We Don’t Know How to Say “The Marvels”

Hello and welcome to Movies on the Side. This is Steven Robles.

And this is Nate Baranowski.

And this week, we are reviewing the 2023 Marvel movie, The Marvelles.

Is that how we pronounce it?

Oh, shoot. Did I misspell it?

Are we saying The Marvelles?

I thought it was the Marvelles.

I believe Marvell.

The Marvelles. The Marvelles. No. It's not the Marvelles. No. It's not the Marvelles. Like Carvel. You ever have a Carvel ice cream cake?

You ever had a caramel?

Yeah. You had a caramel? You had a caramel? I lost my American accent. It's so sad. Nate, I have serious concerns about the Marvel Universe.

That we don't know how to pronounce the movie No. That we just watched?

No. No. I can I tell you what I really wanna say? We're gonna talk about this movie in a second.

She's not called Ms. Mar Vell. She's called Ms. Marvel. She's Captain Marvel. She's not called Captain Mar Vell.

Yeah. I understand. Sometimes when things are plural, you say them differently like moose and moose. I meant to say like mouse and mice. What are we

doing here?

What are we doing? It's been so long since we recorded. I don't know how to do the show anymore. Can I just we're gonna talk about this movie which was, I guess, fine? That's my review. Fine. I am like listen, I like Marvel I like Mar Vell movies. Okay? I like Mar Vell movies.

Yeah, you do.

I used I used to anyway, and now I just it's like what Are

you DC or Mar Vell?

It's it's DC.

It's Iron Man. It's

so now the Mar Vell universe, the Mar Vell cinematic universe, like that meme where the plane is, like, nose down and inch away from the ground and the pilots, like, alright, you take over now. It is in flames. I really wanna see Madame Web because everyone says it's just so bad.

But is that even Marvel or is that Sony Well,

it's Marvell.

Cosplaying as Marvell.

It's in the Marvell cinematic. It's

off brand. Oh, yeah. I got it.

It's got Spider Man. How is it not Marvell?

You know, Sony you know, Sony's got its system Webb, Weave

Tom Holland's. Tom Holland's in the, this MCU, the Mar Vell Cinematic Universe. We're not

here to talk about Madame Webb because from what I've heard, it's sort of like an AI generated nightmare, and I'm excited to get to it at a future episode. But we can't blast the cannons before the ship gets in range.

What an analogy. So you wouldn't pay money to see a terrible movie. Right? Like, that's probably not. No. You that's not

wise. Right? Did I look to see when Tennant is coming to a 70 millimeter theater near me? Oh, yeah. It made me feel like such, like, a Christopher Nolan bro for me to even consider, like, maybe I'll go see it in theaters, but that's kinda where I'm at.

Do you know I saw an interview with, Steven Steven Colbert and, and, Christopher Nolan. Christopher Nolan.

Now we're getting them all more bells.

And he's he loves the Fast and Furious movies. Did you know that? Christopher Nolan. Christopher Nolan likes the Fast and Furious movies because

he knows what they are, what they're trying to be.

And he knows what he's trying to be. Literally set off an atomic bomb for real in the desert. Have you seen Oppenheimer yet? I haven't seen it yet.

Not yet.

I'm not even gonna watch it. I gotta watch it with a video. I have

to see Dunkirk first, and then I can see Oppenheimer. You

gotta wait. You gotta go through the whole Nolan universe before you get to,

Yeah. Exactly.

Is that what you gotta do? Exactly. Alright. So we gotta talk about the Marvell's. I'm gonna say that I don't know if that's right or not. Someone can comment And I'll

say the Marvell's. So we're gonna Alright.

We should say both.

Hit it from both sides.

The sequel to Captain Marvel

Steven Yeah.

Go ahead.

No. You go.

No. You go. That's okay. No. You go. You were saying something. Go ahead. There's a little bit delay because you're in your basement, and you never use Ethernet. So go ahead.

Here's what I'm saying.

No shame.

This feels like the MCU Uh-huh. Well, it doesn't feel like it. This is what it is. The MCU filmed this and Quantumania at the same time. This was all happening. I believe there was one more Marvel project happening at the same time. Okay? Yeah. Something. I think what we're seeing is, unfortunately, this movie came out, got pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed.

It did get pushed a lot.

And this, hopefully, is one of the last times where, we will call it Marvel's overreach of product and attention, and, like, we'll just put out anything, plus COVID. I think what we're seeing is this may be the last one where

We hope.

Where they hadn't got the feedback from Quantumania yet, and they haven't got the feedback from the last couple things. They should've looked so far ahead. They hadn't done the what's the Nick Fury one?

Oh, wow. Secret Invasion? That wasn't good either.

Like, they haven't got all those together. So it's like, well, we have to release it because we need to make some money, but we know, like, it's not great.

Right.

But I think that's I think we kind of hit there. Like, they started having their internal crisis after Quantumania. Maybe slightly before.

I here's what I hope

Maybe when they spent a bajillion dollars on She Hulk, and it was fine. It was fine. I don't know. I like She Hulk. It wasn't Alright. Cost more than Game of Thrones per episode good. But, like, I think they were, like, Ikaris was still flying up towards the sun at that point.

Listen. I just wanna I I was hopeful for Jonathan Majors, and now he messed it up. He's not gonna be the big bad anymore. But the latest news, though not that this is a news podcast, movie news.

It's not.

But Henry Cavill is is supposedly I

hate this gag. I hate it.

Is supposedly entering the MCU and we have it on good authority from our friend on the inside. I don't know what he's

Doctor Doom.

I don't know. He might be Doctor Doom.

A friend of a friend of a friend.

Henry Cavill as Doctor Doom. Listen, I think he's gonna he might save the MCU because I'll tell you what, this movie, I don't think will. Now, we we don't talk about this movie for a long time. I just wanna say, it's fine, like it's fine. But also, so many things that I I I skipped. I skipped the whole singing city. Did you watch all of that? Like Yeah.

Just Of course.

You just sat there and watched the whole thing? I didn't know. Hold on

a second, Steven.

And I couldn't

You and I both have a love for musicals and movie musicals.

If you try to say the little part of it thing is a musical, I'm

guessing so. Scene. As soon as they said they speak in song, I said, great. Bring me a musical number. I don't care. At this point in time, I don't care. I was never emotionally invested in this movie, so might as well have a singing number. I can't believe that you decided, let's skip it.

No. I I mean, I watched enough of it to just I watched them walking through.

Larson sing.

I saw 2

seconds. Mouth while someone sang.

I need to know if that was actually her singing. Do we know?

We'll never know.

I'm gonna look it up.

We live in an AI generated world. We'll never know.

We talked about that in our bonus episode. Was that Brie Larson singing in the Marvells? That's what I just searched. Is Brie Yeah.

I bet it was.

I bet she didn't sing. Anyway, okay. So I'd I'd skipped the part after she started singing because I couldn't tell. It was this was movie was fine. I will just say I didn't like the, the nemesis of this movie.

No. I would say the MCU has a history of having lackluster bad guys. So maybe this is right in line with it.

Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

You did you find Ronan, the accuser or whatever, a good bad guy?

He was not a bad bad guy. I think he was He kinda

he kinda got it.

But look at you look at the iron mans. Those were all good decent bad guys. That was fine.

You thought the guy who the mechanic guy who had the little whips, the lightning whips,

he was

a good bad guy?

Whiplash was good. That was a good bad guy. Look at the, the, Captain America, Winter Soldier was a great bad guy in the Winter Soldier movie as was Red Skull in the first Captain America. These are good bad guys. Doctor Strange, he had a good bad guy, you

know. Who's this bad guy?

The the Miles Mathieson was the bad guy. He was kinda the bad guy.

Mads Mikkelsen.

Mads Mikkelsen. What did I say? Miles Mathies?

Miles Mathies.

I don't know who that is. I don't know who that is. Mads Mikkelsen, he was a good bad guy in that. Anyway, I think there's good bad guys. Mhmm. This bad guy, I thought a little lackluster. Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Good bad guys. Anyway, go ahead.

Jeff Bridges again? Was it Jeff Bridges?

Or yes. No. I think so. Chris, Chris we're a little rusty. Okay? We haven't recorded an episode in a while.

We haven't done this

for a while. I don't know. I'll search the Internet for movies, though. This

bad guy, she was, they kinda shoehorned into the first movie. I really wish they would have pulled somebody maybe from that first Captain Marvel movie because she wasn't in this one. She really didn't have much to do or to think about or to have okay. Let's go back to this. The script of this movie, not good.

Not great.

It's a rough script. Yes. It's a rough script. There is a time where Brie Larson attempts to give sort of an emotional moment about how she feels like it was because of her destroying the AI on her planet that caused the, like, eternal night and somehow got rid of the sun because of a civil war there. And it's supposed to swell and be like, she's rap wracked with guilt.

The mom the mom had a couple heartfelt moments, I thought. Like, trying like, wishing her daughter off order. It's complicated because you're trying to you're trying to shoehorn 3, Marvell's in one movie. You know what I mean? You know, Company and Fish, they start sinking after 2 days, 3 more bills over 2.

I have a hard time kind of tracking Carol Danvers' emotional intelligence and, like, levels of is she meant to be a really wooden character who doesn't have a whole lot going on? Is she meant to be actually, like, very deep, but she has a lot of, like, repression in her emotions? I can't get a good feel on her. And I kept thinking, like, is she playing the same role as the lessons in chemistry that we both loved? Like, is she just kind of playing, like, kind of low level emotions across the thing?

The script is rough. I felt, I don't know. I'd I'd the

Samuel l Jackson didn't wanna be there.

That was the other thing I was I was gonna ask you.

I was like, though cat scene. Did you like the memory song by Barbara Streisand and the cats eating all of the, scientists?

I liked the When I liked them

all but swallowing them.

I like the fact that they use the cat song, that they use memory as the cats were eating them. I don't like I didn't like any of that. It felt like if you're gonna be funny, you gotta go for like like, I I felt like this movie was trying to be a funny movie, like a Guardians of the Galaxy, like loose and be funny thing, and I but I never laughed, and it never like never was super witty. And like you're saying, Samuel L. Jackson, who would normally be a source of like good quips, sarcastic comments, whatever, I felt like, man, he must be is he how far into this contract is he?

I I think it's less of that and more like, hey, Samuel Jackson. We need you for one last ride. I told you I was out of the game. Just one more movie. We need you in here. You're holding this whole thing together. And he is.

I don't know if he's I don't know if he is, though. He wasn't even in the movie that much to, like, I don't know, hold

it on to the He just has to hold that

MCU together. How much longer? He's been into the m the the Marville Cinematic Universe since the very beginning. And, he's been in

a scene that I really like that I hope would play off. Yeah. Pay off. Okay. Let me tell you a scene that I thought would pay off in the future, which is, I loved when they learned that they could switch places by using their power simultaneously.

Oh, sure. Sure.

And there was a scene with a little bit of a a music mix. There's actually a really good song in here that I should have looked up beforehand. Not during that scene, but another fight scene had, like, a great, like

Yeah.

Come in song. I believe Missy Elliott was actually on on the track. I'll look it up later.

I mean, it's

like it was like a Skrillex plus x Missy Elliot track on this that I loved.

Okay.

But there's a scene where they are practicing by, like, throwing a ball up, switching places real quick. They're training how to fight together as a team. And I was like, oh, okay. I like this. I like the idea that you have to be so in tandem while you're fighting.

Right. Right.

Then they almost barely do it when they fight later.

I know.

And I kept I looked over at Jill while watching this, and I said, there is Captain Marvel, the person who is powerful enough to, like

Take on Thanos.

Just take on Thanos and destroy an entire Thanos army of ships. Just blast through them. Okay? Then we have 2 other superheroes with deluxe powers as well. Deluxe. They are fighting. Darben is just some some, what's what what, race is, kind of a

Not a Cree. A Cree?

Cree.

Cree. Yeah. Yeah.

They're just fighting one Kree. And it's like, why are these 3 superheroes having trouble

Yeah.

Just shouldn't Captain Marvel be able to just kinda rear back and just, like, fly through her full on, like, jump to light speed?

You would think. I think you're mixing a universe eye there, but yes, I agree.

It's all Disney, baby.

Also, I watched this in Apple Vision Pro. This is not a tech. This this is

not a tech. Better?

So here's the thing. This is not a tech podcast, okay? But I have Apple Vision Pro. I've been using it for a few weeks.

Mhmm.

I thought this would be an interesting movie because I have watched like I've gone back and watched Marvel scenes in Apple Vision Pro like Infinity War and Endgame. I watched a couple other like big Marvel movie ones. Mhmm. And it is very impressive and very cool to watch it in this VR like with on a massive screen. And watching those older scenes, it was, you know, they're feel good.

flashing lights.

Just a bunch of CG, just whatever. And I always used to I mean, it didn't matter. I enjoyed that. And now, Nate, I was watching this movie on literally the biggest virtual screen I can imagine. It was like I was sitting in this huge IMAX theater, had my AirPods Pro in, so it sounded great. And I'm watching the CG, and I'm like, it doesn't do it for me anymore. Just the like, people shooting laser beams out of their hands.

Wow.

It's just not enough.

It used to be enough for you.

But I also feel like it was enough because it was either Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man doing it or it was Thor, or it was like the characters that actually like

You cared about the characters.

You cared about the characters and it was like, the it was usually a payoff for a good movie now having a good fight scene with CG. Mhmm. But I I guess I really feel now when it's a bunch of CG lightning bolts after like a mediocre movie, that I'm like, this is not really exciting. It also didn't feel like great fight scenes either in this. Like, it didn't feel very exciting. So Yeah.

It was a little it was a little rough. I I think that Marvel in general

Marvel.

Kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger as it headed towards Infinity War and Endgame. But its strength had always been the small stories and the origin stories. And you ended up caring about the Avengers because you cared about them.

Right.

Like, I, a long time before Quantumania, I cared that Ant Man went back and, like, missed his daughter growing up 5 years because of the brain. Like, I cared about these characters going through. And even, I would say, a little bit, I cared about Monica Rambeau's mom and their relationship as, like, fighter pilots back in Captain Marvel.

I did. Yeah.

And I cared about these characters. And then I always felt like, alright. Then you make it a giant laser beam in the sky. And it was good because we hadn't seen stuff like that before. CG was still, like, ramping up.

It was really good compared to when we were, like, younger. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. But, like, I still was worried that the heroes would die. And as the machine of Marvel got bigger, I started to realize, oh, you're not going to you're not at you're not in danger, superheroes. Like, even by Civil War, I was not worried that Iron Man or Captain America would kill each other because it's like, these are bigger entities. These are huge elements. And that's why, like, the Iron Man, like, sacrifice was big at the end. Like, it was the end of Robert Downey Junior

Spoiler.

Until they call him for 1 well, what are we? 8 years ago now?

It was a You're here for this. 6 years ago.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So when it gets to these ones Yeah. And it's like, I am watching an entire, planet of basically, scrolls living as, like, refugees on a planet. Yeah. And, like, I want to care about them, and I want to care about them small. But they shoot it like the planet's getting their atmosphere sucked away and stuff's falling and everything.

Right.

And the heroes are saving a few. But most for the most part, they're not surviving this, and yet this movie wants to make sure that, like, we're not too invested in them. It's almost like they want us to stay at a distance of going, a planet getting destroyed means millions of life forms of these aliens just getting wiped out.

Right.

But instead of feeling that, we're supposed to, like, kind of keep that, like, light p g 13. Like so I'm never able to feel the weight of things. I don't feel the weight of the civil war on the Cree people. Right. And so it doesn't never hits me.

Right.

Kind of thing. Like, that's just gonna head in a different direction.

Multiverse. Multiverse. Yeah. Are you, I don't know what movies are on the horizon. I know there's, like, more Avengers movies coming and stuff like that. Are you are you what's your excitement level to see future Marville movies?

I haven't been that excited about a Marvel movie for a while. I wasn't really excited about Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3. So it's been, like, probably since Endgame that I was kinda like I was seeing them dutifully. I don't think unless reviews come out that are really, really good for a future one. Like, I have heard that see, Deadpool gets a little bit too rated r e for me. Like, it's almost right on the edge of, like,

it

gets a little gory, a little graphic. Sure. I've heard, like it's that kind of, like, off the beaten path thing that gets really good reviews that might bring me back to a theater to watch 1. But Right. Marvel used to be appointment viewing for theaters. And now it's, you know, if it's at Disney plus, I'll probably give it a watch.

Yeah. I'm I'm probably not gonna go to the movies for a Marvel movie, you know, for a while. I mean, I wanted to see Matt if it's just so bad. Oh, this

is a Yeah.

A 100%. We'll do it. I also saw, like, even DC

DC movie. So We watched it together. We watched black Adam together, didn't we? Or was it aquaman?

Well, we watched Aquaman together.

It was Aquaman. It wasn't Black Adam.

It was Aquaman.

You watched that in theaters.

We watched Shang Chi together in Orlando. We did. We saw that.

We did.

That was fun. You fell asleep in that movie, but it was very light. So I understand. I understand. Oh, I got

for the important parts. I was looking He still had 10 rings.

I was looking for things to watch in Apple Vision Pro Mhmm. And I saw that the sequel to the Aquaman movie is out. I don't know if you knew that. The Lost Kingdom or something.

Yeah.

And I saw it there, and it was one of those things where you could like rent it for $20 or whatever. So I was like, oh, this might be cool. So I watched the trailer and, like I just talked about with the whole CG stuff, I was like, yeah. I really don't. I don't want to pay even $20 to see this. So I didn't

sure if I I heard some stories about Nia DaCosta, who is the director of this one. And I don't know how it all went behind the scenes, but, like, heard rumblings or rumors of things not going well and then, you know, COVID stuff and then the strike stuff after that. And, like, I heard, like, things were a little rough. But I have gotten the sense in recent years that directors haven't been super, like, proud of the work they've created, that they're kind of all held in by this bigger machine, and they're just like, I you know, like and even with, like, the the press junkets for things, unfortunately, this movie didn't because of the strike, didn't get

Oh, right.

Like, the the interviews. And so I think a lot of people rejoiced in the flopping nature of The Marvels. I don't rejoice in, like, in not making a lot of money. It doesn't really actually sway me either way, but it did make me feel like, man, I hope that, like, the director for this one, like, I hope that if she didn't make the kind of movie she wanted to make that, like, she'll move on to something else and be like, alright. Well, I'm not doing this again.

or this

Yes. Thingy is seems cut short that it shouldn't be. And so I'm I'm hoping that this movie wasn't meddled with too much afterwards. I think she had a different project, so Nia couldn't hang around for postproduction. I'm hoping that it wasn't just, like, rest out of her control.

see it. That's not a good motivation to, like, release a movie.

I'm not I'm not here to help China organizations recoup money.

Alright. Let's rate this movie. On a scale of, 0 to 5, cats? I mean Flerkins? Flerkins? On a scale of 0 to 5, Flerkins. What do you give this movie, Nate? I'm gonna give it a 2. I'll just say that. 2 Flerkins for me.

I'm gonna give it 2a half. And I'm gonna give it the 2a half because this is a generous 2a half because I feel like it had a lot of things going against it. It was trying to tie in a lot of things, and it's in the midst of, we'll call it, Marvel's midlife crisis.

Sure. Sure.

So two and a half. It was fine. It's Disney plus. You can watch it. There are some cool scenes. I think a someone who, like, with Kamala Khan, like, loving Captain Marvel and then joining her on the team. I thought there would be another scene about with Brie Larson being like, hey, I went into your bedroom and there's a bunch of pictures of me and it's

coming here. There should have been that. There should have been that.

Or, like, I don't know. I'm it's it's weird where yeah.

Yeah. There should have been that.

I don't know.

Well, let us let us know It was fine. Let us know what you thought about the Marvell's or the Marvells, if you want to mispronounce it. You can comment on the Instagram post. You can also support the show. You can do that in Apple Podcasts.

I'm getting a lot of negative energy from you, and I don't like it. That's Carol Danvers.

There he is. Also

wait. We didn't even say it. What? Hank McCoy is in this. The X Men are in

the post credit scene. Oh, post credit scene. The post credit scene. That was kind of exciting, honestly. No. No. No. But they're also doing the X Men, 97 animated show on Disney Plus.

Listen. I'm I'm probably more excited about that than I am about

future Marvel movies. Me too. No. That's not the X Men theme.

What is that?

That's the Wonder Woman.

No. What's the X Men 1? Oh, yeah. That was close. For those hey, for those who are staying around after this, I just Can't believe it. This is, like, our post credit scene.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is

our our quick post credit scene. Yeah. Hey. We talked a little bit about Hans Zimmer and his Pirates of the Caribbean ripping off the gladiator, ripping off the rock. Do you think that this was before, like, social media and the Internet getting big?

I mean, listen. You you're gonna have similarities How similar is it? Similarities.

It's a it's a very similar theme to a scene in Lion King 2, I also found out during my rabbit hole search.

Did Hans ever do the music for Lion King 2?

Lion King 2.

Did Hans ever do the music for that?

I don't know.

That's good.

Didn't get that far in the rabbit hole. Just listened to the Lion King 2

yeah. No thanks. Scene. No. Thanks.