‘The Marvels’ borrowing from the playbook of an infamous DC effort that critics hated but brought home $1.15 billion at the box office is a bold move

The Marvels needs all the help it can get in turning around the tide of bad PR and indifference that’s been plaguing it in the run-up to its release, but promising that it’s going to be employing a tactic used by a DC movie that earned hostile reviews and yet broke the bank is either a stroke of genius or madness.

The final trailer for Nia DaCosta’s movie pulls out all the stops in attempting to convince the audience to go see it in theaters over its opening weekend, including leaning hard into the Avengers: Endgame nostalgia (yes, nostalgia for a four-year-old movie) and even spoiling ts own big crossover cameo. What’s more, by featuring half a dozen explosions across 120 seconds it seems to be evoking DC’s Aquaman.

As pointed out by a light-hearted thread on the MarvelStudios subreddit, The Marvels final trailer is certainly explosive as it features six moments of fiery CGI pyrotechnics in just two minutes, which equates to an explosion every 20 seconds. This feels like a threat that The Marvels going to take after James Wan’s underwater epic, then, which infamously ended practically every dialogue scene with a “KABOOM!”

This kind of thing is probably why the 2018 blockbuster only has 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, but also maybe why it was such a crowd-pleaser that it earned $1.15 billion worldwide. Even so, The Marvels drawing comparisons between itself and the Jason Momoa vehicle might not be a good look when Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom seems all set to sink to the bottom of the box office ocean this December.