Plenty of Marvel movies have rocky-ish roads to release, whether that’s down to inexperienced directors suddenly being handed $200 million projects or changes of priority behind the scenes, but none have felt so publicly plagued as Captain America Brave New World. Constant articles about reshoots (and, most likely, skyrocketing budgets) as well as controversy over the frankly deranged decision to introduce an Israeli superhero (played by a pro-IDF actress) in 2025 have left the fourth Cap, and first to star Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in the title role abdicated by Chris Evans, looking dead on arrival. The finished product won’t do much to dissuade those feelings – not, actually, because it’s much more cobbled together than any other subpar MCU outing, all of which share lumpen scripts and rushed effects work, but just because it’s so damn boring.
Serving as a sequel to two, unrelated and not well-loved, movies (2021’s Eternals and, bafflingly, 2008’s pre-Ruffalo Incredible Hulk) and one TV show (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Brave New World finds Wilson’s winged Cap caught up in a conspiracy story that is clearly aiming at the heights of 2014’s Winter Soldier but never comes close to getting there. Still struggling with his identity as the new bearer of the shield, and now in a contentious relationship with newly elected President, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford replacing the late William Hurt), Sam’s mission revolves around two main issues. First on the agenda; a mind-control assassination attempt on Ross and, secondly, sovereignty over the big dead Celestial in the Indian Ocean from Eternals, the source of a miraculous new metal – Adamantium (the stuff Wolverine’s bones are made out of in the comics).
Both of these plots are presented by director Julius Onah and the *five* credited writers as being urgent, war-starting matters, but the film itself never finds a gear beyond ‘sluggish’. Even as, at under two hours, one of the MCU’s shorter outings, so many scenes seem to take forever to get anywhere, all until the much-trailed fight between Sam and Ross (in big CGI Red Hulk form), which is over very quickly and without so much as a single imaginative action beat.
Despite his prominence in the marketing though, Red Hulk is not the lead villain here. Nor, for that matter, is Giancarlo Esposito as the reshoots-added criminal mastermind Sidewinder. Instead, we are reintroduced (after 17 full years) to Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns, aka The Leader, who has Hulked out his brain to do evil probability analysis. Everything to do with Sterns is just awful, right down to Nelson’s embarrassed-to-be-here performance. Elsewhere, the other actors are more game; Mackie isn’t really blockbuster-anchor material but he’s charming when the mostly wooden writing lets him be and Carl Lumbly is the easy highlight reprising his Disney+ role of betrayed Black Captain America Isaiah Bradley, somehow wringing actual emotion out of a very flat film.
Though Brave New World only feels more ‘reshot’ than, say, Ant-Man 3 or The Marvels on a couple of occasions, those moments are glaring – a couple of scenes just straight up don’t function on a continuity level. But, mostly, the flaws here are just a continuation of every post-Endgame MCU film that isn’t Guardians of the Galaxy 3 – the flaws of a completely flailing franchise. The script: chopped to hell. The visuals: rushed and flat and often ugly. The action: weightless. And, most damning of all, this adaptation of cartoon superheroes where the main hero can fly and the big final baddie is a giant red rage monster? Well, it’s no fun.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 