Captain America: Brave New World is a film that is neither brave nor new, though certainly of this world. Taking all the recycled remnants of prior Marvel Cinematic Universe films and shows, Kevin Feige and director Julius Onah deliver a movie utterly lacking in ambition and almost free of consequence. Almost all of the characters wind up exactly where they started, and even the expected post-credit scene has so little to say that it might as well not have said anything.
Stories of plagued production, heavy reshoots, and lack of direction all seem to have borne true in this final product. Brave New World follows Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as the new Captain America who is seemingly working for the U.S. military. At the same time, one of the opening scenes between Harrison Ford‘s President Thaddeus Ross (Ford took over the part from the dearly departed William Hurt) and Wilson features Ross offering to make Captain America an official government position, which in conjunction with the military work feels like one of many script incongruencies. Regardless, Wilson is caught up in a messy “spy” plot after Isaiah Bradley, a guest of Wilson and an older, forgotten Captain America, attempts to assassinate the president and some others.
The film feels like the smashing together of several plot ideas and threads with no coherent connection. The Serpent Society appears led by Giancarlo Esposito‘s Sidewinder, a character allegedly added entirely in reshoots. Much of the plot centers around someone using flashing lights and music to hypnotize people into doing their bidding, which allegedly was the plot of Captain America: Civil War prior to Feige deciding to go the Civil War route.
This film also tries to be a semi-sequel to The Incredible Hulk, bringing back Ross to eventually turn into Red Hulk, but also bringing back Tim Blake Nelson after nearly 20 years to finally play The Leader. Neither character is particularly well developed, and Nelson’s performance is so bland and unmemorable that the character would be quickly forgotten if not for some somewhat decent practical makeup effects.
Lack of character development is problem that runs up and down through the film. Isaiah Bradley was a character introduced in Falcon & The Winter Soldier, but here is given almost no context past the clunkiest of exposition, and does nothing for the rest of the film. Joaquin Torres, another character introduced on the Disney+ show, is present as the sidekick of Wilson but is given no background, no arc, and no real personality past being comedic relief. The film has you learn nothing about him or his motivations, and it gives him no struggles.
The same could be said of Shira Haas‘s character Sabra, an Israeli operative characterized as a former Black Widow in the MCU continuity. She appears as a security chief for President Ross but is also given no characterization. This may be because of reediting due to controversy over her status as an Israeli intelligence officer and the furor surrounding the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Regardless of politics, the re-edits have neutered this character to near pointlessness.
It also doesn’t help that the film attempts to be a pale retread of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The movie very much feels like it couldn’t find itself, and way down the production line a producer decided to try to give the film the same 70s spy thriller schtick that caused many to praise The Winter Soldier. This film forgoes the typical Marvel Studios fanfare for a title sequence that attempts to be like a 70s spy film, and it has other random music flares and shots that try to pay homage to those films. But like everything here, it feels sloppy and poorly executed.
Far too many of the action scenes in the film could be described the same way. Given this is a superhero movie, one would hope that the action might be the saving grace of the poor writing and direction, but even those scenes are lacking. Many are poorly lit and haphazardly edited, leading to difficulty determining what is happening in many of the scenes. Some of the larger set-pieces have moments that have cheap-looking effects, leading to silliness rather than tension. While a few scenes work, they are few and far between.
Brave New World is mostly a dud. While there are allusions to intriguing plot points and emotional arcs, with a few scenes pointing to a thematic point of wrestling with appearances and legacy, these have been so severely cut down that any potential depth is completely gone. With no intriguing characters, predictable plotting, flat action, and an edit that is so focused on staying under two hours that no scenes have room to breathe, Captain America: Brave New World is one of the flattest, most uninspired MCU films yet.
It is an utter disappointment to see long-awaited characters like Red Hulk and The Leader butchered, and to see a film that continues the theme of post-Endgame Marvel feeling like a flailing mess with no clear direction. While Marvel has never had a perfect track record, the largest flaws of the mid-tier Marvel films of old were that they sacrificed their individual storytelling for building up a larger universe. This may have caused certain films to disappoint, but they still brought some energy in the form of forward momentum towards a larger universe and story. Ironically, despite referencing the famed metal that coats Wolverine’s skeleton, finally bringing in the Celestial island from Eternals, and using many characters from prior MCU entries, Brave New World feels like a disjointed mess unanchored from the larger universe.
If the MCU cannot course-correct, its recent films may be seen as the dying breaths of a once-great storytelling behemoth.
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