Newly minted Captain America Sam Wilson unravels a conspiracy while fighting to clear his friend’s name after an assassination attempt in Captain America: Brave New World, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. Almost a beat-for-beat redux of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, this grounded political thriller is a welcome return to Earth for the MCU after years of intergalactic and multiverse stories—but still comes off as a faint echo of earlier, better films in the franchise.
Captain America: Brave New World stars Anthony Mackie as Wilson, formerly a superhero known as Falcon seen in six previous MCU movies who picked up Steve Rogers’ shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame and took over his mantle in the Prague-shot Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Air Force veteran Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), meanwhile, has been promoted to Falcon status.
As Brave New World opens, Wilson and Torres are in Mexico to intercept a valuable resource stolen by Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) and about to be purchased by an unknown buyer. Sidewinder has taken a church full of priests and nuns hostage, which is a curious strategy while conducting illicit arms deals but gives our protagonists an excuse to be superheroes and the villain an avenue to escape.
That valuable resource, by the way, is adamantium (hinting at Wolverine’s future insertion into this MCU), sourced from the giant Celestial that rose up out of the Indian Ocean at the end of Eternals but has gone unmentioned since. It was stolen from the Japanese, but its safe return thanks to Captain America gives new American President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over the role after William Hurt’s death) a chance to finalize that development agreement with his Japanese counterpart.
Only problem: at the big White House gala introducing adamantium to various heads of state, Wilson’s good friend and former super-soldier Isiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) goes Manchurian Candidate and attempts to assassinate Ross. The President is saved, but confused Bradley is arrested; with a potential death sentence hanging over his head, Wilson must go behind the President’s back to clear his name.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because nearly identical events played out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where Chris Evans’ Captain fights to unravel the conspiracy behind his former friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan, who features in a cameo here) and clear his name. In that movie, Steve Rogers—a former American icon now out of touch with a futuristic world—must confront the horrors of what his country has done. Here, Wilson, whose distrust of Ross has been well established… learns that maybe big government ain’t so bad after all?
Unlike the former film, there’s no conspiracy lurking at the heart of Captain America: Brave New World but rather a single, clumsily-introduced villain. Of course, we all remember Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, right? Well, he’s back here as a classic Marvel character whose appearance is so altered from his iconic look that even fans of the comics may not recognize him.
Captain America: Brave New World is well-paced and reasonably engaging, but suffers from a crisis of character. Mackie is an engaging and charismatic lead, but the screenplay, credited to five writers including director Julius Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox), is more interested in delivering a Captain America adventure than it is exploring the Sam Wilson character, and leaves a void as its protagonist.
Beyond some brief and externalized self-doubt (“I should’ve taken the super-soldier serum”), Wilson has no journey here—no backstory, no goals, no character flaws, no crisis of conscience, no love interest, no family. The movie is relying on whatever we know about this character from previous MCU films to work, but he was never an especially well-developed character, and falls into the background of his own starring film.
Thaddeus Ross, meanwhile, is given all the character work that should have gone into the protagonist: a confrontational persona and complex backstory, a strained relationship with daughter Betty (Liv Tyler), a personal relationship with the movie’s villain, and inner demons to confront that become externalized on-screen. And while this is silly comic book stuff that Ford could sleep through, he instead walks away with the movie; multiple scenes echo his work as Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
Captain America: Brave New World is also a clunky delivery platform for political allegory; as a hulking red monster bellows from the roof of the White House, it seems to be attempting to convey some kind of message. But whatever that message is or was—by the end, it seems to say that there is good in the monster, after all—appears to have been lost along the way.
This is also an unusually unpleasant MCU movie in visual terms, with flat composition, dull cinematography, and dim lighting throughout; even in IMAX 3D, it isn’t easy on the eyes, and only really comes to life during action scenes (an aerial battle that recalls Top Gun: Maverick is a highlight) that expand the scope from 2.35:1 widescreen in 16×9 IMAX. But the hand-to-hand fight scenes are drably choreographed and edited, especially compared to the first-rate combat of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
There’s enough to like in Captain America: Brave New World to make it an easy recommendation for fans of the franchise, and unlike some of the other recent MCU movies, there’s a lot of world-building and references to previous films. Still, this is a far cry from the series at its peak, and continues a worrying trend for Marvel Studios.
