Did 'The Marvels' Deserve The Hate It Got?

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.

A lot of misogynists got to hide behind the fact that it wasn’t a great movie
Always their playbook. There's a lot of that with video games too, often coming from the same YouTube channels and websites, like Bounding into Comics. If the release is a success, they move on soon enough. If not, they latch onto every legit and made-up problem, sprinkling in the usual anti-woke nonsense.
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.
- 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.
Only thing I must disagree on here is Wakanda Forever, I loved that movie.
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
- 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

I said this same thing at the time, and added that there is a second category of hate-reviewers, critics who are tired of Comic Book Movies. Critics watch movies to write reviews and draw readers to sell ads. They must watch every movie, and it's entirely relatable that they would be sick of slogging through yet another superhero origin story, especially given the DC, Sony, and Fox garbage that tried to emulate what Marvel had done. Terrible movies make for entertaining reviews. Shitting on bad movies is good for engagement, which sells more ads.

But the movies aren't made for critics. They aren't made for casual viewers. They're made for fans. If you don't want to watch a comic book movie, all of its flaws will stick out like when you bit the inside of your cheek.

So you have the bigots who hate seeing women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ representation in films. Then you have the critics who want to gather clicks. And you have legitimate grievances with formulaic movies, bad writing, and unfinished CGI.

These snowball into a compounding, self-sustaining feedback loop, and if you aren't paying attention, it seems like consensus.

None of the MCU movies have been terrible. None of the latest batch have been perfect movies, but even the worst ones have been entertaining and sincerely enjoyable for fans of the comics.

Compare the Marvels to a movie like Madam Web, which was irredeemably bad, or Wonder Woman 1984 which was reviled by DC comics fans. The reviews for those movies focused primarily on their flaws, and not being "woke."

The Marvels immediately fell victim to false narratives and culture war nonsense

People with shitty opinions have shitty opinions. Surprise!

I'm not saying you have ignore the elephant in the room when covering the film but you don't need to keep bringing it up as though the people with shitty takes have valid criticism. They're not arguing in good faith.

Now, did the The Marvels have issues as a film? Yes.

The two biggest, barely mentioned in this article, were the shortened run time which led to a rushed storyline and the weak character development of the films primary villain.

The film skips the more interesting story of how Captain Marvel became viewed not as the savior of all worlds, but as the villain of the Kree.

We also have the resentment of Monica towards Captain Marvel. I think the film generally handled this well, but it was weird that these characters never spoke before the film. It would have been nice if they had an attempted but more strained relationship as this film starts.

And if course to contrast all this Kamala absolutely adores Captain Marvel. The "why" isn't really explained. Captain Marvel is mostly out in space, so what did she do to gain her appreciation? Even if we say that she saved the day in Endgame, Kamala would only have second had accounts of these events.

The film needed a bit more world building. It needed more time to tell it's story. Instead we got an extended cat montage. While memorable (ha) and funny, it doesn't add to the story.

But do I hate The Marvels? No. It's a disappointment. It should have been better.

The film skips the more interesting story of how Captain Marvel became viewed not as the savior of all worlds, but as the villain of the Kree.
YES. This could have been a worthwhile movie by itself. Blowing the chance to take a non-human perspective was a missed opportunity.
Overall, I’d say The Marvels wasn’t an especially good movie, but the hate it got was ridiculously disproportionate.

Nah. It got hate from right wingers because woman. Still just a superhero movie but wasn't as bad as they claimed.

You don't need to be a right winger to find the story etc. to be trash.
- Meh. Not any worse than others. More hate though for reason already stated.

the biggest crime marvel ever commited on themselves was infinitywar/endgame. Not all these movies have to be that big and I think many people miss that.

I had a fun time at the Marvels and Quantumania that year, I came out happy. Did they change my life? No, but I had fun

Everything prior to Endgame had been building towards it.
After Endgame it really felt like the movies were rudderless. Too many plots of "I got snapped and I'm sad" or "I didn't get snapped and I'm sad."
If the MultiVerse plots can pull together for Doomsday/Secret Wars that will be something, but what do we have that touched the MultiVerse?
Multiverse of Madness
No Way Home
Loki 1/2
Quantumania
Deadpool and Wolverine
That would be a lot if we were talking about literally any other franchise, but there have been 14 movies since Endgame and only 4 of them set up the next big thing?
Non-Multiverse movies since endgame:
Spider-Man: Far From Home
Black Widow
Shang-Chi
Eternals
Love and Thunder
Wakanda Forever
Guardians 3
Marvels
Brave New World
Thunderbolts*
- Yeah.
  I remember within my friend group it originally was like everyone watched the Iron Man movies. We didnt care about the fact that other MCU movies existed. Then with the first Avengers movie they started teasing more openly about the infinity stones, and that drew people in. Going "oh they are building towards something". And that story is now over.
- Non-Multiverse movies since endgame:
  Spider-Man: Far From Home Black Widow Shang-Chi Eternals Love and Thunder Wakanda Forever Guardians 3 Marvels Brave New World Thunderbolts*
  was there no fun to be had in any of those?

The hate is largely misdirected at the cast. It had weak writing and some of the visual effects were clinkers.

I remember in particular Captain Marvel grabbing a spaceship and throwing it and it was like gravity and inertia just stopped existing for a bit.

This was the first movie I saw in a theater after the pandemic and I loved it. The worst things I can say about about it are that it had a standard villain who we’d never heard of before and watching the making of this movie on Disney+ they went way overboard over how happy they were to involve zero men who n multiple facets of making the movie.

If you imagined it swapped and a bunch of dudes saying how great it was that they got to do, idk, costumes or sound design or whatever without any women being involved it would have been gross, but somehow sexism was supposed to be okay because it was women doing it? Ick.

Still a fun movie that I enjoyed, and I’m very much the dude that at least on the surface looks like who they’d hate.

No movie that isn't just bigotry pretending to be a movie deserves the kind of hate this movie got.

That being said, it's not a great movie. It also lacks the charm of a traditional B movie. But that's all it is, is meh.

It was definitely on the lower end as far as Marvel movies go. I'd say it was just a hair better than bad. There were some good scenes, but overall they didn't flow from one to the other. The main villain wasn't interesting. There were some neat concepts that ended up feeling like missed opportunities (a feeling I've had A LOT post-Endgame).

I'd put it neck-and-neck with Wakanda Forever. Better than Thor L&T, Ant-Man QuANTuMANia, Captain America BNW, and Black Widow. Nowhere near as good as Shang-Chi, Spider-Man FFH, Spider-Man NWH, Doctor Strange MoM, GOTG Vol. 3, or Thunderbolts. I thought Eternals was fun too. Not as good as those mentioned, but still better than The Marvels.

The film is bad and deserves most of the hate. The actresses do what they can with the material, and the hate is unjustified.

@TheImpressiveX I liked it just fine. I feel it delivered on its promises, plus something-something about a villain or whatever. I really liked that they gave so much screen time to Kamala's family.

I rate it about 5/10 on the marvel scale but like a 2/10 on general movie scale. If I had paid theater money for it I would be pissed. Brie Larsen is just awful. Badly cast and increasingly unlikeable.

I absolutely adore Iman Vellani as Ms Marvel. Her and her family made the entire movie for me. I'm a childless middle aged man, hardly the key demographic for her character but I felt like they nailed it as did she.

Teyona Parris I think is also great as Monica Rambau. She's got the intensity and a great dry wit. Her character was misused.

They made Captain Marvel so OP in the Avengers that the story had very little suspense and just felt like it was cramming together some concepts. I've not watched it since it came out so I night take this opportunity to rewatch and maybe critique it more succinctly. But, it was bad.

I'm sure it got a lot of hate from red pilled incels but it still had to be a good movie beyond that. And it just wasn't.

Everything this guy said.
Plus I’ll add that I’ve seen this movie twice. I could not tell you much of the plot, nor describe more than maybe one or two scenes. It just wasn’t a good movie.
Disclaimer: I only watched it twice cause I forgot I had seen it the first time.

I didn't think it was great, but I don't think that I was the target audience. I didn't think that Guardians of the Galaxy III was good either, but that wasn't targeted at me, either. If I was 8, it would have been great.

It wasn't bad, it was just another marvel movie. They're pretty formulaic at this point, to fault the script, universe, effects or acting is silly - it's all the same across 100 movies. It's good, it works. If you're the target of this movie, you'll like it. If not, you'll like it less. It's hardly controversial, it's just marketing.

I watched it with my GF in theaters, it was pretty rancid

Yes.

Yes. It was garbage. And I like most of marvels garbage but this was up there with wonder woman and eternals, and the latest shit.