Captain America: Brave New World Review: I’m Officially Worried About The Future Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe

As much as I love the great crossovers and event films that we’ve seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I will always have a particular affection for the era of the franchise dubbed Phase 2. In the wake of introductions to major characters via origin stories and the first team-up blockbuster, there was a declared ambition to change audience’s perspective of what a comic book movie could be. Tony Stark found himself playing detective trying to solve an explosive neo-noir mystery in Iron Man 3; a special, original flavor of space opera was concocted with Guardians of the Galaxy; the titular Ant-Man entered the MCU via a heist plot; and Steve Rogers uncovered a vast and dangerous conspiracy in the political thriller Captain America: The Winter Soldier. These experiments in genre were crucial to the blossoming canon.

That was over a decade ago, however, and now, the MCU is in a very different state. There have certainly been successes in the last five years, but the overall quality in the output has significantly changed, and there have been some major bumps in the road in the construction of the latest big picture plan. Director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World arrives amid what is described in Deadpool & Wolverine as “a bit of a low point” for the franchise, and while one might hope that it would be the film that would help right the ship, it’s a mission that the blockbuster isn’t able to accomplish – mostly because it feels dedicated to providing more of “the same” without offering even an iota of “new” (rendering the title unintentionally ironic).

It’s a movie that feels desperate to capture the energy and intense magic of the aforementioned Captain America: The Winter Solider, but it’s a whiffed effort – both in the construction of its story and execution. The 2014 film shocked with its epic, canon-changing twists and dazzled with edge-of-your-seat action, but the latest MCU feature has none of that. Instead, the audience is perpetually way ahead of the characters on plot developments, rendering the pacing deathly slow, and there isn’t a single standout set piece (a symptom of uninspired fight choreography and an overreliance on visual effects).

Having accepted the mantle of Captain America following the events of Avengers: Endgame and the series The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is reintroduced to audiences in a new costume leading missions for the United States military, and the film begins with him playing an outsized role in global affairs when he is able to retrieve and return highly valuable materials stolen from the Japanese government. It’s a key step in the efforts from President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) to forge an international treaty that will facilitate the sharing of a rare resource discovered in the mining of the Celestial that has partially emerged from the Indian Ocean (if you’re confused, go rewatch the end of Eternals).

During a White House presentation in which President Ross states his case for the treaty, however, an assassination attempt is made with multiple gunman – one of whom is Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), the first man to ever receive the super soldier serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America back in the 1940s. Isaiah is arrested and potentially facing the death penalty for his actions, but he swears that he is innocent, and Sam makes it his mission to clear his name and find out what is really going on.

Captain America: Brave New World spoon-feeds what is a very basic story.

To give you an idea of how slow and dull Captain America: Brave New World plays things, despite the fact that there is a random song that plays in the room right before the assassination attempt and the fact that Isaiah has no recollection of the events that transpire it takes the film almost a full hour a.k.a. half of its runtime to bring up the idea that he was the victim of mind-control – and things definitely don’t get any smarter from there.

The target audience for it is ultimately oxymoronic: it’s a movie that demands remembrance of key details from The Incredible Hulk, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, and Eternals (by themselves not exactly the most celebrated titles in the canon), but those same geeks must also be wholly ignorant about the movie itself (you can’t know who is in the cast or pay attention to any of the marketing). Simply knowing that Tim Blake Nelson is in it deflates any sense of mystery or suspense from the cinematic experience, and the full plot doesn’t offer any extra layers into which one can properly sink their teeth. Every story development is incredibly basic, a shallower version of something we’ve seen in a previous MCU film, spoiled in the trailers, or all of the above.

The action in Captain America: Brave New World is dulled by an over-reliance on visual effects.

When working with a script like this one, a tent pole blockbuster’s fallback for entertainment value should be high-powered action, but that’s another swing-and-a-miss for Captain America: Brave New World. There are a couple of hand-to-hand fights that give the stars opportunity to show off some skills, but there is also a notable lack of innovation or signature moments to provide unique flair (certainly nothing anywhere near the level of the jaw-dropping street battle between the titular characters in Captain America: The Winter Soldier). As unremarkable as they are, however, they at least feel somewhat real – which is more than can be said for the film’s bigger sequences.

What makes Sam Wilson different from Steve Rogers as Captain America is the fact that he is outfitted with a suit that allows him to fly, but his first solo movie not only lacks any interesting aerial cinematography, but feels far too artificial. Whether he’s dogfighting with some jets in a war zone or doing battle with Red Hulk in Washington D.C., photorealism proves not enough to add proper substance.

The characters and personalities are the highlights of Captain America: Brave New World.

The saving grace of Captain America: Brave New World is its characters: while one may not feel particularly hooked into the plot developments or the action, one at least doesn’t mind spending time with the protagonists. Anthony Mackie knows Sam Wilson perfectly at this point, and once again finds the right blend of affable, determined, and emotionally accessible. Harrison Ford gets to play new levels to Thaddeus Ross that William Hurt never got the opportunity to try. That MVP award, however, goes to Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres a.k.a. Falcon, who straps into a super suit for the first time and is a delight. As stale as the movie gets, Ramirez has a charisma that reminds audiences about the energy of the MCU with which fans originally fell in love.

Overall, Captain America: Brave New World is a film that significantly shakes my confidence in the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The canon hit lows in 2023 on both the big screen and the small with Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion, but with just a little over a year left until the arrival of the next Avengers blockbuster (namely Avengers: Doomsday), I was hopeful that the fourth Captain America movie would be able to set things on a solid path. It doesn’t. It’s so insistent on trying to recapture the MCU energy of the past that it fails to offer anything fresh, and it represents a wrong direction for the beloved franchise.