Ms. Marvel
Ms. Marvel is streaming on Disney Plus at the time of writing.
Television programs are typically reviewed after the first two or three episodes. This report card does not cover the entire season. It may contain MINOR spoilers for the first few episodes.
SCREENPLAY: A
An Avengers obsessed teenager positively, one-hundred percent MUST get to Avengercon! I mean, she’s the biggest Avengers fan in Jersey! But might she become more than just a fan?
Imagine you’re a huge Twenty One Pilots fan (insert whatever band you want!) and one day you spontaneously wake up with mad, superhuman synthesizer skills? That very day, the band posts on their socials that they’re looking for a new synth player? And you look down at your superhuman synth skills and think, “I’m no longer ‘nothing.’ Maybe, just maybe, I could do this!” This show is that, just with superhero powers instead of musical talent.
It’s a captivating premise - a fantasy most of us enjoy. And we can’t even be jealous. Kamala is a delight. If it’s not going to be us, we’re thrilled it’s happening to her. We’re so happy that we don’t even mind spending an entire first episode that’s heavy on exposition and light on plot.
ACTING: A+
One thing you’ll love about this show is how fun, genuine and relatable it is. The reason it is all these things is because Iman Vellani is all these things. If you haven’t seen an interview with her about how she got the role of Kamala Khan, put it on your list of things to do. The Trevor Noah one is good. The Radheyan Simonpillai interview is more in-depth and intimate. It’s a long watch but worth your time.
Kamla’s parents, played by Zenobia Shroff and Mohan Kapur, are a treasure. You’ve seen these types of parents countless times. But Shroff and Kapur play them with such zeal, joy, and commitment that they feel fresh. They come off as believable parents instead of stale stereotypes.
CRAFT: A
Watching people text is boring. But since people do it all the time, authentic stories occasionally need to depict texting. I’m always fascinated by how filmmakers decide to portray text conversations. There’s a sequence where Kamala texts her friend Bruno some sad news. Their texts are brief and emoji-filled. As they walk through garishly lit streets, the messages fleetingly appear as neon signs in store windows and sprayed graffiti on building walls. It’s creative, inventive, and keeps the story flowing.
I also love the frequent spinning camera shots. Characters will walk into a space, and the camera will rise to the ceiling until the character appears upside down. It’s an apt way to illustrate the dizzy, upside down feelings common to the teenage species.
REPRESENTATION (Elective Class): A+
Kamala is Pakistani-American. She is Muslim But the story never allows her to be solely defined by any of these things. If I had to identify her in one word, it would be: Teenager. She enjoys spending time in her head more than the classroom. She’s got this thing (Avengercon) that is massively important to her, but nobody in her life can even understand what it is. She’s constantly pushing back against every adult in her life who’s demanding she decide what she’s going to do with her life. Actually, she’s incredibly similar to me - an old white dude.
Her faith, identity and ethnicity are not a fence that prevents me from relating to her. They are not a wall that borders off her humanity. She’s a person I love spending time with. And by spending time with people from different backgrounds, we start to see our differences as less of a division and more of a celebration of the dazzling immensity of the human experience. Ms. Marvel is a masterclass of representation.
FINAL COMMENTS:
A perk of growing old is that it’s kind of neat to see time march on. It’s super cool to see someone who has adored the MCU their entire lives get their shot to drive the bus for a bit.
Against all odds, Iman Vellani has become a vital piece of the thing she loves. She will be one of the first people to contribute to the MCU as someone who’s been fully shaped by it. We saw a sliver of this phenomenon in the final Star Wars trilogy. John Boyega and Daisy Ridley - I’m sure - are huge fans of Star Wars. But they were born 15 years after the original came out.
I was in kindergarten when the first Star Wars film came out. Star Wars doesn’t belong to Boyega and Ridley the way it belongs to me. Valleni was in kindergarten when Iron Man came out. The MCU is all hers. How will Marvel evolve now that people who’ve never known a cinematic world without it are in a position to push it in new directions? It’s exciting, and I can’t wait to watch what Iman and her peers achieve in this universe.