Directed by Nia DaCosta, "The Marvels" is the 33rd film in the MCU. It is a sequel to 2019's "Captain Marvel", but also incorporates major characters and plot-points introduced in the television shows "WandaVision" and "Ms. Marvel". The shortest film in the MCU, this film brings together three heroines who must work together when their superhero powers seem to short-circuit, causing them to switch places with each other, uniting to fight a villain who desires revenge upon Carol Danvers, for causing mass destruction to her home planet. Already labelled a major failure at the box office, the film sometimes feels like an expensive made-for-TV special, and is not too worried about shouldering the weight of the massive mythology that came before it, instead offering a light, breezy, frequently amusing little space caper, with some inventive sequences.
Joining the adventure is American composer, Laura Karpman. Already a Marvel vet, having scored the "Ms. Marvel" and "What If...?" shows, she here joins the MCU, taking over from Pinar Toprak. Having working in television, games, and films, Karpman is a major advocate for women in the scoring industry, and brings her talent to perhaps her biggest canvas here. The score is centered around a heroic new theme for the three leads, and features a rousing orchestral presence, but also features a wide variety of vocal ensembles, as well as expressive woodwind and electronic experimentation, leading to a diverse and complex sound, balancing harmony and dissonance expertly. Sadly Karpman chose not to utilize Toprak's theme for Carol, and only barely references her own previous material for Kamala. Despite these choices to minimize musical continuity, Karpman nevertheless delivered a rousing new addition to the MCU musical canon.
I offer eight new covers to pick from, all using official marketing artwork. The Marvel Music album features over an hour of original score, the official cover is fine (although I'm not a huge fan of the giant OMPS credit at the top). Fortunately with new films from major studios, it is usually easier to find hi-rez textless artwork, making the job of editing these covers much simpler. After a few more difficult projects, it was a nice break to have one that I could breeze through without too much fuss, but still come up with some nice, colorful variants.
For the post part, the background art is largely untouched (except some minor color and level tweaks here and there). I first started by cleanly editing out the title logo, using curves to trace around the text for a cleaner matte which gave me much more control over various elements in the image.
The only piece of art that required some real editing work was Cover 8. I cut out Nick Fury and the casts from much lower in the image, shrunk them down a bit, and moved them up. I then had to use the colors and textures in the space behind them to paint in all the gaps created by the move. It looks a mess behind him, but the job suffices once put all together.
Let me know your favorites!
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