Movie Review: 'Captain America: Brave New World' is Another Wildly Mediocre MCU Entry

Captain America Brave New World

Directed by Julius Onah

Written by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalon Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz

Starring Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Carl Lumbly

Release Date February 14th, 2025

Published February 14th, 2025

Captain America Brave New World continues the slow death march of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The decline in quality and storytelling from when we were introduced to Tony Stark in 2008 to today is shocking. It reveals the faddish nature of the Superhero movie. It is simply a concept that has run its course. Today, we dutifully attend the next superhero movie in vain hope that things will improve but all the while knowing that things will never be the same. Our collective dedication to superhero movies feels as hollow as the movies themselves have come to feel in the latest phase of the MCU.

Captain America Brave New World picks up in the wake of the TV show Falcon and the Winter Soldier wherein Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) finally came to accept the mantle of Captain America. Of course, this is merely implied in the movie, having not seen the TV series, I simply accepted that since Sam has the shield and people call him Cap, that he must have become the official Captain America in that show. One of the grave flaws of Captain America Brave New World is acting like a blockbuster movie while playing like a serialized TV show.

The plot of Captain America Brave New World kicks in when the new President of the United States, former General Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, calls on Captain America to come to the White House. Cap has just completed a mission in South America where he managed to keep some sort of weapon from falling into the hands of terrorists and the President wants to thank Cap and his new partner, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), for their work. The meeting will also reveal what it was that Sam rescued from the terrorists, a new element that is set to change the world.

During the presentation however, a friend of Sam’s, a former super soldier, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), goes rogue and tries to kill the President. His actions make no sense as he was only minutes earlier celebrating with Sam and Joaquin, laughing and having a good time. It will soon be revealed that Isaiah had fallen under some sort of mind control and was not in control of his actions when he attempted to kill the President. Nevertheless, Isaiah is taken to jail and is likely to remain there for the rest of his life unless Sam can find the truth about who took control of Isaiah’s mind.

The big bad is a doctor named Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) who has a serious grudge against the new President. Sterns knows a deep dark secret about President Ross, one that he uses to try and sew chaos on an international level. It will fall to Sam, Joaquin, and a new ally, Ruth Bat Seraph (Shira Haas), a graduate of the Black Widow school of combat, to find the truth before Sterns can take his biggest revenge of all against the President and, by extension, the rest of the world.

If you’ve seen the trailer for Captain America Brave New World then you know what the big secret is: President Ross is secretly the Red Hulk. The story plays this out as if it were a grave secret but since the movie has been marketed around this revelation, we’re basically waiting for the film to finally reveal the thing that we already know. Add to this the issue of a script that relies heavily on you having sat through the Falcon and Winter Soldier TV series, and you have the makings of a deeply unsatisfying movie.

Captain America Brave New World is simply going through the motions. Anthony Mackie is not bad at all in the movie but he’s stranded by a script written by committee and intended to satisfy the marketing team and Disney investors, rather than provide a satisfying comic book adventure story. As has become par for the course for modern Marvel movies, Captain America Brave New World is not a movie as much as it is a commercial for more movies in the future. The film exists to put elements in place just intriguing enough that you will eagerly line up for the next movie, whether it’s Thunderbolts or The Fantastic Four.

This isn’t exactly new for the Marvel Universe. The first and second Thor movies had a similar feel, being commercials for the character Thor as the company built toward The Avengers. That said, those movies had a little more ambition. The Thor movies, for their many flaws, at the very least tried to draw in the margins and mask the obviousness of their role as marketing tools for other, larger movies. Captain America Brave New World has no such ambition. There is a nakedly commercial quality to Captain America Brave New World, a cynical, calculated, market driven quality that becomes obvious when you realize that the trailers have already shown you the movie.

And then the film has the gall to end on a note of ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ Spoiler Alert: I guess. The President is sent to the same jail that Sam had been sent to during the Avengers movies. It’s the only jail that could hold the Red Hulk. Here, Sam and the President share an empty moment where Sam throws aside the terrible crimes the President committed in favor of forgiveness and a simpleminded message about how we need to learn how to get along with each other. It’s a message that has zero to do with the action of Captain America Brave New World and everything to do with the calculated attempt of Marvel to position itself as the film franchise for all sides of the modern political divide.

The naive equation of people being mean to each other online and people trying to defend friends and families from discriminatory policies of an administration that, at the very least, is willing to tolerate discrimination against minority groups, is just the kind spineless messaging we do not need right now. It’s especially not needed in a deeply mediocre commercial for a dying film franchise deeply dedicated to satisfying the whims of uber-rich stockholders rather than telling good stories about heroic characters.

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