Just got back from watching The Marvels and I gotta say that I think it's gotten very undeserved bad press.
It's shorter than a lot of MCU movies, which works in its favour. It makes the adventure feel fast paced and breezy without ever over-staying its welcome.
The interactions between the titular trio is great. They handle the lighter scenes and the more dramatic stuff really well. And seeing the Kahns interact with Nick Fury is just a delight.
I also liked the main villain. She has a good motivation, and there was a sense of desperation that fueled all her evil deeds. I found her quite engaging.
It's also quite creative with its action scenes and at least one of the locations is just a hoot.
There are some issues with the logistics of the villain's situation and her plan. And the flerken does overstay its welcome. But none of those issues break it in any way for me.
Yeah. I just think that The Marvels is great fun.
They are both mediocre/average films. It's not really worth arguing that one is demonstrably better than the other. It's the same MCU vs DCEU shit. The MCU makes a cookie cutter plot and if everything around it is good it will make it better than the sum of its parts, if not, it is revealed for how generic it actually is. The DCEU takes a bunch of unconventional risks that tend to burden the film under it's own weight unless it's done exceptionally well. Both mossed the mark. If people want to get into a fanboy war that one is better than the other. They both aren't particularly good.
The boxoffice is a result of superhero fatigue, generally unlikeable stars, characters who really been A list style draws, and an oversaturation of the market which makes people not want to turn out for anything that doesn't feel special. The market as it is right now just isn't going to give a superhero film a box office win for being average. That time passed.
I am trying to get through Blue Beetle on Max. If you want to talk about a bad super hero movie with a generic plot and one dimensional characters.... Makes The Marvels look like Lawrence of Arabia.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
It's a neck and neck race for third place between Marvels/Thanksgiving at the box office
Just came back from Thanksgiving...theater was packed.
My local theater isn't even offering tickets for Friday yet (Napoleon, Saltburn, Wish, Taylor Swift, Hunger Games, Trolls, and Dream Scenario)
I liked the movie a lot, but it really suffered with that short run time. I feel like Dar-Benn's feud with Carol was supposed to be personal, but we don't see much of their relationship. I expected a much more powerful villain to give three Marvels a run for their money, but it seemed as though she wasn't even as tough as Ronan.
I also felt that while the place changing in the beginning was fun, I kind of lost sight of Monica. I'll have to rewatch it, but it looked like the Khans should have been killed faster than they would have gotten help.
Still, Carol, Monica, and Kamala made for a great team. They each brought something different to the table, both in terms of power and personality. Fury I was a little underwhelmed by. Even if you ignore Secret Invasion (I guess that was supposed to come out after this?), I feel like S.A.B.E.R. isn't anywhere near as cool as S.H.I.E.L.D. was. Captain Marvel feels too far removed from the rest of the MCU since she didn't get a lot of down time with the Avengers and isn't really bumping into the space characters and aliens introduced in the Guardians movies.
Yeah, seeing that backstory would have helped.
I also liked when Yusuf was advising the S.A.B.E.R. guy about his finances, and when he said he's 300, Amir looked at his father and said "Ah, same age." Him praying and Fury telling him not to stop because they need all they help they can get was amusing too.
Well I don't have any idea what you mean by incoherent and sloppy. There isn't a superhero movie yet where, if I think about it, there isn't a better and more logical way to solve things. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to slicing and dicing nearly all superhero movies based solely on their incoherence and sloppiness.
Look what they did with the rogues in the Arrowverse, with Snart and Rory being good guys? Well, ok, good guys who kept insisting they were bad guys because you couldn't really tell otherwise. Incoherent and sloppy. But I accepted it in the Arrowverse because they were telling good stories and weren't copying old stories but making new ones with new characters. For the same reason, I found myself able to accept the Flash movie for what it was rather than for what it could have been based on the comics and other Flash mythology.
But hey I don't work for DC, no investment in the movie's success here. If more people hated it than loved it, that's good for me because I'll soon be able to pick up the Blue Ray pretty cheap.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
I wonder if part of the problem is that the audience knows that there won't be much of a gap between the cinema run ending and it coming to D+. So if they're a bit "on the fence" about whether to see it on release or not, they know they won't be waiting long to be able to watch it at home. If the gap between cinema release and streaming was longer, maybe more "apathetic" viewers would get to the cinema to see it.
I feel like the pandemic changed outlooks on going out quite considerably.
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Yah I wasn't thrilled with the movie but still there is a certain "blood in the water with sharks" thing going on with the movie. Get the feeling that lots of folks are jumping on the bandwagon without bothering to see it and form their own thoughts about it.
Yes, definitely. Streaming has changed the way we see movies. Also we are just all accustomed to watching movies on a smaller screen of a phone of tablet, so going to see them on a big screen isn't nearly as necessary as it once was perceived to be.
But this is why I specifically went and saw Marvels in the theatre. To support that kind of a movie, with all female and poc leads. But again it was more of a choice to do that rather than because I felt it had to be seen on the big screen.
Last edited by Scott Taylor; 11-20-2023 at 10:35 AM.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
I wonder, who else is in THAT universe? FF (Chiklis, Alba etc now with Franklin and Valeria), Miles, Bana hulk, seventies Strange?
Your thoughts on this?