‘Captain America: Brave New World’ never quite takes flight
Instead of a Sam Wilson solo film, we get a weird sequel to one of Marvel's most forgotten properties
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I’ve been rooting for Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson for over a decade now. I love how he’s deployed in the soulful love interest role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I smile when he pops up as a supportive bestie in Age of Ultron, Civil War, and Infinity War. And I still remember the edge-of-my-seat excitement of realizing that Endgame was going to have Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers pass the Captain America shield over to Sam. The character is introduced as a playful yet empathetic Air Force veteran who now runs a VA support group, and that felt like the perfect energy to bring the classic World War II era superhero into the 21st century.
Be careful what you wish for, though, I guess. Since receiving that shield, Mackie has now starred in two separate projects designed to officially launch him as the new Captain America—the six-episode Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in 2021 and now his first big screen outing, Captain America: Brave New World, which hits theaters this weekend. Instead of proudly announcing his Cap as the new leading man of the MCU, however, both have struggled to make the case for their own existence.
Perhaps the biggest fundamental problem was just the choice to spread Sam’s Cap origin story across two different mediums. FATWS felt like it wanted to leave Sam’s first real Captain America story for the big screen and therefore started with him turning down the shield and returning to his status as the more minor hero, Falcon. The rest of the show then charted his somewhat meandering, occasionally moving reckoning with whether he could live up to Steve’s legacy and what it would mean for a Black man to take on the Captain America mantle. It was an arc that had its high points, but also felt like it was largely filling for time until Mackie’s Cap could finally make his big screen debut.
Now that that big screen debut is here, however, it feels held back by the show. We start in media res, with Sam as an active, accepted Captain America—a choice that follows on from the plot threads of the TV show but robs Sam of the sort of origin story that makes us fall in love with superheroes in the first place. Instead of feeling like the big, splashy debut of a new era for the MCU, Brave New World feels like the subpar sequel to a better movie that doesn’t actually exist.
It's a shame because if you combined the best parts of FATWS and the best parts of Brave New World, you could have a pretty great Cap 2.0 origin story. At its best, FATWS tackled race, representation, and American history in a way that felt like a meaningful use of comic book metaphors and allegories. Brave New World, meanwhile, finds some juice by contrasting Sam with his star-spangled predecessor. Where Steve was a selfless solider willing to fight for what’s right, Sam brings the perspective of a counselor who’d rather peacefully resolve a conflict than fight through it at all—a nice bit of character work that ties back to his intro in Winter Soldier.
The trouble is, Sam isn’t really allowed to be the sole star of the show in either property. FATWS had him split his screentime with Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in a convoluted, overstuffed plot with way too many villains and deeply confusing morality. Now Brave New World has him split his screentime with Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross in a convoluted, overstuffed plot with way too many villains and deeply confusing morality. In both cases, Sam winds up feeling incidental to his own story. And that’s hardly the way to launch a new franchise star.
It's frustrating because Mackie has the charisma and gravitas for the role. And Brave New World’s best action setpiece—an aerial dogfight over the ocean—even manages to combine his old wings and new shield in a way that looks genuinely cool and innovative, something the show didn’t convince me was possible. Yet the film constantly pushes Sam out of center frame to focus on other, more laborious plot aims, including inexplicably serving as a direct sequel to the all-but-forgotten 2008 film The Incredible Hulk, in which Edward Norton briefly played the MCU’s Bruce Banner before Mark Ruffalo took over the role.
In case that isn’t confusing enough, there’s another casting swap at play. Ford steps into the role that William Hurt originated in The Incredible Hulk and continued to play across four more MCU appearances until his death in 2022. Elsewhere, Tim Blake Nelson is back for the first time since 2008 to follow-up on the potential villain role teased at the end of The Incredible Hulk. Plus a few supporting players from FATWS are inelegantly thrown back into the mix with very little reintroduction, including aging super solider Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and plucky sidekick Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). Although that’s at least better than the brand-new characters who pop up as if we’re already supposed to know who they are, like Shira Haas’ mysterious security agent Ruth Bat-Seraph.
Even as someone deeply steeped in Marvel, I found it all incredibly confusing, although, in this case, maybe knowing less about what you’re missing would actually be beneficial. Still, this is a movie that wants to be about shared histories, painful pasts, second chances, and redemption arcs, all dressed up in a twisty, turny Manchurian Candidate-style political thriller package. And that’s just a lot to follow when you’re also trying to remember who the hell Dr. Samuel Sterns is and what kind of role he played in The Incredible Hulk.
Indeed, Brave New World had an infamously tumultuous reshoot process in which massive swatches of the film were reworked and patched together. And you can definitely feel that in the choppy editing and convoluted, exposition-filled plotting. (Giancarlo Esposito plays a semi-major antagonist and didn’t even join the film until reshoots.) To its credit, however, I will say that watching it didn’t make me angry like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or even the Black Widow movie did.
Brave New World is more of a forgettable missed opportunity than a true boondoggle. It could easily be another imperfect installment of the FATWS series, only with Harrison Ford running around giving a weirdly committed performance as a peace-minded President of the United States. The action is lackluster, the themes are muddled, and the character work is lacking. But the scale feels right for a Captain America film and there’s at least some semblance of real-world weight here, unlike in the goopy, stakes-less Deadpool & Wolverine. In the few moments the movie slows down enough to offer something resembling a genuine character scene, there’s some nice sparky chemistry between Mackie, Lumbly, and Ramirez. And the third act finally locks into an interesting idea about what it’s like for Sam to be a Captain America who isn’t a super soldier—even if it feels like that probably should’ve been the central theme of the movie from the beginning.
It's just when you compare all that to the crisp action, bold themes, and memorable character work of Captain America: The Winter Solider, you realize just how far the MCU has fallen lately. Where Marvel once offered a colorful superhero playground filled with endless possibility, it all kind of feels like an obligation now. These movies are more focused on calling back to the past and hinting towards the future than they are simply existing in the present. And that makes so many of them feel like disposal entertainment at best and sand slipping through your fingers at worst. If Steve Rogers’ heroic ethos can be summed up in his iconic down-on-his-luck mantra, “I can do this all day,” Sam Wilson gets his own fitting catchphrase in Brave New World. “Let’s get this over with,” he sighs when pushed to the ground, “I’ve got shit to do today.”
Grade: C
Thanks for this! "Where Marvel once offered a colorful superhero playground filled with endless possibility, it all kind of feels like an obligation now." I felt this. It does make me sad. I just don't have the joyful anticipation nor the excitement that I had with precious movies.
Finally watched this in Disney+ because I am one of those people killing the movie theater experience. I actually did not find it confusing at all. Of course, I have also read thousands of comic books, so that could have something to do with it.
I am not opining on the overall quality yet. I want to sit with it for a bit, but I did like it. If I paid $12 for a theater ticket, my opinion might change.