Released: 13th February
Seen: 16th February
In 2018, Thanos snapped his fingers and destroyed half of the universe. By doing so, he simultaneously created a point we could mark as the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the gift of time, we can pretty much state that Phase Three (AKA the era between Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Far From Home) has been the best phase of the MCU, but its absolute peak can pretty much be pinpointed to Infinity War and Endgame, two films that felt like the end of a cinematic crescendo that had been building for a decade up to that point. They were great movies, truly proof of what this genre could be like at its absolute best and probably one of the dumbest moves that Marvel made in terms of story because the problem is that once you hit a high like that, what happens afterwards?
Phases Four and Five of the MCU have been part of what’s known as the Multiverse Saga, and while most of the films have been good, it is all playing in the aftermath of a set of films so insanely epic that videos that allow you to hear the audience’s reactions on the opening weekend can rack up millions of views. Throw on top of that the reality that COVID happened and threw any plan out the window, meaning that the MCU is playing a game of catch-up with itself, trying to get back to its former glory in time for the next big attempted team-up. In this era, a new Captain America movie marches into cinemas, and while it might not be able to match the movies in the Captain America trilogy that came before it, it’s still good enough to give me hope that Marvel’s going to flip things back around.
Captain America: Brave New World picks up a little while after the events of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier Series where Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) has now fully accepted the mantle of Captain America. His former title of Falcon has been bestowed upon Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and together the two of them have returned to something somewhat normal for them by taking on missions to help America. The mission that kicks off this movie’s plotline is simple, retrieve a package that’s being stolen by a group called the Serpent Society led by a man known as Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito).
This mission was given to them by the president of the US, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) who needs that package as part of a massive deal he’s working on that will help supply the world with adamantium that’s able to be mined from the giant celestial being that’s in the middle of the ocean (so yes, they’re finally dealing with that thing from The Eternals that the internet will not shut the fuck up about). All seems to go well at first until the film’s big bad does an attempted assassination, some mind control stuff happens and it’s up to Captain America and the Falcon to go undercover and do some spy shit to save the world.
One of the fascinating things about the MCU has been how every one of the mini-franchises inside the larger MCU have very different tones. Guardians of the Galaxy are giant comic space operas, Spider-Man is a bunch of coming of age films that tack on superhero shit because they have to and Black Panther are Afro-futurist Shakespearean epics. This gives each franchise its own flavour and sets up certain expectations, with Captain America those films tend to be giant political thrillers that lean more into the evil underbelly of the government in opposition to the proclaimed American ideals that Captain America is meant to represent and the three other Captain America films have all dealt with that in some way. Captain America: Brave New World certainly fits into that category as far as its general plot and tone go but doesn’t match those first three Cap films in terms of quality.
To begin with the positives, because thanks to fucking morons on the internet it feels like you have to say this part before getting into any of the actual problems with the film, the main cast and any elements to do with the race of the new Captain America is absolutely fine. Anthony Mackie is a great lead performer, he has more charm in his big toe than most people have in their entire body and effortlessly carries any scene that he’s in. He is also, undeniably, the current Captain America and he is great at it. Cap has never been about being a super soldier, that was never the important part of the character. The reason that Steve Rogers was a great Captain America was that he was a good person who stood up for others no matter what and didn’t back down (they made this explicit as hell in his first movie when he jumped on a grenade to save everyone) and Sam Wilson has that same fundamental goodness to him that makes him a worthy successor. Even without the super serum making him some kind of physical god, Sam will not rest if he knows he can do something to help others which makes him perfect for the title.
In terms of the story, a lot of it involves returning character Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) who is the emotional rock of the film and probably one of its best assets. Isaiah is a fascinating character in general but this film pushes him to the forefront by making him the victim of mind control and attempting to kill the President. In doing so he’s promptly arrested and threatened with the death penalty and let’s be honest, the image of a black man running from a bunch of police officers in modern times never fails to have your heart stop. There are so many scenes of this movie where the emotional gut punch comes from Isaiah and it’s important to note that his stuff absolutely works like gangbusters.
Where Captain America: Brave New World falters is in two key places. First of all… well, it just looks bad in a lot of places. It’s been kind of a joke for a while now that there are a lot of less than great special effects in Marvel movies (this is mostly because they don’t give the VFX teams enough time to finish the work and are changing things so late in the game that it’s kind of impossible to fix, as this great article by IGN explains) but Captain America: Brave New World was egregious in many parts. We’re not even talking about some of the usual problems that come with films where they design weird monsters and they don’t look right, I mean basic compositing of shots can look painfully bad. There’s a sequence among cherry trees that was so badly done that it’s clearly a last-minute addition they couldn’t fix in time for the release. Some of the big fight scenes in the final act look cheaply done like it was for a PlayStation 2 game, indeed everything in that last act of the film feels like it was fully reshot on the cheap about 2 months ago because they didn’t like the original ending and it kind of sours the film.
Beyond the visual issues though, there’s the fact that this political thriller about a potentially corrupt president seems dedicated to wishy-washy centrism. I’m not saying Captain America: Brave New World had to go full Anti-Trump (though god if any franchise could get away with that, it’s this one) but when your film involves a president who got the job based on his anger and hatred of ‘aliens’, who occasionally turns an unnatural colour before screaming in rage and is constantly taking pills of some form when no one’s looking it’s kind of hard not to see where they could’ve been actually political. Maybe it’s weird to think a political thriller should have a political viewpoint but it’d be great if this one did instead of just having the White House as a cool set piece. It’s a very cool set piece, do not get me wrong on that, but if you’re going to use it then maybe make a fucking point with it? Maybe don’t have the asshole president with the bad hair seem to be constantly forgiven when he does bad shit, we get enough of that in the real world and I would like the escapism of pretending a guy like Ross would be punched in the face by Captain America.
With the problem of the bad visuals and the lack of political backbone, Captain America: Brave New World is probably the least good of the Captain America movies. Sure, it doesn’t help that the first three are some of the best films in the MCU period but this was a film that needed to knock it out of the park and it ended up just kind of getting towards the fence. Again, I’m not saying Captain America: Brave New World is awful, I don’t think any MCU film could be truly awful by any general metric (but hey, I’ve sat through 2025: The World Enslaved By A Virus so my bar for bad is subterranean at this point) but it’s not as good as I would hope it would be. I still have faith that Sam Wilson will be a great Captain America, I can’t wait to see what the character does next, but this outing just isn’t my favourite even if it’s still got a fair bit to like.
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