Marvel is also a lot less serialized that the previous live-action Marvel Disney+ series. Through the first two episodes of the season, Ms.
It’s easy to see how this unknown actress convinced Marvel to build a television show (and soon a movie called The Marvels) around her: She’s a natural comic presence, and unlike a lot of perfectly coiffed, twentysomething television “teenagers,” she’s a really convincing kid. She makes Kamala a very easy person to root for as she dreams of becoming a hero, and butts up against her loving but strict immigrant parents (the equally wonderful Mohan Kapur and Zeonbia Shroff). Marvel - meaning Kamala does become a superhero and seems to get mixed up in some kind of government conspiracy - the thing that sets it apart from those other very similar pieces of recent media is the charming performance of Iman Vellani in the role of Kamala Khan. Machines and Turning Red. Kamala makes YouTube videos that Katie Mitchell would loved, and she has problems with her protective mother - plus surprising supernatural powers - that are almost mirror images of the ones experienced by Meilin Lee in Pixar’s most recent animated movie.īesides the general Marvelness of Ms. Willow Wilson artist Adrian Alphona, it also closely resembles other recent shows and movies about lovable misfit teen girls stuck in generational conflicts with their parents like The Mitchells vs.
While the show is inspired by a recent Ms. It’s a welcome change of pace from the company’s other Disney+ shows, which were starting to feel very similar and very familiar. And her show nicely captures the flavor of those Marvel teen comics. In other words, she’s a classic Marvel teen hero. She’s decidedly a real high school student shy, uncertain, idealistic, worried about her domineering parents, and not yet sure of her place in the world. Marvel’s Kamala Khan a welcome exception. All of the MCU’s other heroes are adults - immature adults at times, but confident, muscle-bound men and women nonetheless. With the exception of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never tapped into any of these concepts. In fact, making Spider-Man a teenager in the first place at a time when the comic-book industry still considered teens useful only as sidekicks to grownup heroes was one of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s primary innovations of the early 1960s. Spider-Man, The X-Men, Nova, The New Mutants, The New Warriors, and Young Avengers all mine similar veins of hormonal romance, pathos, and humor, and have proven popular with comics’ core readership of young adults for decades. Teen melodrama have been one of Marvel’s most dependable sub-genres for the company’s entire existence.