Due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA Actors Strike, much of the pre-release marketing for The Marvels did not include the involvement of the film’s actors. Funnily enough, the settlement that brought an end to the strike was ultimately reached just a day before early previews for the film began rolling out. This was similar to the marketing for Season 2 of Loki, which was also affected by the same strike. After the strike ended, Iman Vellani made a surprise appearance before a showing of the film at the El Capitan in LA.
Early previews for The Marvels coincided with Season 2 finale of Loki on November 9th, 2023. This led Marvel's Instagram page to jokingly post a MCU permission slip form to excuse fans from work and school early.
Trivia Tropes:
Acting for Two: Lashana Lynch portrays the Maria Rambeau of Earth 616 during a flashback Carol relives, and later plays her multiversal variant Binary in The Stinger.
Acting in the Dark: When shooting The Stinger, Teyonah Parris noted that she and Lashana Lynch were on-set with an ordinary doctor wearing a lab coat. She had no idea that said doctor was Beast until she saw the finished film.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Having previously expressed how the character was his favorite role of his career, Kelsey Grammer was very excited to return as Beast in The Stinger for this film. He further expressed hope that he would continue to go forward with the role in the MCU, feeling that he would be back "in a real way".
B-Team Sequel: Nia DaCosta took over for Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck in the directing department. Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet were also replaced in the writing department by DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik, and Zeb Wells.
Box Office Bomb: The film cost Disney $220 million to make,note originally budgeted at $275 million but reduced by a $55 million UK tax credit, not including marketing costs, and grossed $206 million worldwide. The film set a record for the lowest opening weekend for an MCU movie in North America at $46 million, lower than The Incredible Hulk's $55 million opening 15 years prior. It collapsed 78% in its second weekend, the biggest drop ever for a major studio superhero film. It is the lowest-grossing MCU film, as well the franchise's first bomb since The Incredible Hulk in 2008, despite the first film earning $1.1 billion four years earlier. Even when the film was still being in roughly 2,000 theaters at the time, Disney simply stopped reporting its live numbers less than a month later on December 3, 2023.
The Cast Showoff: Aladna is a planet where everyone communicates in song, which is perfect for Brie Larson, who not only can sing but even released an album back in the day (2005's Finally Out of P.E.)
According to Iman Vellani, additional musical scenes in Aladna were filmed but cut presumably for time, including one where Kamala would've belted out singing too.
There's also a scene where Kamala briefly explores Carol's personal spaceship, before getting an incoming transmission from Valkyrie, and subsequently converses with her.
Franchise Killer: The commercial failure of The Marvels has torpedoed any plans Marvel Studios had for Captain Marvel 3.
Inspiration for the Work: In an interview with IGN, Nia DaCosta revealed that Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was a key inspiration when pitching The Marvels to Marvel Studios, using a couple of scenes as reference points. She spoke highly of the film, specifically a "great ending sequence with the main character being thrown into the sky by all the other characters".
Irony as She Is Cast: Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel is a big fan of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel. Iman Vellani didn't rate Captain Marvel very high on Letterboxd (two stars). That being said, as a review of it she wrote "These stars are not for Brie Larson, I will sacrifice my own life... for Brie Larson".
Promoted Fanboy: Nia DaCosta grew up reading Marvel Comics, and was a big fan of Ms. Marvel in general. As such, she was more than willing to helm this film, despite it being an unusual third project for her to take on.
Real-Life Relative: Franchise-based example. Zawe Ashton, the actress for Dar-Benn, is the fiancée of Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki.
Refitted for Sequel: The Supreme Intelligence was meant to appear in its true, comic-accurate form at the end of the first film, but the scene was scrapped. It finally appears in the flesh for the sequel, albeit in a brief flashback.
Release Date Change: When the film was officially announced, it had a release date of July 8, 2022. However, after the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman, it was moved to November 11 of that same year due to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever undergoing drastic changes. Afterwards, the film was pushed to 2023 with a release date of February 17, before it was moved to July 28 and finally November 10 to allow the film more time in post-production.
Sequel in Another Medium: Partially. The film features Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel as one of the three lead characters, who previously debuted in the streaming series, Ms. Marvel. It also follows up on plot points previously set up in WandaVision, namely the introduction of adult Monica and her going to work with Nick Fury in space. The final scene is likewise a sequel to Hawkeye, picking up Kate Bishop's storyline in the wake of her and Clint Barton's team-up.
Troubled Production: This film was a victim of the MCU's franchise-wide post-COVID-19 production issues. Due to the logjam of content, the release date ended up slipping around 15 months behind schedule since the normally very hands-on executives were spread so thin. Its budget ended up ballooning to around $275 million, though a UK tax credit knocked it down to $220 million. Extensive reshoots were done to try to make the story more cohesive which is largely why the budget got so out of hand. Disney was apparently so worried that they conducted public test screenings which they don't normally do as the MCU team prefers to keep its testing process in house for family and friends. Then the marketing got kneecapped by the SAG strike, which prevented the actors from promoting the film, which ended the day before the film was released.
Vindicated by Cable: The film didn’t do well at the box office, but was the most watched programme on Disney+ the week of its debut on the platform.
The project was initially revealed as Captain Marvel 2 during the Disney Investor Day 2020 presentation. The film's final title was established in The Marvels in a promotional video posted on May 3, 2021, alluding to the other characters with the "Marvel" codename, Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, being involved.
Nia DaCosta wanted to involve Adam Warlock and have a time-travel related plot in her initial pitch for this film. However, both elements were rejected as Adam was going to be introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Marvel already had a time travel show in the form of Loki.
Kamala was going to join the Aladna musical number at one point, but her singing parts were removed in the final film. Some parts of it can still be heard on the soundtrack however.
Nia DaCosta wanted the X-Men to show up in this film due to her being a self-professed comic nerd, but Kevin Feige insisted on dialing it back to make their involvement more measured. The final cut does include a cameo from Beast in The Stinger, but that's the extent of any X-Men involvement in the movie.
At one point the film was scheduled for release on February 17, 2023, before it switched release dates with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Had it kept the February 17 release date, The Marvels would have been the first installment of Phase 5 instead of being the third film.
The movie almost had a very different ending where Carol and Dar-Bann both died in the climax.
Word of Saint Paul: Iman Vellani mentioned in an interview that she believes the mid-credit scene revealing Beast takes place in the same universe as the X-Men Film Series, though specifically sometime during the original trilogy due to Kelsey Grammer portraying the character.
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