THE MARVELS

THE MARVELS brings together Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers, the teenage Miss Marvel and Capt. Monica Rimbaud, the daughter of Carol’s old Air Force colleague, to stop an alien leader from sapping the natural resources of three other planets, including Earth, and leaving them uninhabitable. THE MARVELS is designed to be just a fun, funny, relatively family-friendly comic book entertainment, and it mostly succeeds in doing that, but there is a smattering of foul language, lots of action violence and two or three other minor issues that warrant caution for younger viewers.

The movie opens with Dar-Benn, the new female leader of the Kree, a race of alien warriors and conquerors, arriving on the moon with some Kree soldiers. They locate the twin bracelet to the bracelet that gave Kamala Khan her powers as Miss Marvel, or “Ms.” Marvel. What Kamala doesn’t know is that the bracelets enable the wearer to access a series of jump portals the Kree have been using for centuries to skip across the galaxy, conquering as they go. Dar-Benn, however, wants to use her bracelet to sap the air, water and solar energy of other planets so the Kree can save their home planet.

Meanwhile, Carol is in her spaceship near Earth, using some other Kree technology to jog her memories about her previous life on Earth before she disappeared in 1989. She gets a call from Nick Fury, who’s on the space station that, as director of SABER, he uses to monitor potential alien threats to Earth. Fury wants Carol to investigate an anomalous wormhole that’s appeared near the moon. He also wants her to work on it with Monica, Capt. Rimbaud, who’s on a space walk taking care of some equipment on the space station.

Carol hasn’t spoken to Monica, however, since she returned from the five-year blip created by Thanos, who sent half the people and beings in the universe into deadly oblivion to protect “the environment.” Monica is still upset that, when she was a child in the 1990s, Carol didn’t return like she promised after Carol and Nick Fury stopped the Kree from coming to Earth and wiping out a remnant of some shape-shifting aliens called the Skrull, who have been the Krees’ mortal enemies for centuries. The remnant of Skrulls has been hiding incognito on Earth after the Kree Empire destroyed their home planet.

Carol investigates what’s happening on the moon while Monica investigates the strange wormhole. Chaos ensues when both women encounter Dar-Benn and her party. Using the recovered bracelet on her arm, Dar-Benn fires at Monica while Carol uses her superpowers to defend herself. The energy from Dar-Benn’s bracelet interacts with the wormhole and gives Monica special powers. Carol’s Captain Marvel powers become entangled with Monica’s new powers. They also become entangled with Kamala’s superpowers while Kamala is minding her own business fantasizing about working with Captain Marvel.

Meanwhile, the fight with Dar-Benn and her Kree soldiers continues, but with Carol, Monica and Kamala suddenly, frequently, switching places with one another. Also, did we mention that Carol has brought her calico cat, Goose, along for the ride, but Goose is actually an animal alien with tentacles inside his body that he uses to swallow objects and people, only to regurgitate them later. The fighting ends up making a mess of Kamala’s house, which doesn’t please her parents at all.

After the fighting finally stops, the three women eventually find out that Dar-Benn intends to siphon the air out of a planet that another remnant of Skrulls is using. She wants to transfer the air to the Kree home planet, whose sun is dying. Carol feels responsible for that, because she destroyed the powerful AI system that was running Kree society on their home planet of Hala. Carol didn’t realize, however that, by destroying the system, she also destroyed the technology that was keeping the sun and the planet’s environment safe.

Carol, Monica and Kamala decide to work together to stop Dar-Benn. Kamala’s parents are reluctant to let her go, but Carol promises to keep Kamala safe.

Can the three women learn how to work well together and use their powers in consort to defeat Dar-Benn?

THE MARVELS does away with some of the more ponderous aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including any heavy-handed wokeness. It’s just meant to be a fun, exciting adventure with lots of humor. It pretty much succeeds in doing exactly that. In fact, the movie has some of the funniest moments of any Marvel superhero movie. Even the extended fight scene in the beginning has lots of humor in it, although it sometimes gets a little confusing as the three female superheroes switch places at breakneck speed.

THE MARVELS has a pro-life message. Not in the sense of being anti-abortion, but in the sense of trying to save as many lives, human and alien, as possible. For example, the three superheroes try to save as many Skrull lives as possible when the female villain comes to steal their oxygen. Also, in the final battle, an act of self-sacrifice occurs that’s meant to save many lives.

That said, THE MARVELS has a smattering of foul language. Most of the foul language is light, however, except for four “s” words. Happily, the movie is free of heavy-handed politically correct content. There’s a light feminist tone, though, given the fact that there are three female superheroes. Also, during one intense moment, Kamala’s brother starts praying in Arabic. In the TV series where Kamala’s character was introduced, her family was overtly depicted as Muslim immigrants from Pakistan. As the brother starts to pray, he stops and looks at Nick Fury to see if he’s offended. However, Fury says, go ahead, we need all the help we can get, and then adds, “Amen” when Kamala’s brother finishes his prayer. Of course, as most intelligent Muslims and Christians know, the Muslim god and the Christian, biblical God are not the same.