Captain America: Brave New World

Sam Wilson finally gets his own Captain America movie! I have been waiting for this for years. I am seriously excited, because though I really wanted to see Bucky as Cap I recognize that the way the MCU had shaped out at the time there was no real way to do that. I love Sam, I am excited to see him as Captain America and remind people what this character and what the mantle of Captain America is for. Cap is more than the serum, in fact if you can’t be deemed Captain America without it, then you shouldn’t have it. Captain America: Brave New World is Sam Wilson’s first real outing with the cowl and it's gonna be great (I hope).

Well I have good news and bad news; The good news is that the film is not nearly as bad as the internet thinks. The bad news is that the actual core of the plot kinda sucks.

Let’s get into it. The entirety of the plot centers around the 2008 Hulk movie. This was a bold choice. A stupid, dumbass choice, but a bold one. Now it doesn’t assume any knowledge, it explains the context it needs you to know from The Hulk and The Eternals and from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You are not actually expected to know anything. That said the writing relied very heavily on the Hulk film. The main villain, Ross’ backstory, the emergence of the Red Hulk and repeatedly mentioning Hulk and Abomination was all a mistake. There was simply no reason for there to be any ties to that film whatsoever. The MCU has not acknowledged that film as cannon, or at all in the last 18 years. That’s a long time to expect people to care about a film no one cared about in the first place.

All that said Anthony Mackie is an incredible Sam Wilson and as expected he is a wonderful Captain America. He’s charismatic, and charming. And his Captain America explores something really important; he doesn’t have the serum, he’s not a super soldier so it forces him to rely on his counseling skills. Captain America has to use diplomacy and words in order to diffuse situations. And that doesn’t mean he can’t fight, the man has worked his ass off. He trains with Isaiah Bradley to be in the best fighting shape he can be. And to explore other skills that don’t rely on brute strength and technology. But his main power is his heart and that really hammers home why he was chosen as Captain America. Now his, “why can’t we all just get along” message at the end was a little yucky and quite frankly seemed out of character. But random bad decisions are expected when you have 5 screenwriters in the writers room. I am sorry but that is simply too many. 2 writers, 3 max makes sense. You need someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to mindmeld with, someone to keep you in check. But 5 people does nothing but deliver an incoherent script, which is unfortunately what we got.

The fight scenes were good, I think Mackie was given some great fight choreography in and out of the suit. With and without the wings. It really showed his strength and his ability as Cap.

Really the highlight of the movie was Anthony Mackie. He is incredible and he carried the film. Harrison Ford also was incredible. He seems to have found a character that he really loves. You can kind of tell when he is phoning in his performances but he really went hard with Ross and I think he should have had the role from the beginning.

Now my biggest gripe might not seem like a big deal but it was deeply emotional for me and I feel very strongly about it. The theme music that is often used for the Avengers is titled Captain America’s theme. It has played in every major Cap MCU moment. And this film made the choice to not play that theme for Sam, ever. He never got Cap’s theme music. This tells the audience that even Marvel doesn’t believe that Sam Wilson, and Anthony Mackie is Captain America. And though that is not surprising, it is extremely disappointing.

Overall I think this is a very mid-tier Marvel movie. 6/10 at best. I would absolutely rewatch this before I rewatch a lot of other movies and though the core of the plot was a weird choice it doesn’t kill the movie. It only bothers me because there were about 1000 better ways to tell this story. It really just felt like the writers hadn’t kept up with the MCU since 2008 and decided to just write what they knew, but what they knew hasn’t been relevant for nearly 2 decades.