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Did 'The Marvels' Deserve The Hate It Got? — CultureSlate (www.cultureslate.com)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago

I think the movie was on par with other Marvel movies at the time. A lot of misogynists got to hide behind the fact that it wasn’t a great movie, but the fact that this film regularly gets called the “worst” when it was preceded by Eternals (a dry, over-serious slog); Love and Thunder (a disjointed comedy(?) with poor writing); Wakanda Forever (I actually couldn’t tell you what this one was about it was so forgettable); and Quantumania (the failed launch of Kang that was a CGI nightmare) is absurd to me.

All of the movies I mentioned are fun if you take them for what they are, and The Marvels was a basic “superheroes fight bad guy from their past” story with a fun twist.

I think it also got pushback because it was the first film which explicitly had required reading (Wandavision and Ms Marvel), but this is the MCU. Every movie these days is linked to some other product.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Only thing I must disagree on here is Wakanda Forever, I loved that movie.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago

explicitly had required reading

I think Multiverse of Madness had more required reading. Wanda wants to save her kids and without WandaVision you're forced to ask, "What kids?"

For this film I think Kamala being "a big fan" is enough. We don't need to know how she got her powers for her to fit into this film.

For Monica it's a little more required, but they basically just speedrun and say "A magical witch gave me powers" and while that's an understatement you can just sort of accept that she has powers now.

It's similar to Kamala where we just accept that these two new main characters have powers, and that's ok since this is their big screen debut.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Every film in the MCU since phase 2 builds on characters from previous films. You can't just jump into the middle and expect to know what's going on.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Sure, but there is a difference between "required reading" and backstory.

For example at the end of Iron Man 3 Tony destroys all of his various armor and Pepper Potts gets Extremis powers.

At no point after that is Tony missing/lacking for armor nor does Pepper have superpowers. The events of Iron Man 3 are not required to watch any future film.

However Iron Man 3 does deal with Tony trying to recover and handle the stress from the Battle of New York. You can't watch Iron Man 3 without having watched The Avengers.

But also, sometimes the film can just fill you in. Endgame makes a number of major references to Thor 2. Thor 2, at the time, was the lowest rated and likely least watched film. However Endgame just fills us in on the important parts of that film and we move forward.

Yes, watching the previous films is going to improve future tie-in plot points, but it isn't always necessary.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

You wouldn't understand some of Shang Chi without having seen Iron Man 3, though. Trevor has his own entire subplot which makes almost no sense without context.

They also do reference the clean slate protocol in Age of Ultron. By then, Tony has built the Iron Legion, and has started working on Ultron with Banner. Granted, it's not necessary to understand the pathos behind the decision, but it makes more sense with the backstory. It's like the central conflict of the whole movie, kind of the way Wanda searching for her multiversal children is for Multiverse of Madness. If you didn't watch WandaVision, the movie drops a few lines of exposition to give you the bullet points, but it makes much more sense if you watch the show.

I was bummed they just kinda dropped the Extremis plotline entirely, but I've never thought the MCU needed more Gwenyth Paltrow.

And yes, the Endgame scene with Frigga would be extremely confusing without having watched The Dark World. I still think that was one of the worst films, but it is required viewing to understand the trio of Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

The Eternals was the only marvel movie I straight up stopped watching, about 40 or so min in. I haven't seen the Marvels but not sure how it could be worse

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Eternal was a bit of a slog but I ended up happy I watched it, connected to the characters, and willing to see a sequel.

Marvels was entertaining at times but an unmemorable movie that I was mainly happy to not pay theater prices for

A lot of it was the characters.

  • Kamala was a fantastic character in Ms Marvel and the highlight of this movie as far as it goes but somewhat a dead end for her. Bummer.
  • Monica still isn’t developed as a character. I want to like her but she’s still a nothing that barely makes sidekick material
  • I’ve never liked the Carol character in Marvel. I don’t know if it’s poor writing or disconnected acting but definitely the weak part
[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

It doesn't help that Carol is pure Mary Sue and therefore boring. Kamala is why I expect Marvel's to be better than Eternals

this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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