Captain America: Brave New World

dir: Julius Onah

2025

I think this was meant to be a return to form, to the familiar, to the regular, for something that’s still about superheroes and people with fancy gadgets, but, you know, not too fancy. No cosmic stuff, no multiverse extravaganzas, no magic or fantasy, just military fanboy worship and noble guys giving noble speeches before smashing shit up.

And seeing as they’re trying to do Captain America movies without Chris Evans, everything has to pretty much be the same, except it has to acknowledge the fact that a lot of people, including supposed fans of the comics, won’t want to see a man of a dark skinned hue in the role. So not only does Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) have to be the military’s posterboy in all conflicts, he has to be unimpeachable and twice as sharp, yet without the benefit of the super serum that made Steve Rogers America’s Ass.

The series which apparently no-one watched except some of the actors in this film, Falcon and the Winter Soldier made the argument as to whether America could accept Sam as Captain America (the answer was temporarily ‘no’), and whether Sam would be okay with being Captain America despite all the bad things America did to lots of people (again the answer was temporarily ‘no’). Should it have been Bucky, the guy who was brainwashed by the Soviets and turned into the Winter Soldier, who killed countless innocent people, should he have taken up the shield? Well, no, no-one including him wanted that. He is white, though…

When they decided (in that series) that Sam was too Black and give the shield and the serum to a jerk whose only virtue is the paleness of his skin, he turns out to be a nut who kills harmless protestors on camera, bringing shame to the shield and America and grandmas everywhere. They also showed what they did to other super soldiers, like Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who they imprisoned after the Korean War, and tortured / experimented on for decades, mostly because he is Black.

Then Sam was like “nuh-huh! I acknowledge that America is a deeply racist place that’s done untold damage to the indigenous and to Black people. But by becoming Captain America, I will heal the divided nation. I will put myself in a position where everyone will condemn me even if I do things right, and condemn all Black people whenever anything goes wrong, whether my fault or not.”

And Bucky’s like, “You go, girl!”, not wanting the spotlight anyway.

And that was that. There was some other stuff to do with people who lost everything when the half of humanity came back after the other finger snap heard around the universe, but none of that mattered as much as the central question of whether lazy morons were going to call Sam a DEI hire or not.

In this flick, they decide to re-litigate the whole argument, as to, “So, will America, in the form of an old man with anger issues who became President when maybe anyone else should have gotten the job, accept a Black man as Captain America, or should America just go to war with everyone in order to horde precious made-up resources?”

Again the answer is “no” and “yes”, respectively. The president, in the form of Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross, in the form of Harrison Ford, taking on the role that William Hurt can no longer play since he’s dead, and the role Sam Eilliot can’t do because his moustache is just too magnificent, is the very embodiment of Sad but Angry Dad. But he’s also Harrison Ford, so we cut him a lot of slack. America loves Harrison Ford.

Have you met anyone in your life that doesn’t love Harrison Ford? Your parents probably love Harrison Ford too. Even your grandparents. Beloved actor since the 1970s. Class act all round. Plays heroes easily, but is also great at playing complicated jerks who maybe have some redeeming qualities. There’s only one flick I can think of in which he played a complete villain, but to even mention it would be a spoiler.

He is a villain kinda sorta here, but hey, it’s Harrison Ford! He already has our sympathies. Even if his character is a total arsehole, how can you stay mad at him?

His daughter, Betty, still holds a grudge. Maybe it’s because of all the times Thunderbolt Ross ruthlessly pursued his white whale, his nemesis, being the Hulk, and tried to kill him, in both comics and movies. He hated that fucking green hulk so much that, at least in the comics, the thing about hating something so much that you become it, finally came true for him.

Red Hulk. Angry Hulk. Angry Hulk seems tautological. Haven’t they always been rage monsters, naked ids destroying everything and everyone in their paths? If they wanted to change things up, shouldn’t they have come up with a hulk who transforms whenever he hears a sad song, but instead of destroying everything, just sits there in a funk thinking about all the things he did wrong, all the times he should have said sorry, or something truthful, so as to not lose the love of his life?

Why is the Red Hulk in this film about a tentative Captain America trying to protect America and the world from, um, America? Because… I dunno.

There are vaguely elements of this flick that replicate some of the story and some of the style of The Winter Soldier, but it’s nowhere near as sure of itself. It’s a flick that has Sam vaguely uneasy about calling himself Captain America which, let’s be honest, is a stupid title to live up to. But no-one asked me.

And the film wants to take its sweet time before unleashing the Red Hulk upon the world, so it has to kill oh so much time with the machinations of a villain called Sidewinder, who, despite being played by the great Giancarlo Esposito, isn’t that interesting, and a different villain called Lester, I think, or Samuel something. He’s played by Tim Blake Nelson, who played some scientist type in the Hulk flick that had Ed Norton, and Tim Roth as the Abomination.

They’ve brought him back! And he wants revenge! Possibly for having to work with Ed Norton, who knows.

He is a villain, there is no doubting that, and he is really good at pretty much brainwashing people and getting them to commit all sorts of murders and such.

He’s also portrayed as being able to look at all sorts of probabilities in order to “know” what’s going to happen in the near future, an ability that flies out the window pretty swiftly because that’s no fun for anyone.

If it sounds like a lot of pointless plotting for pointless plotting’s sake, well, I’m not going to argue with you. I did not not enjoy this film, but I would be hard pressed to remember what any of this actually mattered.

When he’s not dutifully fulfilling all his work obligations, Sam is also in that unenviable position of mentoring a young jerk who is constantly giving us reasons to actively want his death to occur. In a different flick the Torres character (Danny Ramirez) would be killed at a certain point in order to give the main character even more motivation to take down the bad guys / Big Bad, or dying like Goose in Top Gun in order to give the main character the sads / an opportunity to reflect on his arrogance and self-centredness before his arrogance and self-centredness save the day in the final section of the film.

Alas, no, they let the young Falcon-in-training live, for reasons unknown.

Anthony Mackie is a solid actor, solid performer. He can more that carry a flick like this, and does so, for the most part. It’s not a coincidence that his best scenes in the flick are scenes with other characters that involve no action beyond talking. And it’s also no accident that his best scene is with Bucky, sorry for the spoiler. A downhearted Sam needs some reassurance from Bucky, and he gets it, in the form of platitudes and non-sequiturs, which is the best form of reassurance.

It may be hacky, but then if a viewer watches the beginning of the scene, where Sam mutters “I hate to admit it, but I am really glad to see you” and didn’t tear up a bit, their heart has been infected with too much gamma radiation, and no longer works proper.

This will seem pretentious as fuck, but it actually bugs me a little that the Brave New World of the title makes no reference to the book by Aldous Huxley, and in fact has absolutely no connection to it whatsoever. The new world they are referring to is what’s happening now because a massive amount of a made up mineral called Adamantium was discovered in the Indian Ocean.

Did enough people even watch The Eternals in order to know why there’s a giant statue permanently frozen trying to emerge from the Earth’s crust in the Indian Ocean? Is it just one of the many elements that make people shrug their shoulders and keep eating popcorn?

Possibly. What it is, really, is an excuse for America, in the form of an angry old man, and Japan, in the form of a young hot Japanese guy, seem like they’re going to start a war over this new resource.

In the Indian Ocean? Why would Japan or America have any claim to something in the Indian Ocean? Well, that makes about as much sense as threatening to take over Greenland, or Canada, or Panama, or Gaza or anywhere, for that matter, but these things happen.

There is something inherently anti-climactic about this flick, as are many of the Marvel flicks that now come out, that we are meant to understand are not discrete self-contained movies at all, but just the next episode in an endless sequence that will never end.

Do we even want to see Cap – Falcon fight Red Hulk? I guess. Some of those sequences are okay, Sam’s pretty good at doing tricks with his wings in combination with the shield, but not all of the digital effects work looks that great. In fact a lot of it looks pretty dodgy. At least the angry red hulk looks like Harrison Ford as much as it needs to.

And then they bring Liv Tyler in for a cameo as Betty Ross! At least she wasn’t mumbling “Sun’s getting real low, big guy” in order to get her dad to chill the fuck out and stop destroying the White House.

Does she get to turn into a Hulk too?

It seems only fair.

This killed time. Time passed, somewhat agreeably. I did not absolutely love it, but neither did I hate it. It was okay, and it has been successful, so, who knows, maybe this whole Marvel thing will one day pay off!

7 times I need neither shield nor wings to know the real enemy was racism all along out of 10

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“I was a war time general, now I’m a war time president.” – hush up, grandpa, and get this blanket onto your knees, or no mush for dessert tonight - Captain America: Brave New World