In the nearly six years since Steve Rogers hung up his shield and bestowed the mantel of Captain America onto Sam Wilson, Marvel fans have been keen to see how the two would differentiate themselves.
Streaming service Disney+ gave audiences a taste with the miniseries Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which received good reviews from critics and audiences alike, but people wanted to see Wilson on the big screen.
Finally, there is a new Captain America movie featuring a new Captain America, with Wilson being played once again by Anthony Mackie.
Captain America: Brave New World positions itself as a political thriller in the style of the vastly superior Captain America: The Winter Soldier, not realising the 2014 offering into the franchise was one-of-a-kind.
In this film, President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) is attempting to ratify a peace treaty between Japan, India, France, and the United States, who are all seeking to control Celestial Island and its adamantium reserves.
The one revolutionary thing Brave New World does is finally acknowledge The Eternals after five years of being ignored by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) at large.
In the middle of a presentation, the president gets shot at by assailants who appear to be activated by suddenly audible music of unknown, sinister origin.
He lives but there is more to destabilising a nation than just taking out the head of the government.
What follows ostensibly has twists, turns, and reveals, but they are so by the numbers the viewers probably won’t be engaged enough with the film to expend energy predicting what is going to happen next, content in the knowledge the guess would likely be correct.
There are some fascinating elements at play here, mainly the decision to resurrect old characters as Ross and the villain are part of the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk, with Ford taking over the role from William Hurt, who died in 2022.
Viewers beware–seeing this movie without first doing the required watching of all other Captain America films, the third and fourth Avengers film, and, chiefly, Falcon and the Winter Soldier will like walking into a film in the third act.
While technically it is an MCU picture, it has never felt like one or widely been accepted as one, a feeling exacerbated when Mark Ruffalo was announced over Edward Norton (Bruce Banner in the 2008 film) to be in The Avengers.
The road to Brave New World was not a smooth one, the production was delayed numerous times, first being slated for a May 2024 release but finally being spat out into cinemas in February 2025.
Rumours of extensive reshoots and a massive budget blowout have surrounded the film since before its original release date, with star Mackie claiming the reshoots did not substantially change the movie
Co-star Tim Blake Nelson, the actor who plays villain Samuel Sterns, disagreed, saying in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2024 he had shot the film twice.
“I did it originally a year ago and then we came back and redid a lot of it and the beginning of this summer,” he said.
Furthermore, there are claims the reshoots introduced new super-villains and potentially changed the ending as leaked images showed President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) dead—something which was changed after the assassination attempt on then US-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
All this casts doubt on Mackie’s claim in an interview with Empire there was no “retooling or remaking.”
There are things in the trailers not present in the film, making what is presented on the big screen more interesting in a negative way, as, interestingly, the trailer released by Marvel Entertainment in November 2024 does seem to show a military funeral.
Spoiler alert—no one in the film who would be eligible for such a funeral actually dies.
The film viewers get to see and, critically, pay for, is milquetoast cinema–rote, reliable, uninteresting, unoffensive, teetering on boring even as strobe lights get the more photosensitive in the audience itching more for the end credits than they already were.
One thing comes to mind when watching this movie: Harry Styles’ voice ringing out in apparent defence of his film Don’t Worry, Darling: “this is a movie that feels like a movie.”
We all know how that turned out.
Captain America: Brave New World is rated M and is in cinemas now.