Crap Time to be Cap
Marvel’s brave new world of Phase Five is still wobbling.
Captain America: Brave New World
Director: Julius Onah • Writers: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Tim Blake Nelson
USA • 1hr 58mins
Opens Hong Kong Feb 12 • IIA
Grade: C+
Short version: Captain America: Brave New World is about a delicately orange-tinged but firmly red, vindictive American president who goes bonkers and destroys the White House.
No way does MCU godhead Kevin Feige know this film will be yet another Trump allegory when he greenlights it back in 2021. But here we are and there it is, and what a time for a new Captain America to land. Regardless of how much Felon and F*Elon fans would prefer Cap leaned into the American hegemony ideals of the original 1940s comics, the films have tried to be more even-handed and less offensively jingoistic for lucrative foreign markets. But Marvel is still staring down the barrel of superhero fatigue despite Deadpool & Wolverine’s returns, and star Anthony Mackie is going to have to fend off Woke Cap shrieking (starting in 3… 2…) despite the fact that Disney has started rolling back its DEI initiatives. It seems even Marvel is out to sabotage him, muddying the waters by dangling the return of Chris Evans to the MCU for…checks notes… 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday. It’s a crap time to be an Avenger.
It’s especially hard when the character you’re playing has lost the bulk of his moral and cultural authority by being so hard to separate from the Bigot is the New Black vibe coming from, well, America. Needless to say director Onah Luce (the messy The Cloverfield Paradox) has his work cut out for him, and Feige, Disney, and the army of writers that seem to have stitched together a few lost episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Solider for a feature don’t do him any favours.
Now that’s fantasy
It should be noted that Mackie is not the problem with Brave New World. He’s stupidly charismatic and he juices the dynamic between himself and Carl Lumbly’s Korean War vet and human guinea pig Isaiah Bradley and Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres, and has always knocked it out of the park with Sebastian Stan (sorry, Evans) as Bucky Barnes (TWS). Much of what works about the film and the little subtext it dares suggest can be laid firmly at his feet. The relatively dull low stakes – global warfare instead of a cosmic extinction event – are a balm to laser beam storytelling of past films, and jettisoning their alleged “comedy” to dial the quips-per-minute volume way, way, way down was a wise choice.
Brave New World follows the dreadful Quantumania, the keener Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Marvels and the smug Deadpool & Wolverine, so to call it low-stakes and a little on the dull side is actually a compliment. Sam Wilson (Mackie) is going about his business as Cap, aided in his missions by Torres, who’s angling to take over the empty Falcon gig. They get a thingamajigger from a mercenary type, Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito, wasted), on orders of President Thaddeus Ross (second term POTUS Harrison Ford), which has some doohickey in it he’ll use to kickstart talks about divvying up a resource-rich island that popped out of the ocean in Eternals. But mad scientist Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), who got some of Bruce Banner’s gamma-fied blood back in The Incredible Hulk, hatches a plot to provoke Japanese Prime Minister Ozaki (Shogun’s Takehiro Hira) into war and expose Ross for the Red Hulk he truly is.
Some things never change in the MCU, so the building blocks establishing the next chapter in the saga (the Multiverse Saga) are plentiful, if less aggressively signposted than expected (Sterns teases “they’re coming” from his cushy spot in The Raft), but as usual the focus is down the road – not on the road right in front of it. The cobbled together script has scant consideration for previous drafts and even less for efficiency: Sidewinder? Don’t need him. Shira Haas’s security chief Ruth Bat-Seraph and Xosha Roquemore’s Secret Service agent Leila Taylor? Consolidate them and give one of them something substantial to do. The requisite rushed VFX are better this time – probably due to the predominantly grounded military action – but the pictures are frequently muddy and blurry looking. Look at that drive to the Echo One site. Da fuq? The star wattage here comes courtesy of Ford, replacing William Hurt (RIP) and leaning more into gruff righteousness – his brand – rather than sinister ambiguity. That’s a net loss. So it all adds up to an unremarkable episode that will be essential viewing for purists and a very pricey B movie for everyone else. If there is anyone else. And it’s still better than The Marvels.