Captain America: Brave New World (2025)


Starring: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Giancarlo Esposito et al.

Directed By: Julius Onah

Where It’s Available: Streaming internationally on Disney-+

It’s funny - the fourth Captain America mainline film in the MCU (and first since Anthony Mackie took the shield from Chris Evans) ends up playing like a spinoff sequel to two of the franchise’s lesser-loved products - The Incredible Hulk and The Eternals. Sometimes it works. Sometimes… the film can be a tad dumb and borderline incoherent. In all its one of the most uneven MCU films in the 17 (Jesus) years the venerable franchise is around. But even a ‘bad’ MCU film still has some entertainment value.

The film opens with newly-anointed Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) raiding a compound in Mexico to retrieve… something. Basically it’s just a cool action set piece to show off Cap’s new moves with the shield and his now-vibranium-infused wings - and also to give the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) a chance to suit up onscreen for the first time (he was introduced in the MCU d+ series ‘Captain America and the Winter Soldier’, but this is his first time wearing the wings). They fight a bunch of mooks led by Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), get back the McGuffin and head back to America. It’s a pretty bog-standard setup. That’s when the film starts to hiccup a bit - they meet up with the original super soldier first introduced in the D+ series, Carl Lumbly, and they go for a dinner a the White House. Shit goes sideways and President Ross (yes, that Ross, though he’s now played by Harrison Ford because in the sixteen years since Incredible Hulk we’ve gotten much bigger budgets) is nearly assassinated and Cap needs to go off-book to find out why. Without going into too much detail, it’s pretty obvious the film is stretching for the worldwide-potboiler energy that Winter Soldier had (still one of the five best MCU films), but it just doesn’t quite catch the vibe. It’s also not BAD, by any stretch… it’s just… ‘there’.

Anyway - turns out this whole thing is cooked behind the scenes by one Samuel Sterns (remember him?) who is now mutated and super smart. There’s a big Donnybrook at the Celestial island (remember that?) and everything kinda comes to a head when President Ross gets a little too angry and becomes Red Hulk (something that if the advertising had NOT shown I feel would’ve been much more fun, but anyway) and then Cap and Big Red scrap … and then it’s done. To be frank, the last act of this film feels like a fever dream. Just a constant barrage of gobbledygook and fan service that, as the bard says, is full of sound and fury - signifying nothing.

The Good: The performances are pretty decent overall - Anthony Mackie’s Cap is a good leading man and Harrison Ford at the very least doesn’t feel like he’s mailing it in. But the real surprise is Shira Haas as newcomer ‘Sabra’ (an ex-Black Widow who was a personal security attaché for the president). She stands five foot nothing but still manages to exude badassery and I am desperately hoping this isn’t the last we see of her in the MCU.

The Bad: There’s a scene with cherry blossoms in the final act that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in the 20+ MCU films. It was intended to be a strong emotional beat, but it fell flatter than a pancake that got stomped on by Red Hulk.

The Ugly: Five different writers were credited in this movie, which results in it feeling like three separate films all hastily pasted together (which given what we’ve heard about reshoots, etc, probably isn’t far removed from reality). I feel like at least one of these films could have been legitimately *good*. Instead we got this.

Is It Kid-Friendly?: Sure, as much as any MCU film is. I think I counted two ‘shits’ and by now you know what to expect. It’s comic book violence, but no gore. This isn’t Deadpool.

Captain America: Brave New World is… fine. It’s fine. Really. It’s not the worst way to spend two hours - But it’s definitely in the bottom-five of MCU films. While it’s great that the franchise finally seemed to embrace the two red-headed stepchildren of the series (Eternals and Incredible Hulk) I can’t help but feel another actual CAPTAIN AMERICA movie might have been a better use of our time. 5.5/10

Comments

  1. QuizMasterJune 24, 2025 at 12:01 AM

    5.5, Oof! I'm the one person who manages to not see any trailers, reveals.... movie posters, apparently. And yeah, going in blind made the stuff towards the end way, way cooler.

    ReplyDelete

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