The Marvels is too good to be bombing at the box office

The Marvels has opened in theaters, and the results have been…interesting. The good news is that the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe beat everything else at U.S. theaters this past weekend, with a $47 million domestic box office gross and another $63.3 million overseas for a grand total of $110 million. The bad news is that those numbers are the lowest ever posted by an MCU movie on its opening weekend.

With all the discussion lately about “superhero fatigue” — brought about by over-saturating viewers with middling series like Secret Invasion on Disney+ — news outlets have been quick to smell blood in the water and paint the debut of The Marvels as a disaster.

There are a lot of factors behind why The Marvels underperformed in its opening weekend. One of the biggest is that studios put off settling the SAG-AFTRA actors strike until only a few days before The Marvels opened, so stars like Brie Larson (Captain Marvel), Iman Vellani (Kamal Khan) and Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau) couldn’t promote the film ahead of its release.

Then there’s the aforementioned superhero fatigue. We can debate its severity all we want, but the general feeling seems to be that Marvel has damaged trust among its viewers by dumping too much content on them over the past several years (and perhaps by treating their shows and movies like “content” in the first place). This created some weird buzz around The Marvels, which launched into theaters only one day after the Loki season 2 finale dropped on Disney+.

Then there’s the fact that The Marvels is helmed by an all-female superhero cast and led by a Black woman director, Nia DaCosta. I don’t think I need to explain that there are people who will have problems with the movie based on that fact alone, which is frustrating. It’s been hard to ignore the way that DaCosta has had to justify things that a male director probably wouldn’t have had to these past few weeks while she was on the promotional trail for the film, such as working on another movie when The Marvels was in post-production, something which is not at all unheard of in Hollywood but for some reason made headlines. Steven Spielberg was once lauded for doing this exact same thing by working on Schindler’s List while Jurassic Park was in post-production. The double standard is baffling.

To some extent, a lot of this stuff is framing. The Marvels is the worst opening weekend for an MCU movie; it also happens to be the highest opening weekend ever for a Black woman director, meaning DaCosta has just set another impressive box office record after her 2022 film Candyman made her the first Black female director to have a movie open at number one at the domestic box office. Yes, to some extent the reason these things are being framed the way they are is because “Marvel is failing!” is a bigger, splashier headline than the alternatives. But to my eye that seems disappointingly unfair, not least of all because The Marvels is one of the better Marvel movies to come out in a while.

The Marvels is a great movie, so what’s up with all the doom and gloom?

I went and saw The Marvels this past weekend, fully prepared for it to be a let down. After all, that seemed to be one of the prevailing narratives surrounding the movie, and I was disappointed with a few other recent Marvel projects like Thor: Love and Thunder and Secret Invasion. Was The Marvels destined to join them at the bottom of the heap?

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that The Marvels is not only good, it’s very good. Much ado has been made about Marvel’s declining quality control, from how well the stories mesh together to rushed visual effects. But none of those issues are on display in The Marvels. This is a fun superhero flick with a lot of heart, great visuals, pitch perfect performances from its leads, and a fantastic sense of humor. The action scenes are exceptionally well-constructed as well, utilizing solid choreography and the differing powers of its leads in fun ways. It also has wonderful representation, especially in how it lets Kamala Khan’s family shine and portrays its female superhero leads in ways that feel natural and never forced or awkward (looking at you, Avengers: Endgame).

The movie even manages to work in some musical numbers. I was fully prepared to cringe when I realized The Marvels was going the musical route, but the way it infused bits of Bollywood style and musical theater with the movie’s trademark humor ended up working well enough that I laughed out loud more than once. And don’t get me started on the cat scene late in the movie, which features an accompanying song from the musical Cats that is so hilariously perfect it’s genius.

The Marvels also had the unenviable task of being a sequel to multiple different movies and shows. One of the most common complaints leveled against Marvel in recent years is that there are now so many different Disney+ shows and movies to keep track of that it feels like you need to do homework to stay up to date. And that’s fair. The Marvels is a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, but it also features leads from the TV shows WandaVision and Ms. Marvel. Throw in references to Avengers: Endgame, and it becomes a lot.

Once again, The Marvels surprised me by performing this intricate juggling act extremely well. And I don’t mean “well enough that it wasn’t awful” or something; in my opinion, The Marvels is probably the single best attempt the MCU has yet made to bring Disney+ characters onto the big screen for a movie sequel. Yes, you’ll get more out if it if you’ve seen Ms. Marvel and WandaVision, but the film does a great job of dropping in just enough references and explanations to make the interplay comprehensible without being overwhelming. It reminded me a lot of the first Avengers movie in that way.

All this isn’t to say The Marvels is a perfect movie; it does still have its occasional sticking points. I do agree with criticisms that the villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) could have been developed more. But The Marvels‘ strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. This movie is all about the connection between Carol, Monica and Kamala. They are the priority throughout, as they should be, and when they’re onscreen together it’s easy to get swept away.

The Marvels’ lukewarm reception has nothing to do with The Marvels

At the end of the day, The Marvels is a great, fun movie that isn’t even remotely close to the worst the MCU has produced. After seeing it, I’m firmly of the opinion that the biggest thing the movie has working against it right now actually has nothing to do with the movie itself: it’s all about the public perception of the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel has burnt a lot of goodwill these past few years, assuming people would turn up for any movie or show they made while stretching key creatives like Kevin Feige too thin. If The Marvels was among the earlier movies to release following Avengers: Endgame, I have no doubt that this exact same movie would have been received much better.

Between The Marvels and the solid season 2 finale of Loki, Marvel has had two very strong releases in the past week. It’s too early to say if things are course correcting, but these both feel like steps in the right direction for the studio. I sincerely hope Marvel is able to keep the big picture in mind when analyzing these early returns for The Marvels, because so much about this movie was good. Marvel needs to learn from The Marvels, not course correct away from all the things it actually managed to do well.

Time will tell. But for now, if you’ve been yearning for the sort of movie that used to define the MCU, The Marvels is a welcome shot of adrenaline. It’s out now in theaters.

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