The MCU, at one point, used to make us feel excited to be alive. We were so invested in the character arcs and success stories; every little win would be wholeheartedly cheered, every loss would be gut-wrenching. I've said this before, but I've personally reached a point where I've stopped caring about the future of the MCU, except for very few IPs. I guess The Marvels bombing so badly at the box office gives the main folks at Disney a chance to re-examine certain creative decisions and business routes, majorly the one where they just decide to dump so much web-series content with the sole intention to drive up subscriptions. Disney, your core consumer of MCU content (up until 2019's Endgame) was mostly millennials, and now they're in the 30s. They don't have the time (or the personal space) to watch so many episodic TV shows and keep up with every side character's stories and quests. Your biggest mistake is assuming that we're all still keeping up with everything you've been unleashing on streaming. NOPE.

Now, your target audience is the Gen-Z. To hold their attention span is gonna take a lot more than coming up with a lacklustre effort like The Marvels. Carol Danvers is so wooden and boring in this, that the only time she's 0.01% fun is when she and her new companions Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, randomly visit a planet where only singing amounts to communication. The lack of a personality aside, Larson appears disinterested in the role, given she's forced to buckle up alongside two others as opposed to having her own sequel, and is the most uninteresting character in the whole film. Rambeau (Teyonnah Parris) comes across as another stock character in the larger scheme of affairs, and she's force-fed on us to feel significant because of her earlier (storyline) connection with Captain Marvel.

The only one who legit seems to be having fun here is Iman Vellani, and though she hams it up in a few instances (I have to again blame the writing for it), she's a riveting bubble of energy. Nick Fury isn't Nick Fury-ing at all in this, and I have no clue why. There's one instance of the writing showcasing some ingenuity (in a scene involving the Flerkens) and sadly, that's not enough to keep a 1h 35m film engaging. The set-pieces are probably some of the tamest you'll see, making you question whether it's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or this, with the worse ones. Bottomline is, I don't remember a damn thing about any of it.

What's missing you ask? HEART. Nia DaCosta is undoubtedly a capable filmmaker, but working within the creative confines of today's Disney, I'm sure she, along with several core members of her team, just decided to give up and put together one of the messiest and most forgettable superhero films in recent memory.