PG-13 | starring Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Carl Lumbly, Danny Ramirez, Tim Blake Nelson | directed by Julius Onah | 2 1/2 out of 5 stars |
2025 Sequelfest # 2
Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to trip over itself with Captain America: Brave New World, a movie that should have been an event that directly picked up from the ending of Endgame and reset the table. After several attempts to set up new heroes to replace the Avengers (The Marvels, Eternals, Shang-Chi, Ironheart), the return of Sam Wilson to continue the Captain America legacy should have been a water-shed film in this franchise to connect the past with the future, to build off of the original heroes in a world that hasn’t come to life since the events of Endgame.
Like its previous series high, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Brave New World is another espionage film, another trip to the well of creating a Manchurian Candidate story in the superhero universe. Now partnered with a new Falcon (Danny Ramirez), Captain America (Anthony Mackie) is invited to the White House to meet new president Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) when a bunch of sleeper agents are activated, attempt to target the president and send Sam on the run to clear the name of his friend, Isaiah (Carl Lumbly, with a movie’s worth of backstory) and uncover the true assassin.
This movie is like a train station with plot points and characters pulling in and out at all times from other marvel properties. It’s a heavy sequel to the mostly dismissed 2008 The Incredible Hulk film, a sequel to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series and it borrows heavily from the worlds created by Winter Soldier, Black Panther and The Eternals with the movie’s best action scene centered around but not really incorporating the Celestial poking out of the ocean from The Eternals. This is the kind of movie that rushes through everything it reveals to get to the next reveal. Nothing about it is built as a stand-alone film, you have to have seen every part that makes it up to make any sense of it – and that’s it’s biggest problem and indeed the biggest problem with phase 4 of the MCU. All of these movies are sequels to something astonishing and wondrous that happened in previous films. They build on that so they don’t have to re-explain any of it – and from a logcal in-world standpoint, why should they? I would argue at this point it might be worth stopping and explaining some of it. Because without that, these movies no longer have any wonder to them, no longer have the fun of discovery. When everything is fantastical and outrageous and aliens and insane technology is everywhere, nothing is fantastical and outrageous. Nothing is wondrous.
That’s the problem this entire franchise has written itself into.
For example, in this movie it is taken for granted that someone might tap into your phone, flash some lights and instantly hypnotize you into turning into an assassin. In a previous Marvel movie, when we were setting up this world, that technology would have been a fully fleshed out part of the entire story. It would be such a big plot point that it might even be hijacked by the heroes and turned back on the villain in the finale. Now you’re hypnotized! In Brave New World it’s nothing. There is no world building to be done because it’s been done in previous movies. Which in-universe makes sense, but it does this over and over with everything. When everything is like that nothing has any impact. Tim Blake Nelson, reprising his role from Incredible Hulk, now with wild big brain makeup, looks like he’d be our antagonist, is introduced way too casually, way too early, and then means nothing in a race to get to the film’s underwhelming, given-away-in-the-promos grand finale involving a Hulk stomping around Washington, D.C. Unlike the visceral fights that the Russo Brothers brought to Winter Soldier, nothing in Brave New World has any weight or comes with any cost, and its grand finale looks like something re-shot in front of a green screen. I was floored by how cheap and rushed this movie looked.
Brave New World’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t stand on its own. It doesn’t believe in itself enough to justify its own existence. There is no passion here, no filmmaking spark. It’s just another episode in the Captain America saga that you can skip – until it is retconned in some future movie to be essential viewing for that movie. That’s not just part of the viewing experience though, the movie is made with that attitude, that nothing in it matters and that it’s just a stepping-stone to something else. Everything in it is rushed, cheap, thoughtless, uncreative. It’s a big screen effort from the director of the disappointing Cloverfield Paradox in just the latest example of Marvel hiring indie filmmakers and assuming everyone has the knack for putting together a big crowd-pleasing blockbuster. It’s not a skill, anyone can do it. Filmmaker mix and match.
The results is predictable. This is an action movie that isn’t fun or thrilling, without a single clever or exciting set piece and nothing set up and paid off story-wise. It’s all just content. It’s a New World alright, and in the Marvel Universe we’ve seen so many wild oddities, creatures, aliens, magic and feats of heroism that nothing surprises and generates wonder anymore. That’s a problem.