Review: Captain America: Brave New World

Posted by: Matthew Ardill  •  February 15, 2025 @ 8:29pm

Filed under: Reviews

One of the interesting strengths of Captain America's earlier incarnations was the tonal shift film to film. First Avenger was a heroic war drama; Winter Soldier was a tight psychological drama in the vein of Three Days of the Condor; while Civil War was a bit of a prelude to the next Avengers film setting up the conflicted state, so it was a bit more like the mainline MCU films that had emerged in the wake of The Avengers, the tone flatter and in the "house style".

The latest MCU film, Captain America: Brave New World, went through a lot of reworking to get it where it was. Originally called New World Order, this was a bit problematic, especially since they decided to include Sabra (played by Shira Haas), an Israeli superhero. So for this (and the fact the world is in the depths of a conspiracy-laden hellscape of a timeline) the name changed. So did Sabra's background – while still being Israeli, she was no longer an agent of said government but a victim of the Red Room program. This isn't the only change; there are lots of little changes, and this is where the problem with the film comes in.

We are greeted with a tight first act. We establish the characters quickly, building out the new status quo for Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick Joaquin (Danny Ramirez), the new Falcon (who's been simmering in the wings since the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier). We quickly establish the stakes with something that actually gives The Eternals some consequence (though to be fair, most of the online discourse called this for a while) and we set up Thadius Ross' new status (and Harrison Ford replacing William Hurt). We have a brisk pace paying off some elements that go back to Ang Lee's Hulk film and it feels good, there's a degree of real mystery, and Giancarlo Esposito's Sidewinder is a great foil with serious menace. This is of course immediately destroyed once the veil is slightly pulled back. The mystery is writ large and these promising baddies are now replaced with some technobabble generic bad guy nonsense.

Tim Blake Nelson does a great job as Samuel Stern's, but the pressure just isn't there. It quickly turns into a greatest hits of "blow stuff up", ending in "daddy issue" nonsense (literally a daddy having issues). This could have been so much more, and while I'm not a huge fan of fan service, there were moments that were missing. Seeing Ford as the President, he never once says "get off my damned [insert thing here]", which would have been a fun little meta joke that wouldn't have hurt anything. We never get the iconic name of Sterns' villain identity, and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Copperhead is a toss away. This is a reasonably-sized baddie in the comics, a medium player but someone who deserves some road to play, and it's just a one and done fight baddie. Even the post credits shtick feels tacked on and a waste.

If you've been following the MCU by now, this is a paint by numbers affair. We have the plot beats and the tag to drive the narrative forward. Next we have Thunderbolts*, followed by The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Technically it was supposed to be Blade next, but that got pulled. We're instead getting Avengers: Doomsday, followed by a new Spider-Man film, plus an unnamed filmed (rumored to be Doctor Strange 3), and wrapping up with Avengers: Secret Wars, which will result in a hard reboot with a clean fresh start. This really feels like an effort to tie up loose ends prior to the reset button being pressed.

The most depressing part is the film did not have to be this way. Disney and Marvel have the Disney+ platform and this would have been the perfect fit to drop in as a mini-series. Extend the initial mystery out another hour or hour and a half, make the reveal more gradual, raise the stakes that little bit more, and we'd have had some real emotional pay off. We'd get to see the journey these characters were on. This was supposed to be a redemption story for one of the first characters from the MCU, and it felt like a waste. It was also supposed to be a redemption for Carl Lumbly's Isaiah Bradley, but it felt rushed and inconsequential. And it was supposed to be Sam Wilson really assuming his role as the leader of the Avengers to come, and it felt like an afterthought.

This isn't a bad movie – it's simply a movie that is. It had moments, a few laughs, a few wow-factor shots, and some honestly good fight choreography (there's a few close quarter fights that are just a great watch with minimal cutting and some smooth choreography that actually informs the state of the character). The cast deserved better and we deserved better as an audience. The good news is this feels like a formality, closing the loop, as the next big film will be embracing the First Family's legacy with some real hardcore Kirby and Syd Mead-inspired visuals, and I believe some really big twists that they've been hiding (but I'll keep those thoughts to myself for now).

Tags: Marvel, Captain America: Brave New World, Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Tim Blake Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Captain America

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