‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Review: A Major Disappointment

Searching for a word to best describe Captain America: Brave New World, the one that keeps coming to mind is inconsistent. Some of the hand-to-hand fighting is way above average for a Marvel film; some of the green screen backgrounds and visual effects are about as clunky as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever produced. Sometimes characters from elsewhere in the MCU pop up in unexpected places, and the film makes no attempt to explain who they are or what they are doing; at other times the dialogue is so expository and blunt it feels like the verbal equivalent of getting pummeled in the face by a Red Hulk. For every good moment, there’s a bad one. Or two.

Pretty much all of the good moments feature Anthony Mackie as Marvel’s new Captain America. Following the events of Avengers: Endgame and The Falcon & the Winter Soldier, Mackie’s paratrooper turned social worker turned superhero Sam Wilson has been promoted to captain (of America), which puts him into conflict with another longtime Marvel character sporting a new job title. “Thunderbolt” Ross, previously known as the obsessive general who hunted the Hulk, is now the MCU’s President of the United States (and played by Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt in the role).

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As Marvel fans know, Ross and Captain America have clashed in the past. (As Marvel fans also know, the comic-book version of Ross has a nasty habit of occasionally turning into a rampaging monster.) As President, Ross wants Sam’s help to preserve an all-important international treaty over the rights to the Celestial that emerged from beneath the Indian Ocean in Eternals and apparently contains priceless minerals. (Fair warning: If this is the first you’re hearing about this Celestial Island, you may occasionally be lost watching Brave New World.)

No sooner has Ross recruited Captain America than the President is attacked — in the White House no less — under circumstances that suggest a massive conspiracy. It’s up to Sam and his partner, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), who has adopted Sam’s old costumed alter ego as the Falcon, to find the mastermind behind the assassination attempt before he can destabilize the treaty and possibly the entire world.

That setup (which is credited to five different writers) sends the heroes off on a wild goose chase for clues that is manic, confusing, and a little dumb. It contains echoes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in its vague mimicry of ’70s paranoid thrillers, but Brave New World’s insistence on avoiding any possible hot-button political issue or real-world resonance mean its mystery and ultimate villain can’t have any satirical bite whatsoever. That villain is largely a dramatic bust, and boasts powers that are seemingly limitless, which means he is often impossible to stop — until, of course, the script demands they become impossibly easy to stop.

Some of my frustrations with Brave New World’s murky plot were mitigated by the fact that I liked watching Anthony Mackie try to fly and punch his way through it. He makes a very good Captain America: Charming, charismatic, strong, yet empathetic. (The film makes smart use of Sam’s background as a trauma counselor.) He’s witty when he needs to be and convincingly stoic at other points. He carries himself like a hero.

Sam does not get much of a character arc or a goal beyond exonerating an imprisoned friend, but there is a small but valuable subplot about the fact that unlike Chris Evans’ Captain America, Anthony Mackie’s does not have super powers. He’s got Cap’s shield and an impressive jetpack and wings, but strip those things away from him and he’s a vulnerable, flesh-and-blood human being. In Brave New World he gets stabbed, shot, and pummeled. He always gets back up. Although he doesn’t use Steve Rogers’ old “I could do this all day” catchphrase, he shares his spirit of quiet determination.

Without special powers, Sam mostly fights his enemies the old fashioned way; there are some sequences that involve him cutting cars in half with his high-tech wings or zooming away from fighter jets, but most of the action — and all of the best action — involves hand-to-hand fights with solid choreography and elaborate MMA-style throws and takedowns. I suspect some audience members may question whether a dude with a shield and metal wings could go toe-to-toe with a Red Hulk, but I’ll take a more human hero in my Marvel movie — one who is overmatched by more powerful foes but never gives up — any day of the week, and twice on Free Comic Book Day.

Ford’s transformation into the Red Hulk is good for a few chuckles — he really goes for it, which is fun to watch — and the obligatory teases of future Marvel adventures are as promising as they‘ve been in several years. They also allude to movies I would rather have watched than Brave New World, which is surely the weakest Captain America to date, even if its Captain America shows a lot of promise. Like I said: Inconsistent.

Additional Thoughts:

-Speaking of the Red Hulk, with his role, along with appearances from Tim Blake Nelson and Liv Tyler, Brave New World often feels more like a sequel to The Incredible Hulk than to Captain America: Civil War, or even The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Why is a Captain America movie so obsessed with a Hulk film that nobody likes that came out 15 years ago? Isn’t it supposed to be about a brave new world?

RATING: 5/10