Review: CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD

 by Rob DiCristino

It’s really The Incredible Hulk 2, but it couldn’t possibly matter less.

Watching a Marvel movie in 2025 feels a lot like being an American in 2025: Everything bears a vague resemblance to the classic highlights of yesteryear, but there’s an acrid stink of laziness and desperation in the air that you just can’t ignore. It all feels like a front. An act. It insists upon itself without merit. The awe and spectacle you remember from your childhood is nowhere to be found, and you’re starting to wonder if it was ever all that awe-inspiring or spectacular to begin with. The most familiar faces are well past their prime, all of them milling about aimlessly without the slightest clue as to why they’re still around or what purpose their actions might serve. The new class, such as it is, is made of second-string pretenders who pale in comparison to the icons who spun miracles out of nothing but charisma and guile. Those forebears took great risks and reaped great rewards. Their successors, like Captain America: Brave New World, are ignorant and ineffectual, soft with privilege and lacking the power to inspire anything but apathy and frustration.

In the years since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk — which is quickly summarized by talking heads who seem to know it’s the MCU movie no one watches — Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford, in for the late William Hurt) has traded the military for Pennsylvania Avenue, foregoing his long-standing crusade against The Avengers in an appeal to the superhero-loving American electorate. His first presidential policy initiative is securing a treaty with a group of nations claiming ownership of “Celestial Island,” the site of Tiamut’s emergence in Eternals. You remember Eternals, right? Tiamut’s the big dude sticking out of the ocean. Anyway, the island is filled with unrefined Adamantium, which Ross says is “more indestructible than Vibranium.” Whistling past the semantic detail that indestructibility isn’t measured in degrees — The only thing lower than America’s literacy standards for its children, of course, is its literacy standards for its presidents — Ross enlists Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the new Captain America, to get a firm grip on this valuable asset.

Well, sort of. It’s true that Seth Voelker (Giancarlo Esposito) stealing an Adamantium sample is technically Brave New World’s inciting incident, but the film kicks off in earnest when a group of White House VIPs — including America’s forgotten black super-soldier, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) — are Manchurian Candidated into an assassination attempt on visiting dignitaries, destabilizing the treaty before it’s even signed. Excommunicated by the president and supplanted in his inner circle by former Black Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), Wilson and his plucky new Falcon (Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres) go rogue to hunt down the attack’s real mastermind, prove Bradley’s innocence once and for all, and uncover a conspiracy that will force Ross into a confrontation with the demons of his past. There will also be a fight with Red Hulk somewhere in the last act because Marvel knows how insane it would be to bet their entire $200 million blockbuster on Tim Blake Nelson (returning from The Incredible Hulk as The Leader) in a Spirit Halloween mask.

And if Brave New World grasps at any deeper thematic inquiry between its ungainly action set pieces and empty military intrigue, it might be this: What role should a black Captain America play in the U.S. government? How can Wilson acquiesce to a system so inextricably linked to oppression and abuse? Bradley — who recounted his personal horrors on that front in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — poses these questions early on, and a film with bigger brains or balls might have attempted an answer. But this one gets distracted with a dull retread of The Winter Soldier grafted onto an undercooked and largely incoherent story about Ross atoning for years of war-mongering and mistreatment of his daughter, Betty (Liv Tyler). Rather than dovetail these threads into a grander lesson about honor, responsibility, or social justice, Brave New World is content to have Wilson and Ross blow shit up, spout empty platitudes, and nod at each other in self-congratulation as the credits roll. It’s probably for the best, really; God forbid a political thriller features a political message.

There’s more to dissect, if you like: With all due respect, Anthony Mackie is not a movie star. He’s not going to be able to carry a major franchise, least of all one that can’t give him tangible human material to work with. Harrison Ford is so bored by this dialogue that he seems to be in physical pain, which would be charming were it not such a rampant plague on all MCU A-listers. What else? There’s an interesting symbolism in watching the president literally smash the White House to pieces, I suppose — especially in 2025 — but again, Brave New World lacks cogency enough to make even the most blunt and obvious metaphors land with any real impact. Oh, and temper your Red Hulk expectations, folks. He’s in this for about eight minutes. Look, I could go on, but the bottom line is that Captain America: Brave New World is a gutless, brainless, empty waste of time, money, and talent. Like America itself, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is over, and nothing — not even that dry-ass Fantastic Four trailer you’re all dying over for some reason — is going to bring it back.

Captain America: Brave New World hits U.S. theaters today, February 14th.