The film recently made it to Disney + so I watched it over the past couple of days.

I can't say that I much cared for it. It didn't feel like an actual story; more like a succession of colourful action scenes with a little sitcom humour thrown in. I was quite confused as to what was supposed to be happening at times because we never seemed to wrap up a situation before moving on to the next crisis. (That singing dude was Carol's husband, for crying out loud... would it have been too much to learn what happened to him and his planet?)

The cast was good. I really like Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. Her bemused expression and the way she seems to control her exasperation when she's annoyed are pretty funny. It was the first time I saw Kamala Khan, and her youthful enthusiasm was a breath of fresh air. I also like the actresses who play the Rambeaus, both mother and daughter. The chemistry between the three heroines worked, but that's about the only thing that did for me.

The formula used in Love and Thunder, Quantumania and now The Marvels just doesn't work for me: it's pretty hard to feel involved in a plot that makes little overall sense, or to care about threats that will be dismissed without effort as soon as the run time is long enough. I don't ask a super-hero movie to make a lot of sense, but perhaps asking writers to come up with a strong story wouldn't be a bad idea before investing Lord knows how many millions?

How did Kamala's grandmother get her hands on a cosmic weapon? Why does another forgettable Marvel villain decide to go all evil and destroy worlds instead of, you know, asking for help (since we see at the end of the movie that the big problem facing the Kree could be solved in fifteen seconds with no effort)? How do you drain all the air from a planet in a few minutes through a tiny hole in space, without it reaching temperatures of a gazillion degrees? Where did Hala's toxic air go when new air was pumped in? Why does losing air caused massive Earthquakes? How can Marvel's refugee alien races (Asgardians and now Skrulls) all fit on a single ship? Who is that woman who magically appears and offers sanctuary to the Skrulls? (Just kidding, I know it's Valkyrie... but this film doesn't say it, nor tells us where she now lives or what's she's about!) How come the Kree villain overheats and explodes when using both magic bangles at the same time (like Ronan did when handling an infinity stone) while Monica and Kamala can do it without problem? How come Kamala still has powers without her bangle? Was that explained in her TV series? It sure wasn't here. Why do the heroes keep zapping the villain with power blasts when they know she just absorbs their energy? How did our sun recover from being partly drained? Why is the mid-credit scene character a bad CGI version of the fellow with neat make-up he was a few years ago? Why are we supposed to care for noble sacrifices that we don't build up toward and that don't involve a real price anyway?

You can guess that I found the film more frustrating than enjoyable. In all honestly, I'd much rather have dispensed from the Kree threat and had an hour and a half of Kamala's mom dealing with the superheroic nonsense her daughter keeps indulging in! That lady has more depth than half the rest of the cast put together.

No idea where Marvel is going with its shared universe. It looks like every new film is just a string of ideas pulled from a box with little to connect them together.

(And people say "The Dark World" was bad. At least it had a plot and actual emotion!)