"The Marvels" - Review

After destroying the evil AI which ran the planet of Hala, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) now operates as a space lesbian protector. Her grilfriend's daughter Monica (Teyonah Parris) works as an astronaut for an organisation called S.W.O.R.D, under Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) in space, and they haven't been talking in a long time. Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) is an aspiring superhero living in Jersey City, who absolutely adores Carol Danvers.
When space magic from Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) leads to shenanigans, all 3 of these women find themselves swapping places whenever they attempt to use their powers at the same time.

The central concept and rapport between the trio of Marvels is wonderful. They have lovely chemistry and Iman Vellani is one hell of a find: I wish everybody enjoyed everything in life as much as Iman Vellani enjoys playing Kamala Khan. It is a shame that the "Swapping Places" is not the whole film, and is resolved too quickly. The film soars when it is veteran space lesbian, overly keen and adorable fan girl, and unfortunately bland scientist going on adventures and figuring things out. Yeah, Rambeau gets given the emotional core of the film with her relationship to her "Aunt" Danvers (who is fun here, as a spacefaring lesbian with a lot of things on her plate, who usually spaces out and forgets how humans are, due to her frequent interactions with aliens) after her mother's death and how it separated them and the betrayal she felt. But it falls rather flat despite good efforts from the actors due to a half-baked nature of its ideas and plot: Rambeau (a key supporting character from the last film) has been killed off screen (and don't tell me "it's in one of the shows" because this is a film, fuck off), and whilst we can have Khan's powers just be there and have her be a superhero with no context (she's great, I cannot stress this enough), that's fine for her character: this is a core emotional beat and throughline of the film which is effectively an afterthought. This leaves us with the main plot, forgettable despite having the talented Zawe Ashton as the villain, which boils down to "bad hammer lady wants magic thing and is going to 3 different places, Earth is the last one". Fortunately the set pieces (a fight between the trio and some aliens where they swap places between space, Suburbia, and the moon; a musical segment on a water planet with a beard husband and a species who speak entirely in song, again Vellani is too precious for all things; and a sequence set to "Memory" by Streisand) and the chemistry of the leads propel it higher and further than is would go otherwise, and it is a fun, goofy, if underwritten follow up to Captain Marvel.
The pre-credits finale with Vellani is nice.
Mid credits scene is absolute dogshit, however, continuing the trend of movies self-cannibalising. Can this "Multiverse" nonsense piss off already?