Marvel Fatigue has been a thing long enough that we’re now experiencing “Marvel Fatigue Fatigue,” in that critics and lapsed fans like myself are not only tired of Marvel movies, we’re tired of complaining about them. I’d hoped—though not expected—that Captain America: Brave New World might shake me from my Marvel malaise. After all, it’s been nearly a decade since the last film installment in the Cap franchise, and Brave New World is the first film in which the former Falcon, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), gets to play the lead as the new Captain. This could have been a refreshing new start, or perhaps a welcome return of the superhero/airport-bookstore-political-thriller mashups that set the latter Cap films apart from the rest of the Marvel catalog. Instead, Brave New World—directed by Julius Onah and written by five people—doesn’t really feel like anything. Not particularly good or bad, it is “another Marvel movie”—certainly not the cure to what’s been ailing the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Endgame.
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CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD ★1/2 (1.5/4 stars) |
In Brave New World, Sam Wilson is now years into his tenure as the new Captain America, a superhero who also functions as an agent of the United States government. Cap expects his job to get more difficult when recurring Marvel antagonist General Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) is elected President. However, the usually bull-headed Ross claims he’s turned over a new leaf and wants to work together to help bring some hope and stability to a country that faces a new blockbuster movie apocalypse about every three months. A figure from Ross’ past (Tim Blake Nelson) has other plans, and is scheming to expose the President’s worst sins and poison his legacy—at the expense of a lot of innocent lives, of course. Cap and his new Falcon sidekick J,oaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), must unravel the villain’s plot while trying to determine who they can trust, doing a lot of flying, shooting, kicking and punching along the way.
Marvel movies tend to be a lot more complicated than they are complex, with busy plotting that incorporates a lot of distinct action sequences and a bajillion characters whose mere appearance is a thrill to longtime comics fans. By comparison, Brave New World is pretty straightforward, and in a kinda-sorta-political thriller, that’s not a positive. Every character in the film is more or less who they appear to be and their motivations are never in question. There are few twists in the narrative and Marvel has made the biggest one into the centerpiece of the film’s marketing, so there are practically no surprises.
Brave New World doesn’t excel as an action movie, either, offering entirely adequate fight sequences that scale at a reasonable pace from practical beat-em-ups to effects-driven super brawls. They’re all coherent, but not terribly imaginative. It doesn’t help that the new Cap, who wears a new version of his old Falcon wings and the classic metal frisbee shield, has a wingman who is merely a lesser version of himself. As Falcon, Sam Wilson provided a contrast to the first Captain America’s grounded offense, expanding the canvas of an action scene. But even as Cap, Sam is still flying around, and his sidekick is literally wearing his hand-me-downs, which brings nothing new to the table.
So much about the film is merely functional. There’s nothing noteworthy about the visual language, cinematography, or design of anything. The dialogue has a few dashes of spice and good-humored jabs between Sam Wilson and The Forgotten Captain, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), but the rest is either bland exposition or truly cringey, faux-witty banter that barely meets the standards of a Fast & Furious movie. If you were to take a shot every time a character in Brave New World responds to some new development with “Oh, shit!” you would have to have your stomach pumped.
One gets the sense that Brave New World plays it safe because, unlike during its boom in the 2010s, Marvel isn’t currently in a position to take big risks. Or, perhaps, there’s a worry that Anthony Mackie’s first film appearance as a Black Captain America is risky enough, particularly in a regressive political landscape that has become insanely hostile towards the idea of a Black man having a job. Brave New World reckons a bit with Sam Wilson’s difficult position as a meaningful symbol both for his country and his culture. Unfortunately, this burden is as stifling to the character narratively as it is within the text. Sam Wilson isn’t interesting, he’s simply a person in an interesting position. He’s not allowed to be interesting, because any specifics about him would inevitably get perceived as some kind of political statement. It’s deeply unfair, and consequently, neither Wilson nor Mackie really make an impression in this movie.
Interestingly, Brave New World actually does feature a critical yet sympathetic personification of America—not in the new Star-Spangled Man, but in Harrison Ford’s President Ross. Ross is a hot-tempered military man whose professed desire to make peace is at odds with his violent history. He will work towards a better world, but not if it conflicts with his own selfish interests. Even his pursuit of progress is motivated by a desire for his daughter to start talking to him again. You feel bad for him, but everything bad that happens to him is a natural response to his own mistakes. Ford gives a strong performance—or maybe it only seems that way because the rest of the cast is given so little to work with, squandering the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and Tim Blake Nelson.
As much as it failed to restore my enthusiasm for Marvel movies, Brave New World still does credit to the idea of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, telling a complete story that builds off of seventeen years of history. This film picks up on threads left dangling as far back as 2008’s The Incredible Hulk while also benefiting from the 2021 miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which could afford to spend much more time digging into the paradox of Sam Wilson becoming the face of a government that has treated his own people horrifically. The story even makes the most out of a concept left behind by one of the MCU’s most maligned installments and uses it as a springboard for one of its most anticipated arrivals. It’s a nice reminder that this massive cinematic universe is still, in theory, a very cool idea. But if Marvel is ever to rebound in the zeitgeist or at the box office, they’re simply going to have to be braver than this.
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