Captain America: Brave New World Review: A scattered film
The last film I watched with my dad and my best friend before I moved to a different part of the country was Captain America: Brave New World, and it was emotional for me. This isn't the movie I thought would join No Way Home as the only MCU film I saw in the theater twice, but it is what it is. Did this two-time watch end my movie-going with two of my most important people with a bang, or was it a disappointment? That's what I, Brighton Nelson, will be discussing in today's Reel Ranker review. Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you enjoy this article!
Let's start with the positives. First, this movie finally started connecting some dots for the MCU—and it acknowledged Eternals, which made me happy as an adamant defender of that flick. Seeing Sam as the full-force Captain America he deserves to be, leading the new Avengers team (but not the New Avengers...), and getting a sequel to The Incredible Hulk for once, while also dealing with Celestials and adamantium, was a delight. The scenes where he pilots a plane and an epic air battle breaks out over the Celestial were easily the movie's best action sequence—grandiose and exhilarating, almost like Star Wars in the best way. The initial hand-to-hand fight with Sidewinder's goons was awesome and brought some of The Winter Soldier's grit into the film. The Red Hulk destruction sequence was also a treat, especially after years of being starved of normal Hulk action.
The best bits of this movie actually are the scenes that were focused on the character drama. Like Black Widow, I feel this film underdelivered on satisfying superhero moments (we'll get there soon!), but it pleasantly surprised me with its beating heart. As someone who absolutely despised so many of the choices and underwhelming elements in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I expected this to continue the trend of preachiness, underdeveloped main characters, and cyclical annoyances. But this film improved on that show in every regard, especially for the protagonists.
Isaiah Bradley's involvement previously felt like the epitome of anti-nuance. The show treated him like a token Black character used to explore underdeveloped themes. Here, the themes are unpacked in a way that makes Isaiah feel human rather than a plot point. I loved his story here—it was perhaps the most surprising element and my second-favorite part of the movie.
But the best part of the film is Thunderbolt Ross's storyline. It's sad that William Hurt passed away and couldn't carry the film after years of phenomenal work, but Harrison Ford did a great job picking up where he left off. After being the villain of The Incredible Hulk and releasing The Abomination into the world (and randomly making him one of the most recurring characters in the Multiverse saga, which is kind of embarrassing), and after years of stopping superheroes for stupid government regulation reasons, he now successfully becomes the President of the United States.
His campaign is ridiculous, and I have no idea why anyone would vote for him (sorry, but Team Cap forever), but his story is awesome. Because he's dying, he teams up with The Leader and becomes the very "monster" he once sought to destroy. He was already a hypocrite, with Abomination holding a ton of power and criticizing superheroes for using theirs, but it's quite the journey to watch him keep descending. However, while the descent is super interesting, the film's heart is his redemption and reconciliation with his daughter. In fact, he and Isaiah are honestly the main characters and emotional cores of this movie more than Sam, which was interesting.
However, that leads to one of the film's biggest problems: it's not Sam's story. Having Isaiah and Thunderbolt Ross go through arcs was a great touch, but side characters' arcs shouldn't trump the lead. His arc in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was ridiculous as all hell, but somehow, they still couldn't surpass it in this film. While that show's arc felt like an unnecessary sidequest about the shield, they didn't do the setup needed to justify that arc not being the plot of this movie. If they'd merged the best parts of that show with this movie and cut out the rest, I'm sure this movie could've been a whole lot better.
Additionally, while the story about his sister's boat is one of the least interesting routes they could've taken to address the Blip—the Blip and the Multiverse have been used so poorly—at least we got some picture of Sam's life and personal stakes. With Steve, there were a lot of underlying layers with Peggy and being a man out of time. This movie forgets Sam is a layered man behind the shield. I love Anthony Mackie as Captain America, but his projects keep letting his character down. Still, I am putting a lot of faith in Doomsday to do him justice—Sam's character has always been fantastic under the Russos' direction, and I bet they're cooking up something unforgettable as they pivot him into a more pivotal role.
This movie also struggled with how many characters it had to balance. I love my boy Giancarlo Esposito, but his character felt pointless and like too much of a middleman. Or they needed to intrinsically tie him to The Leader or the Ross in a way that didn't make him a sidepiece. I mean, this movie literally took the entire Serpent Society and reduced them to a glorified cameo role taken down by a couple of punches and some questionable lines of Spanish. They're literally the equivalent of a bad tutorial in a video game, except this doesn't have tens of hours to make up for it.
If this film were a 24-episode TV show where Sidewinder and The Society could've got a six-episode arc, that would've been awesome... But no. They were just here to make Captain America look good because the main villain is way too powerful for him to take down with brute strength. I'm not saying The Society should've been the main antagonist of a film, but no beloved antagonist should have to be fourth-rung leftovers. It's better to leave them untouched and keep their reputation intact.
Another problem arises with the villains: two Hulk icons were put in this movie, finally giving me more of what I've wanted all these years as somebody who's always controversially preferred The Incredible Hulk more than the OG Iron Man. And both of them are completely wasted, like Sidewinder, but for very different reasons.
Thunderbolt Ross's Red Hulk is simply not the right antagonist for this movie. Like in the TV show, Sam wins by somehow convincing a radical that's been set in their ways for decades to flip a full 180 within five minutes of screen time. While Ross's scenes with his daughter and his continued descent into madness were my favorite part of the movie, that doesn't mean it felt earned. The Red Hulk sequences were awesome, but Sam can't win that fight by normal means, so it's not very interesting as a climax—this ain't Kill Bill: Volume 2. Red Hulk is a great antagonist for pretty much any hero with super strength or anything more powerful. I love subversions in my superhero climaxes, but they need to make sense.
As for the Leader? I was so hyped for that loose end to finally be tied up... but that's all this film treated him as. As-is, it feels like the most generic Marvel producers came together to try and write a genius when they couldn't think of a genius plan. Super smarts is a hard power to capture on-screen if you don't have super witty, grounded people writing the script. Here, his plan was a joke. He felt like a thumb-twiddling, bottom-of-the-barrel weekly cartoon villain with a "master plan" that seems like drivel a three-year-old would scribble out on a napkin with a purple mountain's majesty Crayola in an attempt to amuse themself.
This film even tried to directly mimic some of the beats of The Winter Soldier to "return to form," but it instead became like a parody of a better film. The grounded action, mind control, corporate espionage, and government elements here were all mediocre at best. While Isaiah's arc was important and awesome, it was so obvious it was mind control; we didn't need this subplot.
And... Why were Sabra and the Japanese sort of additional villains here? It just felt like they started throwing uninteresting things at the wall to check off plot beats from the comics in a truncated timeline. I'm not saying the actors did a horrible job with their characters, but they weren't given much time or good script beats to develop their characters well. It doesn't help that the non-Japanese people spoke horrendously pronounced Japanese (it's desu, not deshhhhhh), and the Japanese are the stupidest and most unlikely choice of any developed nation to be pulling such hijinks. We all know they just replaced China with Japan at the last minute to boost box office numbers—it's not like that means anything, because they cut Mackie out of the promotional materials there. The racist pandering and ridiculous race-swapping need to stop. We don't need some Flag Smashers situation here where the company is pretending to be morally gray when you're letting a culture get away with hateful beliefs instead of advocating for change with the power they hold.
The Reel Ranker Verdict
Reel or Unreel? - Unreel
The Reel Ranker Score: 49%
Letter Score: C
Star Ranking: 2.5 out of 5
Captain America: Brave New World is a significant improvement over The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, giving Isaiah Bradley a much more moving story and moving past the ridiculously boring "do I deserve the shield?" story—of course he deserved the shield! However, while Isaiah Bradley and Thunderbolt Ross have moving stories, and while there are some exhilarating action set pieces, the main protagonist and antagonists are sidelined in a convoluted story that feels more like the lows of Spider-Man 3 than the highs of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Interested in checking out some recent reviews for some other sci-fi, action, and superhero films? See them below!
Brighton Nelson
Brighton Nelson
Brighton Nelson
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