It was a legitimately awful movie. If you asked chatgpt to make you a superhero movie for teen girls and the plot didn’t matter, this is what it would be. I’m hoping that’s the audience they’re trying to pull into the giant universe, because everyone else is going to be left underwhelmed.
Other diagnostics on The Marvels: 65% male leaning, with 45% men over 25, 22% women over 25 (giving it the best grades at 82%), men under 25 at 20%, and women under 25 at 14%.
I think this highlights the issue well. Marvel continues to be popular with primarily men. Disney has tried desperately to attract women by killing off popular male characters and introducing young women. Unfortunately all they’ve achieved is mostly just alienating men. I’ve given up on Marvel entirely.
Do you know for a fact that it’s bad? Have you seen it? Or are you just making an assumption because it has low box office figures which you are extrapolating as meaning it’s a bad movie? It’s rated above a 6 on IMDB and above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it sounds like a lot of people enjoyed it.
Based on the non-response from the person above, I’m guessing they haven’t seen it either. Most Marvel movies are mixed in terms of reception, and some men, whether they claim it has nothing to do with gender or not, will not go see a superhero movie where women are the heroes. They don’t even hate the idea, they just don’t see “woman movies.” There are an unfortunately large number of men who feel that way.
But then, despite all of the people, all seemingly male, who told me that She-Hulk was terrible and it wasn’t about gender, I thought it was terrific. So what do I know?
Hey you get my upvote. I had a blast with She-Hulk. A lot of Marvel is uneven but enjoyable. I like how, even after the show called out big CGI battles, Marvel still pumped out big CGI battles. Was wildly self-aware and yet… here we are!
After seeing Dr. Strange and not understanding the entire movie engine because I don’t have Disney+ I stopped watching MCU movies. I’d love to go see this movie now that I know it’s out but why spend time and money watching actors in front of a green screen doing things I don’t understand because I didn’t watch multiple TV shows?
I mean, i have been seeing the same damn trailer for it before every movie i’ve seen in theaters for months, and I still didnt realize it was coming out now.
Superhero movies are infantile comfort films, art is supposed to be challenging and interpretable. When you know the ending from the genre it's a bad movie.
Yet pseudo-nerds will sperg out over the meaningless cameos and "cannon implications."
They keep trying to push Kamala Kahn, but I never found her to be a very compelling character. Even less so now that they changed her powers. I watch almost all the marvel stuff but I couldn't make it through that mini-series, and I'm not very interested in this movie either.
Maybe it was because I thought the examination of the American Muslim community was interesting and not something I’d really seen before, but I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best show ever, but it was interesting. The examination of The Partition was also interesting.
Yeah, I felt like it was more about the American Muslim/Pakistani experience than it was about superheroing, which is why it probably wasn’t popular with some people like the person above. But I was fine with that because I was learning things about a culture I wasn’t very familiar with. But thinking on it, it’s kind of a departure from other Marvel stuff. A lot less action and mayhem.
Yeah the cultural exploration was probably the most interesting aspect of it, otherwise she just seems like a palette swapped Jubilee. They leaned pretty heavily into that. Honestly, I wish they'd just created a different Pakistani superhero to explore this, it might have been more interesting. Other countries should have superheroes too, right?
If I recall correctly, her original shape-shifting powers led to some interesting character development in the comics, which fit in with her thematically wrestling with her identity. That all got discarded when she got the power to summon purple glowing rock things instead, leaving behind the most interesting part of the character to me.
Also I recall there were a lot of "hello fellow kids!" cringeworthy attempts at appealing to zoomers in the miniseries.
As someone who comes from a Canadian Muslim family, that’s probably the thing that made me stop watching the show. It was just so over the top in terms of Muslim culture that it just seemed off. The way Islam was brought in to pretty much every discussion, no one actually talks or acts like that, at least no moderates. It’s no different from people of Christian backgrounds who I am sure aren’t talking about being Christian 24/7. It just felt like pandering.
Ms. Marvel is up there in terms of my favorite D+ series and what you mentioned had a lot to do with it. The end of the season felt extra corny and like some generic Netflix production but overall it was really fun.
Mostly because of her, I would like to check out The Marvels in theaters but I just don’t think we’ll have time and, realistically, it’s going to be streamable in, what, a couple of months? That’s probably the bigger issue - there aren’t really movies I’m so excited to see that I can’t wait that long.
Agree to disagree. I find the Kamala Kahn character to be an effervescent relief to a series that's taking itself way too seriously or trying too hard for slap stick. Does that make this particular movie great? No. The movie itself is a pretty flimsy plot. The main trope of the movie is someone makes a mistake, the group comes together to resolve the mistake, and develop themselves during that resolution. So with that said, it's not really good at delivering that, it's not Trolls bad (the original one which the plot sucks, the music is quite good) but yeah there was a lot of room for lots of character development that was just not included in what was delivered. To me the movie pulled its punches on what it could have delivered.
But in these kinds of tropes you see classic character stereotype traits, in this case Kamala Kahn plays the lighthearted comedic foil and does so quite well through the movie. Needless to say the Captain Marvel character is our person who brings the conflict to be resolved and towards the end you are left with a pretty unsatisfying result. Like the issue is indeed resolved, but it's about as exciting as how I might feel when I've completed my taxes. Hooray, I got that done. Maria Rambeau is our power character consistently pushing the accelerator for the characters to resolve the matter. And she's pretty good at it, but there was absolutely more opportunity for her to flesh that out that they kept sacking her personal past to keep that in check. Which at some point one might go, yeah we get it, she's troubled and doesn't want to talk about it. There's a degree of too much "I'm the aloof character in this movie". I will say the final fight scene is actually good for the level of just skirting the level of frenetic and follow-ability. I've gotten to a point where I just tune out superhero fights when it just becomes a lightshow and camera pandemonium (ala the most recent Ant Man movie).
Like I said, it's not a horrible movie. I went to the 10am showing of it on Friday (with one other friend) and that was $40 and that's where I would say "Do NOT go see this movie for $40". But I really enjoy the Kamala Kahn character and the level of energy the actress brings to the character. It reminds me a bit of how bubbly my twenty-two year old niece is sometimes and that serves as a nice refresher given the backdrop of generally everything else. So, I will acquiescence, there's a likely bias on my part for the character.
Again, absolutely not disagreeing with your position on the character. I think Marvel (and this touches just every so slightly on the superhero saturation) has gotten so big that not every character is going to be widely welcomed by everyone. I think there's a point that the Marvel Superhero movies get so numerous that you have to start considering sub-genres for the movies. And perhaps Marvel should pull back a bit on the distribution (it's their ship ultimately to sail and sink if need be). But I really enjoyed the Kamala Kahn character in the same way that I enjoyed the Katy character from the Shang-Chi movie. I good comedic foil is like pepper, you need just enough to flavor the food and not too much to over power the food and both of those characters have carried that role quite well thus far. But like anything, Disney has every chance to run that straight into the ground.
Going to see it this afternoon with the whole family. Looks like a good time. I’m glad that Kamala is a big part of it. The Mutant saga will likely be where box office reinvigorates. Having her be such a key figure in the early explorations of the X-Men is a perfect introduction. She could definitely be the Jubilee type character for the X-Men saga. If she heads to Xaviers school after Deadpool 3 id lose my mind.
Edit: I just finished the movie. Family had a lot of fun watching. Dynamic between the characters was good. Story actually progressed some of the MCUs overarching plot of incursions. I didn’t expect the post credit scene to bring in what it did, but I goes along with what I was hoping. If you are reluctant about seeing it, go to the adult parlor and have a drink. It’s worth a beverage and the ticket price. More Kamala is on the way and I’m hyped.
I saw the movie a few days ago and while I didn't think it was bad, I'll admit the script is a mess. Some parts are a little hard to follow or poorly explained. Someone either got a bit lazy with the writing or did a poor job cutting it all together.
It will be interesting to see how the post-strike/pandemic era of the MCU plays out. The 2007 strike made for like 5 years of shit movies. The pandemic and this strike were significantly longer and had a much higher toll on every level of movie making. I don’t harp to much on scripts from serialized content, but I do imagine it will get better in time for the X-Men and Fantastic era of the MCU.
It feels like an editing issue. The film was fast paced and a lot of scenes just ask you to assume that they make sense. In truth they probably do, but they need a little bit of explanation.
Let’s talk Flerkins for example. Early in the film Goose eats some bad guys, teleports to Kamala’s living room, then spits them out. No one really comments on it. No one found it weird. We just defeat the bad guys and move on.
Next Goose spits up some science equipment. We learn that they’ve been missing for a while. They look fine but no one mentions that they still work, or we’re otherwise still preserved.
Finally we have the musical Memory scene. Ignore for a moment the eggs that hatched. Ignoring for a moment it happens when they’ve run out escape pods. We have “kittens”, we’ve established that Flerkins can eat people and they can hold what they’ve eaten for a while. So while the solution makes sense, and on paper they’ve earned the moment, it takes a moment to really put it all together. As a result it feels rushed and instead of just enjoying the scene you’re left wondering if it makes sense.
We’re only talking about cutting a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but it adds up.
I feel like Disney already knew and was expecting this. The original Captain Marvel wasn’t very well received, and they seem to understand now that not everyone wants to consume every piece of MCU media all the time with the new “Spotlight” tag. I expect it’ll get a fast turnaround onto streaming.
They love to blame flops like this on things like feminism, but generally it’s just because Disney has no idea what they are doing anymore after killing off the A-listers and then releasing nothing but wet farts for the last five years.
That and they’ve oversaturated the market and made it hard for non fans to keep up. When you have to watch 2 5-8 hour Disney plus shows just to understand who the characters are in the movie (Maria Rambeau and Kamala Khan) then Disney as a company is probably doing something wrong. Comic people might love it but everyday joes not so much.
Yeah it’s like the films are kind of safe cash grabs, but then they also have this barrier to entry. Even as a fan of marvel I couldn’t finish all the mini series because some of them just don’t grab me, and then what?
Yep. In order to understand this film, you have to have watched the Captain Marvel film, the Wandavision TV series and the Ms. Marvel TV series. Meaning this is basically a way to tie you down to Disney+ so you don’t miss out.
They’ve made it hard for even the die hard fans to keep up.
One of the major reasons I never liked comic books was there was always a hundred different storylines going on. That’s now crept into the MCU and it’s just no longer fun to try to keep up with
Yeah, I feel like Avengers: Endgame was an ending for the MCU. I’m not complaining, because a good story needs to have an ending, but I’m also not motivated to see superhero movies coming out after Endgame (at least not cosmic-scale superhero movies - I’ll always have a soft spot for Peter Parker).
Not to mention how expensive it is to go to the movies! For us, this has less to do with how medium the marvel movies have been and more that a single ticket is a month of a streaming service and I already cut all our streaming services. If I decide to splurge, it’s going to be on a month of content, not two hours.
I haven't gone to see any movies for a while now. The effort to go to a theatre and all that just feels not worth it. I'd rather wait for the films to be available on something I can watch at home.
This is literally the first I’d heard of the movie. If it’s anything like the other marvel movies, it’ll be overwhelmingly OK (not terrible, not great).
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