DUBAI: The sequel to “Captain Marvel” comes four years after it introduced our eponymous superhero (Brie Larson) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; but “The Marvels” feels far removed from the emotional core of that 2019 movie — in all the good ways, and, perhaps, some not so good.The film begins with Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), the plucky Pakistani American teenage superhero who calls herself Ms. Marvel, day-dreaming about teaming up with her dream superhero partner, Larson’s Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers.Her wishes are soon fulfilled when she suddenly finds herself pulled from her bedroom to the inky, vast blackness of space, replacing Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), a superhero astronaut, who you will remember got her powers at the tail end of Disney+ show “WandaVision.” Rambeau herself finds that she has switched places with Danvers, fighting Kree soldiers on a spaceship, whereas the latter is in Khan’s living room, terrifying the cozy Khan family unit as she fights off Kree soldiers. It is one of the most action-packed openers to an MCU film in recent history and it simply buzzes with an electric energy that is maintained almost through the entire 105-minute runtimeThe reason for the heroes’ abrupt location-swapping is explained by a mysterious entanglement of the trio’s light-based superpowers, which was triggered by malfunctioning jump-points in space, created by the film’s antagonist, Kree warrior Dar-Benn, played by British actress Zawe Ashton. Dar-Benn is on a mission to save the Kree’s home planet Hala, after Captain Marvel destroyed it in events that happen off-screen post “Captain Marvel,” earning herself the nickname “the Annihilator.” If all of this sounds like a lot, that is because it is. Marvel projects nowadays require that audiences pull up their socks and do their due diligence when it comes to keeping up with the increasingly convoluted MCU lore, and “The Marvels” is no exception. “The Marvels” thrives whenever Vellani’s Kamala Khan is on screen. The young actress embodies the joy and vulnerability of the vivacious teenage superhero with a practiced ease, and it is a joy to behold her enthusiasm. Larson and Parris also deliver sincere performances, and the duo, along with Vellani, share great chemistry. “The Marvels” also feels like it was made with a younger target audience in mind with all the Flerken (an alien that looks and behaves like a cat but is more adjacent in powers to a tentacled eldritch monster) shenanigans and an aside that involves a musical number and the appearance of a certain Prince Yan (Park Seo Joon). Ultimately, though, the stakes in “The Marvels” never feel too real and the film’s light-hearted and breezy structure fails to hold up its more emotionally intense moments. But the laughs come a mile a minute.