that she inherited from her grandmother, which turned her into a super-powered hero over the course of her show’s first season.
All three characters are brought together in The Marvels. Unlike Captain Marvel, this takes place in the “present” of the MCU, but it serves as a sequel to the 2019 film by, among other things, establishing how Danvers took the revenge on the Kree that she promised. It’s also a sequel to Ms. Marvel, providing the origin of Khan’s bangle (which is similar to the quantum bands, or nega-bands, used by Mar-Vell in the comics).
Nia DaCosta—who had previously worked with Parris on Candyman—was brought in to direct the film, which was written by DaCosta, Elissa Karasik (executive story editor on Loki’s first season), and Megan McDonnell (story editor on WandaVision).
Back from Endgame (via cameos in both Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Ms. Marvel’s first season) is Larson as Danvers. Back from WandaVision’s first season is Parris as Rambeau (with brief appearances by Akira and Azari Akbar as young Rambeau in flashbacks from Captain Marvel). Back from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Lashana Lynch as two different iterations of Maria Rambeau (having played a third iteration in that Doctor Strange film). Back from Ms. Marvel’s first season are Vellani as Khan, Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba, Mohan Kapur as Yusuf, and Saagar Shaikh as Aamir. Back from Secret Invasion’s first season is Samuel L. Jackson as Fury (though the events of that TV show aren’t really acknowledged, which, frankly, is fine). Back from Thor: Love and Thunder is Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. Back from Hawkeye’s first season is Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop. Back from X-Men: Days of Future Past is Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy.
Appearing for the first time in this film are Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn, a gender-swapped version of a Kree general from the comics; Gary Lewis as Skrull Emperor Dro’ge; and Park Seo-joon as Prince Yan.
The movie did surprisingly poorly at the box office, and the future of all three characters is in doubt, though Danvers is likely to be in the just-announced Avengers: Doomsday in 2026, while the mid-credits scene establishes that Rambeau will be involved in however they integrate the X-Men into the MCU. It is unknown if there will be a second season of Ms. Marvel; Vellani has co-written two Ms. Marvel comics miniseries for Marvel.
The Marvels
Written by Nia DaCosta and Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik
Directed by Nia DaCosta
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: November 10, 2023
“No more touching shit! Especially glowing mysterious shit!”
A Kree ship goes from their devastated homeworld of Hala through a jump point to a world with the rather bland designation of MB-418. Dar-Benn—a Kree general who now possesses the universal weapon that used to belong to Ronan the Accuser—and her team unearth a container that has a quantum band inside it. To her great annoyance, they only find one of the expected pair, and she wonders where the other one is.
Cut to Jersey City, New Jersey on Earth, where we see Kamala Khan, who has the other band. She views it as a bangle, bequeathed to her by her grandmother and giving her super-powers, enabling her to become Ms. Marvel. We learn about this through the fanfic she writes, which also establishes that she’s a Captain Marvel fangirl and the fanfic has her helping Captain Marvel fight a big scary monster, and then becoming best friends forever.
From the S.A.B.E.R. satellite, Nick Fury contacts Carol Danvers about a surge in the jump gate network. Danvers has been using the Skrull memory-thingie that they used to torture her in Captain Marvel to try to regain more of the memories she lost when she blew up the lightspeed engine. Danvers goes to MB-418 to check it out.
At the same time, the now-super-powered Captain Monica Rambeau is leading a team to check out the jump point near Earth. She and Danvers both touch a messed-up jump point at the same time.
Some Kree soldiers show up to remonstrate with Danvers on MB-418. She starts to use her powers, which causes the first of several switches: Danvers suddenly winds up in Khan’s house in Jersey City, Rambeau winds up on MB-418, and Khan is in Rambeau’s EVA suit in space outside the S.A.B.E.R. satellite.
They eventually wind up back in their right places, with no idea of what’s happening. Khan’s parents are upset that her closet door’s been destroyed, but Khan is too busy fangoobering over the fact that Captain Marvel was in her living room and that she (briefly) met Fury (hoping that this was an Avengers tryout of some sort).
When Danvers is restored to MB-418, she learns that Dar-Benn is on Tarnax, and—after disposing of the Kree soldiers—heads there. Tarnax is a Skrull refugee site, and Dar-Benn is seen negotiating with Emperor Dro’ge, though that negotiation quickly proves to be bullshit. Danvers attacks the Kree soldiers, but the switching thing starts happening again, with Kree soldiers brought along for the ride more than once. As a result, Danvers, Khan, and Rambeau each wind up fighting Kree soldiers, not just on Dar-Benn’s ship orbiting Tarnax, but also in the space elevator that goes between Earth and the S.A.B.E.R. satellite and in the Khan house in Jersey City. (At one point, Khan sees Goose swallow some Kree soldiers with her tentacles, and she is totally freaked out…)
Apparently, any time two (or more) of the three of them use their powers simultaneously, it triggers the switch. Fury and Rambeau go to Jersey City to check on Khan (whose parents and brother are not exactly thrilled with how their house has been trashed), but Khan using her powers causes another switch. A few switches later and Khan finds herself in the stratosphere, having switched with Danvers when she was flying into orbit from Earth, and Rambeau has to rescue her (though it winds up being more of a team rescue).
Eventually, they all go to Tarnax, just in time for Dar-Benn to open a jump point that sucks the atmosphere away from Tarnax and to Hala.
It becomes clear what’s happening. Dar-Benn is using the quantum band she found to power-up the jump points so she can restore Hala. The three heroes have become entangled because Rambeau and Danvers both touched surged jump points at the same time, and that mixed with the energy from Khan’s bangle to cause the switches.
The trio evacuate as many Skrulls as they can from Tarnax. Danvers summons Valkyrie, who takes them to New Asgard.
At one point on Dar-Benn’s ship, Khan saw a star chart that showed their next destination, but the chart itself was meaningless to her. Danvers uses the Skrull memory-thingie so that she can see it—but it also triggers other memories of Danvers and Rambeau from thirty years earlier, and also of Danvers visiting Maria during the Blip when the latter was dying, none of which makes Rambeau happy
The star chart has Aladna as Dar-Benn’s next destination, which is also a planet Danvers knows well, for reasons she’s cagey about at first. She also confesses to Rambeau why she avoided coming back to Earth to see the Rambeaus. The Kree have been calling her “the Annihilator,” and Danvers explains why: Danvers’ destruction of the Kree Supreme Intelligence led to a civil war on Hala, which left the sun badly de-energized, the atmosphere not entirely breathable, and with their water supply exhausted. Danvers felt guilty about this, and couldn’t face either of the Rambeaus—especially not Monica, because she didn’t feel worthy of being Lieutenant Trouble’s Aunt Carol anymore.
Rambeau tells her she’s an idiot and that that’s not how family works. Speaking of family, Fury brings the Khans up to the S.A.B.E.R. satellite, where they aren’t thrilled about their daughter haring off into space to fight the bad guys (Muneeba’s exact words are, “Kamala, you are not going on any space adventures!”). Khan insists that she’s needed, and besides, it means possibly getting the other bangle which is, of course, a family heirloom. Her parents accept this and wish her well, though Muneeba says in Urdu that she’ll kill Danvers if anything happens to her daughter. Khan refrains from an exact translation for Danvers…
On the journey to Aladna, the trio practice working the switches, including using jump rope to switch in and out from the one jumping to the two twirling the rope.
Upon arrival at Aladna, Rambeau and Khan are amused to learn that the local language is singing and dancing, and Danvers is married to the prince, Yan. She says it’s just a political thing, but her arrival is treated with extra pomp and circumstance, including them singing and dancing together for everyone. (Rambeau asks if Khan is now writing new Captain Marvel fanfics, and Khan dreamily answers in the affirmative.)
Yan is bilingual, so he and Danvers can talk without singing. She explains the situation apologetically, as Dar-Benn is obviously going after planets Danvers herself cares about. Dar-Benn arrives and fisticuffs ensue. Alas, Dar-Benn is able to maintain the upper hand and steal Aladna’s water, while the trio are forced to retreat.
Having gotten air from Tarnax and water from Aladna, now Dar-Benn needs to re-energize Hala’s sun. Her target: Earth’s sun.
In the meantime, strange pods are found all over the S.A.B.E.R. satellite. Then Dar-Benn arrives through a jump point, which damages the satellite very badly, including trashing some of the escape pods. But then the pods crack open, and it turns out they’re Flerken eggs: Goose had a litter! Which means there are a ton of Flerken kittens loose on the station.
This actually solves a problem: they don’t have enough escape pods for all the full-sized humans, but the Flerkens can (temporarily) eat the people; that way they’ll take up way less space. So Fury and the Khan family have to herd cats, while Danvers, Khan, and Rambeau go after Dar-Benn. Unfortunately, Dar-Benn is able to get her hands on Khan’s bangle, so now she has both quantum bands.
However, the power required of both quantum bands to do what Dar-Benn wants proves too much for her, and she’s consumed by the energy. Earth’s sun remains intact, but the jump point is severely damaged and has opened a portal to another universe. Rambeau can fix it if Danvers and Khan power her up, but she can only do it from the other side.
Rambeau closes the jump point, saving everyone, though she is now trapped in the other universe. Fury and the Khans land safely in New York, along with the S.A.B.E.R. crew (once they’ve been horked back up by the Flerken kittens). Khan returns alone in Danvers’ ship—Danvers herself goes to Hala and re-energizes their sun herself.
Danvers moves into the Rambeau house in New Orleans, assisted by the entire Khan family, with her stuff taken out of storage. Khan and Danvers both get into Maria’s plane, with Khan in the pilot seat.
Later we see Khan in Kate Bishop’s loft, recruiting her for something she doesn’t actually call the Young Avengers, in a cute callback to the post-credits scene in Iron Man.
Rambeau wakes up in a lab, being examined by Dr. Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast, and Maria Rambeau, a.k.a. Binary. Maria has no idea who this crazy woman who thinks she’s her daughter is…
(And all the X-Men fans cheer!)
“So literally herding cats…”
This movie should have been a huge success, and I’m going to go against the grain and suggest the two main reasons are not the ones many of its detractors have given. One is the SAG-AFTRA strike, which kept the actors from promoting the movie (the strike didn’t end until after this movie’s release). This is a bigger reason than you might think, simply because Iman Vellani is a national treasure and a joy and a massive nerd and her actually being able to do publicity for the movie would have, in my not-so-humble opinion, increased its box office tremendously.
The other is the spectacularly idiotic decision to give this movie the bland, generic, meaningless title of The Marvels.
Seriously, guys, what the actual fuck? You had a gajillion-dollar success in 2019 with Captain Marvel, why the hell isn’t the sequel called either Captain Marvel 2 or Captain Marvel: Some Sort of Subtitle, like you did with every other damn character in your pantheon? This is Branding 101! Not everyone who sees these movies follows all the stuff on the Internet about it; most just know there’s a movie coming out, and if it’s not branded as a Captain Marvel movie, but instead given a generic title that just indicates that it’s from the same studio, probably, folks are gonna miss it. And by “folks,” I don’t mean the hardcore fan base, I mean just ordinary, not-plugged-into-the-geek-community movie-goers, whose interest in these movies is why they’re so wildly popular.
It’s especially maddening because this movie is an absolute delight, tremendous fun from beginning to end. A huge chunk of that, unsurprisingly, is due to Vellani’s mere presence. Her Khan is glorious, continuing the superb work she did in Ms. Marvel.
(They really need to put her and Tom Holland together in a Spider-Man movie. I mean, they have to have a mainline Marvel Studios character accompany Holland in any Spider-film anyhow, so why can’t Holland’s next one also feature Ms. Marvel? It would be perfect!)
The three leads have fantastic chemistry together, and it’s good to finally see why Danvers has stayed away from Earth until Fury specifically summoned her at the end of Infinity War: guilt, which is always a good motivator (especially for Marvel’s more angsty heroes). She didn’t want Lieutenant Trouble to see her as the Annihilator instead of Aunt Carol.
An interesting shift in Rambeau’s character here, which intellectually I don’t like, but found myself taking to despite myself: Rambeau resists becoming a proper superhero in this movie. She rejects every overture Khan makes to give her a codename, and she prefers to be Captain Rambeau of S.A.B.E.R., not one of the Marvels. This is in direct contrast to her comics counterpart, who jumped into being a superhero with both feet, mostly because her career in the Harbor Patrol was stalled due to institutional sexism, whereas the Avengers accepted her without hesitation. Still, it works, and Teyonah Parris continues the good work she started in WandaVision, particularly with her resentment toward Danvers for staying away so long.
Meanwhile, Larson perfectly plays Danvers as a loner. She’s reluctant to let anybody in, partly because of that guilt, partly because the last group of people she teamed up with turned out to be assholes (Yon-Rogg and the rest of the Kree gang from Captain Marvel). Watching her slowly come to accept Khan’s fangoobering and restore her relationship with Rambeau is very nicely and subtly handled. (Probably too subtly for far too many viewers who don’t notice nuance in female actors’ performances…)
In addition, we have the absolute joy of the Khan family and the eternal Samuel L. Jackson. The Khan family dynamic grounds the movie, making it far more relatable to everyone except racists, as these are ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances and dealing with it as best they can. (I particularly love when Yusuf gives financial advice to one of the S.A.B.E.R. crew.) And it’s never not fun to watch Jackson be Fury (even in a disastrous slog like the awful Secret Invasion), from “Black girl magic!” to “No more touching shit!” to his encouraging Aamir to keep praying because they need all the help they can get.
It’s not as strong as the movie it’s a sequel to. It’s more of a straightforward superhero adventure, which may be a third reason why it didn’t do as well. It’s become clear over the decades that the audiences are less interested in “ordinary” superhero adventures, as the ones that have either origins or major status quo changes are the ones that tend to be successful. Which is a pity, as this movie is a great showcase for three great superheroes.
Plus, the Flerken kittens eating the crew and then horking them back up is just epic…
Next week, we look at the last 2023 superhero movie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
