I think Marlin makes a very nice lever action. While lever actions are some what older they are great guns.
While I know Remington makes and sells more guns that Marlin I don't think very highly of them. Of course though most people only own Remingtons so of course they are the best.
I was involved in a business that moved from Conn to NJ a long time ago 27 years ago in fact. The business was right on I95 in North Haven 100 yards from our building was the Marlin Building. Some of my associates were previous Marlin IT people. I took a tour of the facility. They are or were a very conservative company and they really ran an antiquated IT department but they had quite a bit of money invested in QA equipment such as optical comparators at the time. Their receivers were drop forged and then machined... and held based on what I saw to some pretty tight tolerances. It's an old design but a proven design with no cast,MIM or other crap in the manufacturing process. Milled Forged steel and good wood . Only plastic they used was on the buttplate. This latestis just an attempt at market share for a declining market(hunters). Someone gets a nice buyout and Remington(Cerberus) gets market share.