Captain America: Brave New World came out a week or so ago and by chance, I got to see it recently. This fourth movie in the Captain America series is the first to feature Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in his first big adventure after assuming the Captain America mantle in that Falcon and Winter Soldier miniseries, which was probably the last real Marvel thing that I actually watched with any semblance of interest or enjoyment.
There’s been a lot of noise surrounding this film beforehand. It was originally titled New World Order before someone figured that we might offend someone – mostly the Orange Goblin, brother – and then there were the reshoots and all the talk about “how dare they replace Steve Rogers with Captain Falcon” or the usual nonsense. My only real concern here was whether the people behind the creative for this thing was capable of crafting a story that was worthy of the films that came before it. The previous Captain America films have been – in my book if no one else’s – the best films out of the MCU. Good storytelling, fantastic performances, and .
Brave New World had a lot going on its shoulders. It needed to convince the world that Sam Wilson was a worthy successor to the Captain America lineage and it need to live up to the standard that past films have established… and I think it’s safe to say that Brave New World fails on both counts.
Let me get this out of the way so that there’s no misconception. Brave New World isn’t necessarily a bad movie – on the contrary, it’s perfectly acceptable superhero fare with some attempt at intrigue that falls flat on its face. Anthony Mackie once again shines as Sam Wilson, a man who finally embraced the Captain America mantle while still coming to terms with what that means to him. Harrison Ford as Thunderbolt Ross (taking over the role from the late William Hurt) is probably the best genuine performance from Harrison Ford that I’ve seen in ages and him turning into Red Hulk could easily have been how he wanted to react to the umpteenth Star Wars-related question.
There’s bits of this movie that I liked. I liked that we brought back some aspects of the much-neglected Hulk movie with Edward Norton in the form of a couple key characters making a return. I liked that we have a Hulk that’s presented as something of an imposing figure rather than the comic relief that the other Hulks were relegated to. There’s little character moments here and there that show some signs of thought put into things. And perhaps, most pleasant of all, the usual Marvel attempts at jokey-hokey conversion is kept to a bare minimum. It’s there, but it’s not too glaring and I’m somewhat grateful for that.
However, Brave New World’s general narrative falls a bit flat and that’s mostly due to the fact that it’s more interested to doing some universe-building and teasing for future MCU properties than it is in crafting a strong first outing for Sam Wilson’s Cap. There’s an island of some sort housing a new metal called Adamantium – planting the seeds for another new take on X-Men. The plot about sleeper agents being triggered by music and gamma signals tying back to the Leader – a Hulk villain – and the end payoff of Ross turning into Red Hulk… this feels more like something that would work as a follow-up to that initial Hulk sequel, but instead of bringing back the Hulk to take care of these things, we’re bringing in the new Captain America who feels so out of place in this particular story.
That is NOT a feeling you want to have in trying to get people to care about this new flavor of Cap.
This isn’t a feeling I had just watching this movie. Everything about the press and trailers beforehand had me thinking that Marvel couldn’t come up with a strong enough story for Sam Wilson to embrace the Captain America role, so they just shoved him into a Hulk sequel that never got made. I was kind of hoping that the final product would disprove that theory and unfortunately, that feeling intensified the more I watched the film. The post-credit scene about these further multiverse shenanigans in future films didn’t inspire me with much confidence.
Brave New World was a bit of a disappointment. It’s not a bad movie or anything – it’s merely passable fare… but considering what came before in this line, “merely passable” may as well be phoning it in. Sam Wilson deserved a better first outing than this.
Do better, Marvel.
That’s what the guy said in that speech, right?
That’s good advice. Maybe you should follow it.
dtm666 