‘Captain America: Brave New World’ review: The MCU’s OK Phase

The biggest weakness of Julius Onah’s acceptable Captain America: Brave New World is our own expectations.

Let’s just get this out of the way: Captain America: Brave New World is the worst Captain America film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while the MCU still sometimes manages genuinely great films (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) and box-office busting crowdpleasers (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine), it’s becoming more and more obvious that peak-MCU is behind us.

Captain America: Brave New World makes Captain America the third Marvel superhero to get more than a trilogy, following Thor: Love and Thunder and the quasi-rebooted Wolverine of Deadpool & Wolverine. But it’s the first fourth entry to have a new character taking on the mantle, with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson taking over from Chris Evans’s Steve Rogers. And it’s the first time the film has been more of a sequel to other properties than the films that preceded it, with the film picking up from miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and leaning more on Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk and Chloé Zhao’s Eternals than it does the preceding Captain America films. It sounds bloated because it is, but no more so than any of the two or three crossover events Marvel has running in its comics at any given time.

The Incredible Hulk 2: Captain America 4

The film opens on Wilson, now fully embracing the Captain America title, intercepting a shipment of Adamantium stolen by Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito). The revelation of the new alloy has started an arms race, the quelling of which newly elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt) sees as an opportunity to salvage his well-earned reputation as a warmonger. But the signing of the peace treaty is disrupted by assassination, with the blame falling largely on Wilson’s friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). Wilson knows Bradley is innocent and with the help of Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) stumbles upon a plot orchestrated by Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), but Ross isn’t particularly concerned with a truth that will stand in the way of his agenda.

The tension explodes in a twist that has been so thoroughly spoiled by the film’s marketing it’s a wonder they made it a twist at all. And the climax features the wonkiest third-act CGI Marvel has released to date. The film’s troubled production was hampered by strike delays and extensive reshoots that (poorly) tried to strip the political thriller of political undertones and both those struggles are pretty apparent in the end result. And that’s not even getting into how heavily the film leans upon two of the lowest-performing films of the MCU, one of which was released a full seventeen years ago.

Not as good isn’t always bad.

It’s a far cry from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a top-notch political thriller and one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. But it’s an even further cry from when the best Marvel political thriller was a David Hasselhoff-led Nick Fury TV movie. It may be the worst MCU Captain America movie, but it’s miles better than the four Captain America films released between 1944 and 1990. Which raises the question: is it actually bad? Or is just…not quite as good?

Mackie’s performance here is as endearing and charismatic as ever, and the chemistry he has with Ramirez and Lumbly is outstanding. Haas and Esposito are both given satisfying debuts that should have viewers excited to see their characters again in the future. And anyone who says Blake Nelson’s scenery-chewing for two hours with a bunch of practical effects glued to his head isn’t worth celebrating has never read a comic book. The climax might be a visual mess, but the remaining action is solid and the script allows the cast to shine.

Ford is clearly the weak link here. He obviously has no idea why he’s been cast, and he can’t match the quality of Hurt’s performance. Many viewers won’t even realize they’re playing the same character. But the mere presence of an actor of Ford’s stature manages an elevating presence. His main purpose here (beyond a few Air Force One jokes) is to get people excited about Harrison Ford being in a Marvel movie, which he pulls off with aplomb. Is it the most admirable goal? Absolutely not. But twenty years ago that casting alone would have been enough to get comic book fans out in droves.

The bottom line.

Audiences were blessed with more than a decade of great comic book films. Now the consistent quality of the MCU is, sadly, behind us. But Captain America: Brave New World isn’t bad. Not too long ago we would have been able to recognize it for what it is: fine. And something that probably could have even been great had Disney not bent over backwards to appease those who are insulted at the idea of blatant political corruption being bad.

If we view the success of comic book adaptations on a binary of critical and financial titan or abject failure, we’re going to miss out on things that not too long ago would have been revered superhero movies. It’s good to hold things to a higher standard, but we deserve better than to stop enjoying things just because they’re not at the highest echelon of what we know to be possible. Captain America: Brave New World is, rather unjustly, destined to become a victim on that front. But to those smart enough to give it a chance (or old enough to have seen the superhero movies of the nineties in theaters), there’s plenty of joy to be found.

Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer here.

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Images courtesy of Marvel Studios. Read more articles by Brogan Luke Bouwhuis here.