Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors (2018)
So I got recommended this movie by a friend of mine that's far, far more well-versed with Marvel comics than I do. And while I might watch a lot of the TV shows and movies and play the video games, I actually don't know a lot of the newer characters if they don't show up in like, non-comic-book media. So I know who characters like Squirrel Girl and Kamala Khan and Spider-Gwen and even Inferno and Miss America are because they show up in video games a lot, but I barely know who they are as characters. So my friend told me to watch this movie to basically see some of these 'new wave' characters presented in a way that's apparently not shoehorned down my throat in the way that they apparently are in the comics. Okay, then.
And so I watched the first of the Marvel Rising imprint of movies, Secret Warriors, released a couple of years ago. And it's... it's actually not bad. A good chunk of this movie basically introduces the new characters to us, but a significant portion of the movie centers around Ms. Marvel, a.k.a. Kamala Khan, a.k.a. one of the more popular (or at least more marketed) modern-Marvel characters in a while. A lot of the movie basically ends up introducing these new characters to us and there's a bit in the first half of the movie where you're not quite sure who the bad guy is. But the movie is clearly meant for a younger audience, so there's no real huge twists and turns. Our heroes are struggling to figure out what's going on with Inhumans going wild, find out that it's part of a conspiracy, there's a bit of an information dump and an Avengers-style gathering of a superhero team, and they fight and save the day and form a superhero team sponsored by their mentor Captain Marvel.
And the movie itself is a pretty decent watch! Most of the characters get a chance to shine (except for Patriot and Captain Marvel, I feel... and Spider-Gwen, who doesn't actually appear at all in the movie despite showing up in the cover) but the cast doesn't feel too overcrowded. A good chunk of the cast are Inhumans, too, which helps to ground the plot in a specific segment of the Marvel lore while also introducing aspects of the Inhumans to audiences. There's, of course, a significant amount of the controversial way that the new Inhumans are basically taking the X-Men formula in Marvel's ill-received attempt to replace the X-Men with Inhumans, but in a standalone movie like this... it doesn't really bother me that much.
As mentioned before, Ms. Marvel ends up being the main focus of the show, and there's a neat combination of the Peter Parker-esque "tries to be a hero but sometimes she bungles things up" in the beginning of the movie, and a bunch of neat superhero moments of trying to figure out whether to trust her gut, and attempting to see the best in everyone. The rest of the cast are... they're not particularly deep, but are mostly here to get the point across. Squirrel Girl is the comedic sidekick and also Kamala's best friend. Quake and Patriot are the more established SHIELD agents, with Quake also having a brief subplot of hiding her Inhuman status. Dante (a.k.a. Inferno, ha ha, I get the joke) is the oppressed and afraid Inhuman. America Chavez is the token reluctant hero/team jackass, although she mellows out when the plot needs her to (she's also the only one other than the Inhumans to have a drawn-out backstory flashback, which I felt was kind of distracting). Captain Marvel only shows up near the end as the cavalry. Hala the Accuser is a card-carrying villain, while Victor "Exile" Kohl is a villain with an inferiority complex who has a lot to prove. Again, none of these are particularly complex or new, but it does serve as a neat gateway to quickly tell us what we need to know about these new faces.
And the movie itself is executed relatively well, I suppose. The pacing is a bit off at times, and there are moments that feel like it's kind of blatant exposition that could've been worked into the story a bit better -- particularly the aforementioned America Chavez alternate-earth backstory which really feels like they didn't need to shove it into the movie. Both America and Patriot feel like they're rather inconsistently written, too, with some inter-personal conflicts particularly in the second act are brought up and resolved abruptly. The first act of the movie is easily the strongest, I feel, because the conflict between these characters happen in the heat of the moment and none of these heroes are sure whether it's Dante or Victor that's the villain.
The voice acting is decent, with Agents of SHIELD actor Chloe Bennett voicing Daisy Johnson (honestly a good chunk of why I ended up being convinced to watch this) and Ming-Na Wen lending her voice for Hala. As the two main characters, Kathreen Khavari and Milana Vayntrub (Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl respectively) bring enough energy to make some of the slower parts of the movie work, even if the scripting is perhaps not the best at times. I'm also not a huge fan of the random songs shoehorned into the fight scenes, none of which really end up working well. The animation is... it's serviceable, even if the action scenes are noticeably light and simplistic for a full-on movie.
Overall? It's a very basic movie, with a relatively basic premise and it's mostly here to introduce characters to you. And it's not like some sort of revolutionary masterpiece or anything, but it's definitely a very fun and solid movie.
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