When I learned that 'The Marvels' was goimg to be the MCU's shortest entry to date at a relatively lean 105 minutes, not.only did it not set off any red flags, I was actually quite encouraged. I thought 'Finally! A Marvel movie that strips away the accumulated mythological baggage and dutiful backstory that's been amassed over fifteen years and thirty-three (?) movies. A comic book movie that's just content to be a simple romp again'. Alas, that's not the movie I got.

Whether or not 'The Marvels' is in fact the absolute worst of this vast multi-tentacled cultural behemoth is open to debate. But it's certainly the most narratively ungainly and encumbered. Far from cutting loose from its predecesssors, 'The Marvels' is hamstrung by its own dutiful insistence on perpetuating the 'brand ' by trying to be a sequel to, by my reckoning, five things at once. It's a sequel to 'Avengers : Endgame'. A sequel to 'Captain Marvel'. A sequel to 'WandaVision', 'Secret Invasion', and 'Ms. Marvel'. It's utter madness on a storytelling level to try and squeeze the level of box-ticking necessary to pay off all these dangling threads in a mere 105-minute movie. And maybe that's why the movie seems to be fumbling at the box-office. Maybe it's not the displeasure of the rancorous, terminally online brigade of gatekeeping fans that are the issue. Maybe its the ordinary, casual members of the moviegoing public who have come to feel excluded, as if this long-running exercise in megabudget geekery now simply requires a diploma in Marvelese just to have a cat in hell's chance of comprehending what's going on.

Try, just try, to put yourself in the shoes of a non-initiate who has bought a ticket to 'The Marvels' simply in the hope of A Good Time At The Movies. Try to picture their reaction to being assaulted by a barrage of deadening expositional baggage involving snaps, blips, Kree, Skrulls,.Hala, Flerkins, quantum bands, Tarnax etc. At what point do they just tap out altogether? Stan Lee famously used to say that every single comic book is someone's first comic book. But nobody involved in making 'The Marvels' seems to have remembered that simple axiom (and to be fair I'm willing to give director Nia DaCosta the benefit of the doubt), and instead went full steam ahead on making something that only really functions as pipe-laying connective tissue between the last Marvel entry, the next Marvel entry, the next dozen Marvel entries.

And this is a shame, because every now and then you catch a glimmer of the movie that 'The Marvels' could have been if the enterprise was allowed to run unfettered by so much lumbering franchise baggage. The notion that Captain Marvel herself might have been the cause of the Dar-Benn's crusade, and that the villain's vendetta against her is not entirely unjustifiied, is an intriguing one, albeit one that's not developed satisfyingly.enough. So is the idea that Carol Danvers would retreat from her role as Captain Marvel and the company of her friends out of guilt and shame to grow lonely and more isolated. And the corrosive effect that her absence would have on Monica, given her promise to return to her family in short order. All of this has fruitful dramatic potential, but again, it's merely paid lip service and sketched in rather than followed through to any impactful degree.

Elsewhere, the plus points are mainly to be found around the margins. The early interpolated use of Kamala's pencil animations to depict her imagined adventures with Captain Marvel hint at a slightly new visual direction for the franchise, one that's possibly even influenced by the acclaim for the 'Spider-Verse' movies. So again it's a real missed opportunity that this innovation is pushed aside after the opening sequence in favour of the now rather tired Marvel patina of hazy greenscreens, clanging metal corridors and crystally blue zaps (again, this is something over which I'm willing to give Nia DaCosta the benefit of the doubt). And the detour to the singing planet of Aladna, whilst being the kind of thing that causes the fanboys who see this series as something Deeply Important to clutch their pearls en masse, does have a certain 80's Henson-movie charm to it, and adds a welcome sense of whimsy to an enterprise that is constantly threatening to choke on its own earnestness.

The best that you can say for 'The Marvels' really is that Iman Vellani is a star in the making, so it's unfortunate that her movie debut should come in such a jumbled endeavour. Such is the charm of Vellani and Kamala Khan, she even manages to turn some increasingly wearisome Marvel tropes (the pop culture references, the juxtaposition of the uncanny against the domestic and prosaic) to her advantage, with fun impersonations of Jack Sparrow among others (and this is amongst the last p!acea that I ever expected to see a reference to 'Dead Poets Society'). Vellani / Kamala has the same almost apologetically klutzy diffidence over her powers as Paul Rudd's Scott Lang, so whatever the future holds for this strand of the Marvel universe, hopefully Kamala still has a place in it.

Weirdly, the continuing characters don't fare as well. The whole Brie Larson of it all has been discussed elsewhere, not always fairly and - if you're poking around in the wrong places of the social media hellscape - not always rationally. My take, by the by? She's one of the best actors of her generation. No dispute, no arguments, case closed. At least for me. But I do find it intriguing that Larson apparently prevaricated for quite a while before accepting this role, concerned that as a curious, introverted soul who likes to wander through the world and observe people, joining the Marvel juggernaut would cost her the actor's tool that she values the most. And in 'The Marvels', Larson is simply, sleepwalking is too harsh, but oddly listless and perfunctory in her choices, as if she's realised that this role isn't going to get any more interesting or challenging from this point forward. Whatever the case, the incandescent young talent that lit up 'Short Term 12' now seems like a very long time ago. To be fair, Larson isn't the only one being ill-served by the material. Even if you allow for the softening of the character portrayed by the 'Secret Invasion' series, then it's still disconcerting to see Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury reduced from formidable badass to the cranky uncle at the family barbecue, dad-joking his way through proceedings in sitcom fashion.

Higher, further, faster? More like lower, smaller, slower.