Ms. Marvel (Disney +): TV Review
/MS. MARVEL
Season One - 6 Episodes - Disney +
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This series is embarrassingly bad and embodies everything that is wrong with the current Marvel machine. Under no circumstances should you watch it.
I just finished watching the season finale of Ms. Marvel, the latest Marvel superhero series on Disney +, and my question is this…what in the hell are we doing? Seriously, like, what the fuck are we doing as a country, as a culture, as a species?
The six-episode series, which tells the origin story of Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel – a superhero obsessed teenage Pakistani-American girl living in Jersey City who discovers she has super powers, is the most embarrassing, most egregious and most-cringe-worthy piece of garbage Marvel has released on the small screen, which considering it came out right after the steaming pile of feces that was Moon Knight, is quite an achievement.
A brief rundown of the plot is that Kamala loves Marvel superheroes (Captain Marvel most of all) and wants to be one. Then through some family history and Pakistani lore, she ends up discovering she has powers but has to hide them from her loving but conservative immigrant parents and her friends. A journey from Jersey City to Karachi and back again ensues and there are some poorly written and poorly delivered expositional monologues and some hysterically bad action sequences and then it comes to the most-inane anti-climax imaginable.
Ms. Marvel sucks…it really, truly does suck, the reason for that is because Ms. Marvel as a character is extraordinarily dull, her origin story (at least the one presented in this series) is even duller and her superpowers are absurdly bland. The series itself looks unconscionably cheap, most notably its laughably amateurish special effects, not to mention the inept acting, insipid writing, incompetent directing and its mind-numbingly pedestrian action sequences.
The reality is that Ms. Marvel is, at best, a third-rate show for kids…and by ‘kids’ I mean really, really stupid, little kids. It’s like a superhero version of Hannah Montana or Lizzie McGuire or That’s So Raven, because it doesn’t show what life is really like for teenagers, but what adults think little kids think life is like for teenagers. The series would be better suited for Disney Kids or Disney Junior or whatever the fuck the money-hungry monsters at Mickey Mouse now call their mind-destroying, child indoctrinating channel.
Speaking of which, the star of Ms. Marvel, Iman Vellani, is, to her credit, a somewhat appealing presence – sort of like Hillary Duff as Lizzie McGuire or something like that, but she is also…just like Hillary Duff, a truly atrocious actress, and watching her try to vacuously mug, pose and preen her way through scenes is like watching a toddler repeatedly soil their Underoos.
To be clear though, Ms. Marvel’s awfulness is not Iman Vellani’s fault by any stretch, hell, you could cast Meryl Streep in this thing and still want to gouge your eyes out rather than keep watching it.
There has been a lot of hype around the series with critics fawning all over it, so much so that it is “officially the highest critically-rated Marvel series in history”, with a 98% critical score at review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
Of course, this is just more proof of critic’s desperate virtue signaling and pandering than anything else. Critics are falling over themselves to adore Ms. Marvel simply because of the show’s ‘representation’ in the form of a South Asian centered storyline and diverse cast.
The critical praise of Ms. Marvel highlights the trouble with film/tv criticism in these hyper-politicized and polarized times. Namely, film/tv critics have placed representation, diversity and inclusion atop their hierarchy when evaluating a movie or show, with quality, creativity and artistry barely registering as something of value. These critics could never give an honest assessment of Ms. Marvel and excoriate it for its obvious failings because that would give comfort and aid to the bad people…or something like that. It would also open them up to attacks from the swarms of Savanarolas on Twitter who bring down the hammer on anyone who dare question the woke inquisition.
While Disney/Marvel may revel in the praise of the sycophantic simpletons who make up the Rotten Tomatoes roster of critics, they’re not faring nearly as well with audiences, as Ms. Marvel is officially the least watched of all the Marvel tv series.
Disney/Marvel and many intellectually impotent critics are blaming Ms. Marvel’s poor viewership numbers on…you guessed it, “racism!” This is par for the course and is standard operating procedure at the Disney distillery of dismal drama. The masterminds at the Mickey Mouse mansion make a shitty show or movie and then call people “racist” for pointing out how poorly conceived and executed the stupid, shitty show/movie really is. This happens all the time with the god-awful Star Wars shows and movies, and with the Marvel products as well.
Unlike most critics, but like most fans, I truly do not give a flying fuck about representation, diversity and inclusion, all I care about is quality, creativity and artistry…of which most of what Marvel and Disney vomit out onto the public nowadays, Ms. Marvel included, has none.
Am I supposed to pretend Ms. Marvel doesn’t suck just because the main character is a Pakistani-American and a Muslim? That seems absolutely absurd to me, and frankly, feels mightily paternalistic, condescending and cowardly.
The idea of a Muslim superhero is pretty intriguing, and if it that part of a character and story could be explored in a well-executed, serious and profound way, say, like the terrific Netflix series (which is now streaming on Disney +) Daredevil and how it used its main character’s Catholicism as a crucial part of his inner life and mythos, then I’d be all in. But the Muslim aspect of Ms. Marvel is the most offensively vapid and vacant bit of window dressing meant to do little more than check a box.
As for the claim that ‘racism’ is the motivating factor in audience’s dislike and distaste for Ms. Marvel, it is equally condescending and frankly, aggressively moronic.
It seems much more likely that audiences have stayed away from Ms. Marvel in droves because the character is a forgettable, fourth rate superhero that’s painfully new to the Marvel canon (she was created in 2014), so no one has ever even heard of her or cares about her.
Another factor is that Marvel fatigue post-Endgame is a real thing and is only growing stronger everyday as Marvel/Disney spew out one more piece of junk tv show or movie after another.
And on top of all that there are no “stars” in the show…I mean even the dreadful Moon Knight had Oscar Isaac in it.
Of course, if viewers did tune in to Ms. Marvel, they would’ve been met with such an incorrigibly incoherent story that they would’ve been wise to bail early…I wish I did. But lucky for you, dear reader, I watched this piece of shit so you don’t have to….and you really don’t have to.
The bottom line is that Ms. Marvel is just another buoy guiding Disney on their collision course with the deadly iceberg of wokeness, which worships representation, diversity and inclusion and ignores quality, creativity and artistry, a formula which will ultimately sink the previously-believed-to-be-unsinkable cash cow known as the good ship Marvel.
If you are one of the myopic mental defectives working at Marvel or Disney, grab a life-jacket and hop into a life-boat now, because by the looks of things your corporate caretaker is steaming full speed towards its own oblivion and is completely blind to its impending doom.
©2022