The Marvels review: Nia DaCosta has been thrown under the bus – this poorly promoted sequel is marvellous

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. It’s certainly beneficial to have some familiarity with its trio of leads going in: Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani’s Ms Marvel, and Teyonah Parris’s Monica Rambeau. But DaCosta’s script, written with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, does an admirable job of getting audiences up to speed: Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers, is an intergalactic icon, saving planets ever since she liberated herself from the fascistic Kree empire. It’s also, perhaps, a sly bit of commentary on the way 2019’s Captain Marvel, the first solo film for a female character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was expected to serve as some sort of litmus test for the future of every super-powered woman in the franchise. While Marvel’s been busy flooding us with endless, exhaustive content, DaCosta’s movie offers us the one thing that made this franchise work in the first place – heroes we actually want to root for.