The Marvels Final Trailer is Shameless

Movies

In one last, desperate attempt to get people to see one of the most unanticipated movies ever made, Marvel has released a final trailer for The Marvels a couple of days before it opens. Directed by Nia DaCosta, The Marvels sees Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Monica Rambeau team up when they suddenly start switching places while they use their powers (sometimes). Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Teyonah Parris return to play the three central heroes, with Zawe Ahston, Park Seo-joon, Gary Lewis, and Samuel L. Jackson in supporting roles. The Marvels opens on November 10, 2024, and you can see the new trailer below:

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to cover a last-minute trailer for a movie that premieres this Friday, but it’s indicative of a larger problem at Disney. Can you imagine how little faith Marvel and Disney have in this film to cut a trailer like that? Right off the bat, there are images of Iron Man and Captain America, references to Thanos and Endgame, and the Avengers theme playing throughout. They’re invoking people’s love of what came before to get them in the door, reminding them of characters and actors we’ll never see in the MCU again (unless Disney meets some assuredly insane asking prices). It should be embarrassing, but I doubt anyone behind this is capable of feeling that. But it’s empty under that sheen of better days and Robert Downey Jr. The dialogue about the villain’s evil plan sounds like this will be another multiverse story, and the consensus is that everyone is tired of that trope (which doesn’t bode well for a trio of phases called “The Multiverse Saga”). And when you try to make Dar-Benn sound like the heir apparent to Thanos, you’re guaranteeing disappointment because even the most optimistic moviegoer must realize that ain’t happening. They’ve even taken a page from the Distinguished Competition and revealed their big cameo, except Shazam!: Fury of the Gods had Gal Gadot in store for audiences while this has… Tessa Thompson. (Remember when people thought it would be Thor?)

I think this partly stems from Disney realizing they’re not being protected to the degree they once were. That Variety article that shed some light on Marvel’s troubles still went out of its way to shield them from too severe an attack, but the damage it did was much worse than its ass-kissing. Then, South Park came along and mocked their obsession with empty diversity, not to mention their lack of originality and how lame the multiverse turned out to be. Now, the truth about The Marvels and its prospects is coming out, with early projections of a $75-80 million opening weekend dropping to $50-60 million. Even this new trailer is getting mocked by people who should be fawning over Disney’s latest release. This tells us two things: first, Disney is in a bad enough position that they can’t simply write off a single dud anymore, or they wouldn’t have opened themselves up to the ridicule a trailer like this would inevitably get them; second, the emperor has no clothes, and the little boy has eased the crowd’s tension by pointing it out ( or in this case, four little boys from Colorado). While obviously not going too far, the media is admitting that this ad smacks of desperation from a company that was once poised to own the bulk of the entertainment industry. And look how hastily this thing was assembled; JLongbone noticed that one of Nick Fury’s lines from The Avengers had been dubbed into the trailer.

They dubbed Fury with his line from the first Avengers lmao https://t.co/GUK4noiNta pic.twitter.com/sTKhqynMXV

— A.K.A. JLongb0ne (@JonsLongs) November 7, 2023

Things are looking bad for Disney, and while many have seen the writing on the wall for some time, it took The Marvels to bring it home for the Mouse House.