Captain America: Brave New World

• Directed by Julius Onah
• February 11, 2025 (TCL Chinese Theatre) / February 14, 2025 (US)
• Based on the character created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan

The new Captain America investigates a possible conspiracy involving the new U.S. president Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross.

So much of Captain America: Brave New World rides on the events of the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier that one who has never watched any of that show can become lost. Or bored. Julius Onah and friends do make an effort to catch the audience up on those bits but when they occur they are more information dumps iterating things to characters who should already know. Plus they drag the story to a crawl. Refreshing the memory of the audience or informing the unknowing is an art that is necessary in such an interconnected film universe as the MCU.

This is presented like it wants to be a political thriller but, well, it’s not thrilling. You need well done action and a believable plot in the created world. This is not. If you create a supersmart villain that uses statistics and probabilities with the ability to hack any system and creates a mind control effect for phones yet cannot prep against the hero because he is “too much of a wildcard” you will have a very weak movie.

Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) is supposed to be a genius but is continually beaten and/or proven wrong or just simply stopped by Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). The very idea of the character is undermined by repeated relatively easy victories by the hero. Then again any character is only as smart as those writing it and I’m not sure if the if the writers were up to the task. No shame in calling in help.

The whole plot of Sterns is to disgrace the newly elected president Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) who kept Sterns imprisoned for years using his genius to design weapons and eventually get him into the presidency. Why he never put this big brain to escaping when he realized Ross wasn’t going to honor any agreement I don’t know. That would be my first move.

There are a lot of characters in here that just show up but go nowhere. Maybe at one point they were used more but presidential security advisor Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), Secret Service agent Leila Taylor (Xosha Roquemore), and the overhyped-in-this Giancarlo Esposito as hired goon Seth Voelker/Sidewinder are more plot devices than characters. Seth Voelker/Sidewinder gets name dropped the most but the other two may get named in passing. He is not even much of challenge to Sam.

I think this can be blamed on so much being left on the editing room floor either because of the re-shoots or because the runtime was cut prior to release. Character development is important and even in the most popcorn of movies. They need a little more depth than an NPC in a videogame.

I guess the story is to be about Sam Wilson ultimately conflicted on who he is working for and whether not he’s on the right side but that pretty much goes away. It’s not strongly put forward. It’s almost a token thing as he barrels through the narrative in an unfocused scramble to exonerate his friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbley).

Anthony Mackie is passable. Mackie does what he can, but his character never rises above just being cool. Sam is already awesome and will save the day. He mostly just must find the right person to punch. He does not step up to a challenge. He just needs to get bored and end things.

Given that part of the story includes the US and Japan fighting over the adamantium in the Celestial that popped out of the ocean, this could’ve gotten kind of topical. Instead there’s a fight and then it just disappears from the movie because a big naval battle is not the climax of this story. Such a thing usually happens in the final act. That honor goes to the Red Hulk and Captain America with his Wakandan flight pack.

Backing up a bit, Ross is revealed to have a heart condition or believes he does (I’m not sure if it’s legit) and he’s taking medicine prescribed by Sterns and made by Sterns to keep himself alive because its always smart to put your medical in the hands of your prisoner. Turns out the final the coup de grace on his plan is to have Ross turn into the Red Hulk because those pills are tainted with gamma radiation.

Red Hulk is way overpowered to be believably facing off against Sam who has little more than a few cool gadgets. Sam dodges a few blows as best as he can. That makes what should be a climactic superhero battle rather underwhelming. Worse Sam defeats Ross with words.

Captain America: Brave New World is poorly paced and rather tepid with an underwhelming ending capping off a poorly executed plot. I say stick with the previous three.