‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Review: Marvel Continues to Self-Perpetuate Their Own Impending Irrelevance [D+]

It’s an accepted fact that at this point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lifecycle, keeping up with the extended lore and returning characters means slogging through a mountain of homework. The cruel joke of Captain America: Brave New World is that you need to study multiple MCU projects that no one has any business remembering. Maybe it’s not so surprising that you’d need to be brushed up on the events of the nondescript Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or even the lackluster Eternals, but if you assumed that 2008’s The Incredible Hulk was a mostly nominal entry in the franchise—a slight black sheep—you have another thing coming. 

The sheer amount of peripheral knowledge required to fully grasp Brave New World epitomizes the post-Endgame quandary facing the MCU: it’s no longer enough to keep up with each successive theatrical release; you need a working knowledge of the entire multi-platform ecosystem, including a solid recollection of a forgettable film from 17 years ago. At this rate, it won’t be long before a crucial plot development is exclusive to a Marvel ride at Disney World.

But that’s all part and parcel of a franchise that sustains itself through self-mythologized iconography and the serotonin boost of recognizing familiar faces and imagery. At one point, this was novel. Now, it’s a tired routine that Brave New World leans on heavily, exacerbating the increasingly shapeless nature of Phase Five. This Julius Onah-directed film makes trifling gestures toward pushing the franchise into new territory, but ultimately falls back on its long-established conventions and safeguards. 

Conceptually, Brave New World positions itself somewhere between the dueling political intrigue of The Winter Soldier and Civil War, while also functioning as a stealth sequel to The Incredible Hulk. We pick up with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie)—now Captain America after inheriting the mantle from Steve Rogers—in Mexico, intercepting Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), an as-yet-unseen villain awkwardly shoehorned in to inject some extra last-minute drama into an otherwise frictionless film. This brief mission earns Sam and his allies—“Nu-Falcon” Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and “Old Captain America” Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), two characters you’ll have zero context for if you skipped the aforementioned Disney+ series—an invite to a White House soirée hosted by now-President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt). Despite his previous support of the Sokovia Accords regulating superheroes, Ross wants to discuss reassembling the Avengers.

That conversation is swiftly derailed when Ross becomes the target of an assassination attempt by none other than Isaiah, who has no memory of the incident by the time Sam catches up with him after his escape. Sensing foul play, Sam launches an investigation, while Ross cuts him out of further government involvement and instead focuses on delicate negotiations with world leaders regarding the “Celestial Mass” currently lodged in the Indian Ocean—that massive, humanoid structure from Eternals that’s been left to rot in the background ever since, and which is apparently full of Adamantium. The issue? An old adversary working behind the scenes to make Ross look like a fool on the world stage—an antagonist whose schemes will inevitably collide with Sam’s search for the truth.

This is all perfectly convoluted, which could bode well for the type of espionage-laden story of globe-spanning governmental intrigue the film attempts to define itself by. Unfortunately, as ever with the MCU, the film stops short of filmmaking that amplifies this broad signal toward an identifiable genre, cutting itself off at the knees to become more simple brand-augmenting fodder. Whereas Marvel once had a stranglehold on popular cinematic culture, pumping out film after film that were met with enough general public interest to convince you they were true events, they now can’t seem to get out of the rut that makes their new movies feel like inconvenient obligations. 

Brave New World offers little in the way of subversion or innovation—this is about as standard-issue MCU as it gets, made worse by the telltale unevenness of a film plagued by extensive reshoots. Narrative progression and basic scene staging are marred by reported production troubles, resulting in the usual awkward ADR and conspicuous green-screen work. Flat one-liners pepper the dialogue between action sequences that follow the usual formula: a little hand-to-hand combat here, some aerial dogfighting there, all staged with mechanical coverage. Quick cuts for close-quarters fights, a couple of obligatory long takes, a few slo-mo moments—you’ve got yourself a Marvel movie. 

It’s no shock that the marketing bungled the one surprise that Brave New World has to offer by making it the centerpiece of all the promotional materials: Ross eventually turns into Red Hulk to face off against Captain America. You’ve pretty much got the gist of this fight if you’ve seen any trailer for the film, so on top of its futile, boring plotting, the film feels like it builds to nothing. And even despite the self-sabotage, the climax is rushed and unsatisfying on its own accord, as the culmination of a dull story mixes with lousy CGI and the flat daytime color grading that’s a staple of the series.

Given its political theming, the screenplay (credited to 5 different writers on top of 3 story writers) makes wishy-washy attempts to speak to our current societal moment with a certain naivety that doesn’t suit the precariousness of our reality. Lines like, “If we can’t see the good in each other, we’ve already lost the fight,” reflect a well-meaning but hopelessly simplistic outlook, distilling the hotly-simmering cultural strife within America down to a treacly motivational quote. This is a franchise too corporate and risk-averse to engage meaningfully with real-world conflicts, further alienating itself from its ostensible genre experimentation with its weak commentary.
More broadly, Brave New World exemplifies the MCU’s continued floundering. For Marvel to recapture its former glory, it needs to break new ground, take risks, and embrace unexpected directions. For all its faults, the interconnected mega-franchise model was a unique cinematic experiment that cemented the MCU’s place in the cultural zeitgeist. But if Disney wants to replicate that success, it has to stop living in the past. Right now, Marvel seems to believe that chugging along with its worn-out formula constitutes its own “brave new world,” filling in the standard margins with B-heroes and villains to press forward. In reality, it’s just another recycled chapter in a 17-year-old saga, employing regurgitated assets with nothing new to explore.

Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios will release Captain America: Brave New World only in theaters on Friday, February 14.