After several underwhelming endeavors, the powers behind the MCU have realized that their content oversaturation was not appealing to audiences, but the content mill must go on in spite of the dwindling engagement, and content lists looking like Thanos snapped half of them out of existence before they even went into pre-production.
Anthony Mackie taking up the mantle as Captain America at the end of Avengers: Endgame felt earned, and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier showed promise, as Mackie’s Cap continued to reckon with the implications of being the poster boy for the American empire, finding his own way to navigate both Steve Rogers’ legacy and how to convey that the jingoistic title of the job does not define the character of the man holding the shield.
However, much like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier faced rewrites in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world at large has only grown more volatile since the 2021 series premiered, resulting in Mackie’s first solo feature as Cap being a rather underwhelming affair.
Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder is sidelined and reduced to Giancarlo Exposition, as his brief appearances serve little purpose in a performance that feels phoned in, albeit that may just be due to his role having been cut to ribbons in the editing room.
Similarly denied any meaningful character development, Shira Haas’s Ruth Bat-Seraph is never mentioned by her alias name Sabra – although her super suit is visible under her jacket in at least one scene – and she is instead rewritten as a former Black Widow, which does nothing but show the increasing levels of panic at MCU headquarters every time someone turned on the news during production.
As a result, rewrites and reshoots were commissioned to awkwardly tiptoe around the presence of an Israeli character, and this milquetoast approach just makes the character more controversial all around, as her fans will see it as erasure, whereas her critics will consider the retcon a lazy attempt to avoid the film being boycotted.
Clearly, there was no winning for Captain America: Brave New World with the MCU insisting on the latest film being merely pseudo-political when the character has always been inherently political.
As such, one must question what the point of making Captain America movies even is at this point, as any narrative becomes a liberal miasma falling over its own feet in order to not step on anyone’s toes, making it a directionless mess that fails to match previous efforts of both Mackie and Evans in terms of narrative quality, suspense, and action.
While Captain America: Brave New World is not as abysmal as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it is nonetheless among the messier productions from the otherwise successful MCU template.
Stylistically, the film draws significantly from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, which has some merit due to the increased presence of Thunderbolt Ross, but it ultimately feels like a baffling choice to let this connection inform the visuals and score to such an extent that both feel cheapened, resulting in something much less polished than the 2021 Disney+ series.
This also impacts the acting, as Harrison Ford’s take on Thunderbolt Ross is respectful of William Hurt’s portrayal of the character, but Ford’s performance is nonetheless unusually ham-fisted for the modern MCU, and the film’s main villain also feels like a throwback stock character in all the worst ways.
The action, while serviceable, does not cover any new ground in terms of choreography or cinematographic composition, making it unforgivably mundane for a superhero movie.
More than half a decade on from the pop culture behemoth that was Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios are still struggling to consistently engage audiences, and Captain America: Brave New World unfortunately only manages to qualify as a middle-of-road movie you can nod off to on the couch on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Verdict: 4 out of 10.
* * * * * *
Produced by Kevin Feige, Nate Moore
Based on Marvel Comics
Story by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson
Screenplay by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman,
Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz
Directed by Julius Onah
Starring Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas,
Carl Lumbly, Xosha Roquemore, Giancarlo Esposito,
Liv Tyler, Tim Blake Nelson, Harrison Ford
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