Captain America: Brave New World – Review

“CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD”

Brave New World is the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this film now sees director Julius Onah to take over the role, whose most notable credit prior to this is directing the Cloverfield Paradox… not one of the finest entries in that series. 

This also marks the first full feature length film to feature Anthony Mackie in the role of Captain America, following Chris Evans retiring from the role. This film also follows on in many ways from the Falcon and Winter Soldier series on Disney Plus, which I would really recommend watching that series before seeing this movie.

Personally, I was really exciting to see this film, since I really wanted to see what an Anthony Mackie-led MCU film would be like, considering that his star is on the rise and projects that he is the lead actor in turned out really well – he’s the lead on one of my favourite episodes of Black Mirror as well as that really good Twisted Metal series. 

If you haven’t seen trailers for Captain America: Brave New World, that’s probably a good thing since they show off a lot of the movie in that trailer. Even if you have managed to avoid it, the marketing has really shown off the introduction of Red Hulk to the MCU. The film basically revolves around a treaty between President Thaddeus Ross (played by Harrison Ford) is trying to get done in order to have a global share out of the newly discovered adamantium (since Disney now has the rights to use the X-Men stuff) and Captain America is trying to stop a potential dark figure that uses mind control to basically cause a big breakdown of the situation. 

I am being purposely vague because I don’t want to give away the identity of the villain since the film does try to have a reveal, but I will say that there is a shadowy figure manipulating the situation that really reminded me of Captain America: Civil War.

To be honest, I think that this film was done a bit dirty by its marketing because this entire film is trying to build up to the Red Hulk and that’s about it. If they had managed to keep that under wraps this film might have done a bit better, considering Red Hulk is not in this movie for very long. In fact, if anything, the only other villain that really builds a presence is Giancarlo Esposito reprising his role as Sidewinder, who is frankly one of the best parts of the movie. 

I do get a sense that a lot of the way that this film was written and directed in regard to Thaddeus Ross does make me feel like the creators thought that Trump was going to lose the election. It really felt like they wanted to take a pop at his politics. I wanted to be a lot more scathing, but apparently I’m not allowed to in these reviews…

Nevertheless, Harrison Ford did a decent job. A lot of recent comments on his performances say that he seems out of it and just wants a paycheck, but he actually does some decent acting in this film. Though he does have some moments that are reminiscent of his terrible performance in Ender’s Game, he does deliver some real heart to this performance, and the way they wrote his character is quite interesting in several ways. The problem is that while this stuff is going on in the background it takes away that the main plot of this film should be about Sam’s insecurities about feeling he can’t live up to Steve Rogers. While it’s definitely touched upon and done well, it feels like it’s in the background. If there’s one thing this film has an issue with, it’s that there’s too much going on and could have been streamlined better. 

Despite what I’ve said, I actually quite liked Captain America: Brave New World, but it does have a problem of being a little too over-packed with plot lines and characters and the marketing kind of actually spoiled what could have been one of the best reveals. The fight scenes range from okay to really good, and I will say that the performances were strong. It’s not in the echelons of the worst MCU projects – we’re nowhere near that level, but I wouldn’t put it up there with the best either. That being said, I do hope we get to see more of Anthony Mackie as Captain America.