I Saw Captain America: Brave New World In Theaters, And It Made A Bold Change I Didn't Love

There are a slew of upcoming Marvel movies on the horizon, but the latest, Captain America: Brave New World, really introduced us to Anthony Mackie as our newest full-fledged hero. Reviews of the fourth Cap movie have been mixed, but among the pros are the fact the movie gave us a fun cast introduction and did so with a delightful 2-hour runtime and some other changes to the typical MCU format. One of these changes was a bold move that certainly made a statement; I’m just not sure I loved it.

I’ve been watching Marvel movies even before the studios’ acquisition by Disney. I grew up with them in the same way a lot of fans grew up with Star Wars or Harry Potter, and the one commonality every single one of these movies has had in common is the Marvel logo at the very beginning of the film, which has turned into an opening sequence in the MCU era.

This was conspicuously absent from Brave New World, with the new movie favoring a black and white logo instead of the colorful, character-filled kickoff. Unfortunately, I absolutely felt the absence of the modern era format as I dove into the film.

How Marvel Movies Have Changed Their Opening Crawl Over The Years

Now, to be clear, there have been some changes to the crawl at the beginning of plenty of Marvel films in the past. This has been going on before Disney bought Marvel, before Disney made a deal with Sony, and before Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox, thus combining superhero properties like Deadpool all more formally under one umbrella.

Over time, the studio has also switched from showing us a logo opening with a bunch of comic book highlights to an opening that’s shown off footage of MCU heroes. In 2019, when Captain Marvel came out, the logo at the beginning paid tribute to Stan Lee using a bunch of throwback press footage. When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever premiered in theaters, the opening logo paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman as the Panther mantle was being passed. (Though the Black Panther 2 ending also paid tribute to Boseman’s character in a different way.)

And, in several cases, we have gotten that Marvel introduction with different sorts of music. For example, Avengers: Endgame leaned into rock and roll and used “Dear Mr. Fantasy” instead of traditional orchestral music to set the vibe, and then cut to Iron Man playing a version of paper football with Nebula. In Deadpool & Wolverine, we got the traditional opener, but then Wade Wilson was singing “dun dun dun dun” over it before noting “that logo music just gets me.” I guess what I'm saying is, it is not uncommon for the movies to give us some element of personalization each time.

The color of the Marvel logos has changed before, as well, and given the events in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it’s not a huge surprise they were going to go with a more somber tone to kick off this latest flick.

There have been fun openers, end-of-an-era openers, sad openers, and poignant openers, and in this case director Julius Onah chose to dive in with little fanfare. This could be reflective of Sam Wilson’s journey as a more grounded hero. There were plenty of jokes in the movie about how Sam “should have” taken the super serum like the Cap before him, but without giving away major spoilers about the Brave New World ending, ultimately he got to a good place with his hero identity by the end of the film.

Whatever reason Marvel had for changing the opening, we haven’t gotten a good answer yet, and while I’m all for working toward a new era of Marvel with movies like Brave New World and more Marvel movies coming in order like the upcoming Thunderbolts* and enthusiasm-inducing Fantastic Four: First Steps, I do think maintaining some threads between movies is necessary to keeping fans engaged.

To me, the Marvel opening sequence is something that efficiently did that and led to positive talking points in a way Brave New World's opening didn't. I’m someone who really wants to buy into Phase 5 and Phase 6, yet I’m finding fewer and fewer reasons to stay on board as a fan, and this opening change, while it may feel minor to some, was just another bold decision that didn’t really play perfectly for me. Bring back the colorful opener, please.