Ms Marvel directors hope Marvel’s first Muslim superhero series inspires ‘a lot of girls in the world’ as well as people of any religion, race or genders
- Iman Vellani stars as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teen who idolises Captain Marvel and gains superpowers of her own from a magic bangle
- Khan has to deal with her powers while navigating the two cultures she lives in, say directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who are also Muslims
The makers of Ms Marvel can feel the power of their new superhero series.
Muslim directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah can’t wait for audiences to experience Marvel Studios’ first project centring on a Muslim superhero, introducing the character Kamala Khan as a Pakistani-American teenager from Jersey City who obtains cosmic abilities.
“It reminds me of my sister, my nieces, [Adil’s] wife, our aunties,” says Fallah. “Now they have somebody that they can look up to that resembles them. I hope that it will inspire a lot of girls in the world, but at the same time, it’s also a universal story and I think it’s going to touch everybody, no matter the race, gender or religion.”
“It’s an origin story, so we just follow this teenage girl who is between two worlds, between her American culture and Pakistani-Islamic culture,” Fallah says.
“At school, she’s trying to be cool but she’s clumsy and she doesn’t know who she wants to be. It’s like an identity crisis. Then all of a sudden, she gets this power, and now she’s between the superhero world and being a normal human being.”
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El Arbi, 33, and Fallah, 36, directed the premiere episode and the finale of Ms Marvel and also served as executive producers on the series.
“When we were editing Bad Boys for Life, we were talking to each other and saying, ‘What’s the next step?’ And the next step had to be Marvel, because that’s the biz so you’ve got to be part of the [Marvel Cinematic Universe],” says El Arbi.
“We were joking around and saying, ‘But if we are going to do a Marvel show, it’s going to have to be a Muslim character, right?’ Not knowing that (one) existed and they were planning to do that.
“We were also surprised by how authentic and how much they really went deep into that Muslim aspect and the subject matter,” El Arbi said. “It felt very relatable and realistic to us.”
Kamala first appeared in the Marvel comics in 2013, and became the company’s first Muslim character to lead her own comic book the following year.
El Arbi and Fallah aimed to capture the essence of the comics by mixing animation into the live-action Ms Marvel episodes.
“The comics were a great base and a great source material to be inspired by,” El Arbi says. “We also had Sana Amanat, who was co-creator of the comics, to be there as a producer, so we had a really great guidance in that aspect.
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The Ms Marvel series is only the beginning for the titular superhero. The Kamala character next appears in the 2023 movie The Marvels, which also stars franchise veterans Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris.
“She’s so young. There’s such a big future for her,” Fallah says. “I hope it will be like Peter Parker from Queens. That’s the bar, that she has this long, long future ahead of her.”
