Ordinarily, I’d be writing this review of Captain America: Brave New World. I didn’t count on getting kicked in the teeth by COVID-19, and I’m lucky I remember how to spell my own name. I’m also lucky that my son, Liam Brennan, was willing to take over this week’s review. I think he hits the nail pretty well on the head with this one.

Art is inherently political. It’s a fact of art, that every single piece of creativity is motivated by something in the world. Political socialization is ever present. It’s the lens through which we see our world. Captain America: Brave New World is at odds with that idea.

This fact isn’t exactly surprising. Disney as a company has always anticipated the whims of culture. They are a well oiled machine that makes the decision that they believe will make the most money and will allow them to continue making the most money from everyone, regardless of political affiliation. It’s a similar sentiment to the famous Michael Jordan quote, “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” but Disney is in a more difficult situation in this regard. After Trump won office again, Disney had Pixar remove a trans-focused storyline from their new animated TV show, Win or Lose, which is debuting in just a couple of days. Their politics have always been a reaction to the zeitgeist, and Captain America: Brave New World is unfortunately no different.

Following the events of Avengers: Endgame and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Captain America: Brave New World follows Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as the new Captain America in a very divided country. Sam has been a superhero for a while, having been recruited by Steve Rodgers to fight a corrupt government all the way back in 2014’s* Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Sam has been a consistent supporting character in many MCU movies since then, and this marks his first time as the only lead. 

Sam is dealing with a lot right now. He is working alongside newly elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) as well as having his own Falcon-in-training Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) with the end goal of a global treaty for the harnessing of a new material, Adamantium, found in the dead Celestial from Eternals. Things get complicated when Sam’s close friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbley) attempts to assassinate Ross. Bradley was featured prominently in Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a black super soldier who was tortured and experimented on. 

People jump to conclusions that Bradley was acting intentionally, particularly Ross’ personal security and Israeli Black Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas). Sam, however, is certain that Bradley is innocent, and begins uncovering a plot masterminded by Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) with help from Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) to destroy President Ross’ legacy, one way or another.

In essence, Sam is caught in a series of terrible situations. He has to stop a mass conspiracy, save his friend, teach his protege, battle a growing, red problem, embody Captain America and make the ever changing world proud. Can he do it? That isn’t the right question to ask. The proper one is, can the movie do all that? The answer is no.

I want to make clear first that there are flaws here that aren’t the movie’s fault, and more the structure of the MCU. This is firstly being used as a ghost sequel to The Incredible Hulk, a film from 2008 with shockingly little relevance for the rest of the MCU. It’s also a sequel to Eternals, Avengers: Endgame, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and even Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. It is a jenga tower of other movies to which it has to pay due respect, and that hurts it massively. 

Another flaw is the clear and constant reshoots and rewrites the film went under. The writing began in 2021, and shoots, reshoots and rereshoots went until November 2024, only 3 months before release. Its screenplay, written by Julius Onah, Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, and Peter Glanz, is a Frankenstein’s Monster of different ideas and fragments of scenes shoved together. It is painfully clear that once there was a succinct and politically relevant script with a lot of very good ideas, but the end result cuts every time they’re about to finish a point. It screws the pacing, muzzles the film, and makes it painfully uninspired. The dialogue also often hurts the film more than helps. Half the lines said by any character are explaining the scene you just watched, as if intended for somebody barely paying attention to follow along and still think they’re getting the full experience.

The directing is also inconsistent. Julius Onah has only directed two films before this, Luce and The Cloverfield Paradox, and being thrown into the deep end of blockbuster filmmaking must be difficult as hell. However, Onah isn’t a bad director! Many of the shots have excellent blocking and layout, with some beautiful lighting and well-used color! Some of the CGI is also breathtaking, like the corpse of the Celestial. It looks stunning and real! The action scenes often suffer though. The fights frequently lack both weight and consistency. Someone will be on the floor, and then immediately be standing up between cuts. While it isn’t necessary to show every movement, it causes a disconnect when you see the start and end of an action and miss the middle. The flow becomes disrupted. This also happens every now and then during dialogue scenes, and again it isn’t wrong, but it feels off. Some of the shots in this are so beautiful though that I believe it’s a case of someone out of their wheelhouse and massively overworked.

The performances are mostly great! Anthony Mackie gives a confident and charismatic performance. He sells the drama, tension, humor, and moments where he kicks people in the head. Mackie carries the entire film on his back, and has comfortable chemistry with all of his fellow actors. His best scenes are with Carl Lumbley, with strong back-and-forth on both ends. If both of their acting specifically was any weaker, the film wouldn’t work at all. I really hope Mackie gets many more leading roles, because he is electric. Harrison Ford is also very strong in this. At 82 years old, he’s energetic, his mocap** looks good, and he does really solid work. For one of our last lead characters, Danny Ramirez is fun! His character has less substance than Ford or Mackie, but he brings a nice boost of energy when he’s on stage.

With all of that said, I have a lot of issues with Shira Haas and her character of Ruth Bat-Seraph, also known as Sabra. The character in the comics is a former Mossad agent and the superhero of Israel, draped in the flag and everything. Her character is a controversial one, being seen as aspirational by Israeli readers and horrific by Palestinian ones. In her debut comic book issue***, she battles the Hulk. The issue famously climaxes in a scene where she kneels over the body of a dead Palestinian child who had been killed in a bombing. To quote the panels of the book directly, “It has taken the Hulk to make her see this dead Arab boy as a human being, it has taken a monster to awaken her own sense of humanity.” This is a highly charged political moment, and that depth is nowhere to be found in this movie. 

What it comes down to is that Sabra has no real reason to be in this. If they wanted an international superhero (which I still think wouldn’t be the best decision), there are many who would be a better fit for the role, both currently in and out of the MCU. Sabra has superpowers and specific traits which don’t appear in the movie, which makes it even more confusing as to why she is included. Also, her being an Israeli former Black Widow hurts the film, as she has no business being the President’s personal security. One, no US President would have a foreign national be their head of security, and two, no US President would have a former brainwashed assassin whose agency’s main thing is killing people in power be their head of security. It’s a gibberish role.

Shira Haas is also not the right actor for this gibberish role. Her line reads aren’t very dynamic, and she doesn’t have the charisma to compete with heavyweights like Mackie and Ford. Haas doesn’t fit well into the movie, and that’s one more wound suffered by the movie.  

The final large problem with this film is that it has a slew of missed opportunities that you can tell were thought about. It is the first film with a black Captain America, and the film doesn’t reckon with that at all, but you can see moments where it would have. It’s a continuation to a very political series, and doesn’t follow any of those points. It fights against the notion that Captain America is political, while also including political imagery all the time. It’s at war trying to decide whether Captain America represents America or represents what America could and should be. 

The previous films in the Captain America franchise reckon with this, with Steve both loving his country but also losing faith in it. He becomes a supersoldier to fight nazis and instead is utilized as propaganda. He disobeys orders from his superior officers to save lives, and then fights against a corrupt government in some way in most subsequent appearances. And Steve Rogers is a white, blue-eyed supersoldier. Sam Wilson is a non powered, skilled black man. His most recent appearance had him talk down a congressman and struggle to pay his bills. He isn’t the guy to be the President’s errand boy, and the film talks about that, but not enough. It turns a role that should have been an incredible, strong Captain America film into a film that nearly any character could lead, no individuality to be found. This needed to be a Sam Wilson Captain America story. It is just your average superhero story instead.

Is Captain America: Brave New World the worst MCU film ever? Not by a long shot. It is flawed, and during a time of real-world national conflict, a better and more thoughtful movie would have made a real impact. A version of that movie exists somewhere, a movie that could have been one of Marvel Studios’ best. But it’s buried. The quality shines like a diamond when it’s there, but you have to dig for it. Pretty damn deep.

*That was almost 11 years ago. Oh my god.

**My dad told me that Harrison Ford DEMANDED to do the motion capture himself, so he’s in this skin tight suit stomping and yelling around and smashing the ground. He described it as “being an idiot for money,”. I wish that was me.

***The Incredible Hulk #256.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.