The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D+
I’m at a place now with the MCU that I can look at a mess like Captain America: Brave New World and think “well, that could have been worse.” And it could have been worse. This is a better film than, say, The Marvels or Eternals. It’s not good that the bar has been set that low post-Endgame, but here we are. But Brave New World does hammer home the sobering fact that these movies, with a few exceptions, just don’t feel special anymore. They now feel like forgettable episodic content that ties into other forgettable episodic content, creating a veritable collage of I-don’t-give-a-fuck. What’s worse is that this isn’t some C-list character that Marvel is taking a chance on; it’s a frigging Captain America movie, for god’s sake. This is supposed to be one of Marvel’s pillars, not some throwaway epilogue to a streaming series.
But that is ultimately what Brave New World feels like. In a choice that is simultaneously baffling and on brand for post-Endgame Marvel, this movie is mainly a sequel to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (a streaming show that I haven’t seen) and The Incredible Hulk (a movie that I did watch when it came out….17 fucking years ago). But to truly understand why this movie feels like such a jumbled mess, we must address its troubled production history.
Brave New World often feels like several different movies stitched together because, well, that’s kind of what it is. Filming started way back on March 21st, 2023 and initially wrapped production on June 30th, 2023. The film then underwent massive reshoots throughout 2024. How massive, you ask? Well, in the movie that was released, Sidewinder (played by Giancarlo Esposito) is the primary villain in the first third of the movie. The casting of Esposito wasn’t announced until May, 2024, almost a full year after the movie was initially done filming.
So if you watch the movie and think that Sidewinder feels really disconnected from the rest of it, that’s because he originally wasn’t in it. Not that he wasn’t in an early draft of the script, but that the movie wrapped production and the character wasn’t in it. The original movie included several other members of the Serpent Society as primary villains (including Rosa Salazar as Diamondback and an unrevealed role for Seth Rollins), all of whom were cut and the film was reshot with just Esposito’s Sidewinder. Millions and millions of dollars were spent on reshoots so that we would have scenes of an elderly man with a gun ridiculously being portrayed as a viable opponent for Captain America before fucking off so that we can get to the next section of the movie.
We get to the next act (which feels more like the next episode of a show than the next act of a movie) and I honestly didn’t know who this villain was at first. It turns out that he is Dr. Samuel Sterns, also known as The Leader. Remember him from The Incredible Hulk in 2008? Because I sure as fuck didn’t. Turns out that he has spent the last 17 years manipulating events so that Thunderbolt Ross (played by the late William Hurt in Incredible Hulk, replaced here with Harrison Ford) would become the President of the United States because Ross let him out of prison under the condition that he help achieve that goal. But The Leader has also been secretly plotting revenge against Ross by turning him into the Red Hulk when he loses his temper at an inopportune time.
Now we get to the final episode of the movie, which has Red Hulk as the villain. I almost feel bad for the writers here because the reveal of the Red Hulk was clearly meant as a surprise, but then the studio plastered it all over the marketing. Because not enough shit has happened in this movie already, the U.S. and Japan are on the verge of war because they both want control of the giant celestial that emerged from the ocean in Eternals. Yep, Marvel is finally addressing that. In a twist that was totally planned from the beginning and not altered in a panic when Eternals bombed, it turns out that the celestial is made out of adamantium. Adamantium!!!! Do you realize what that means?? The groundwork is being laid for Wolverine! We haven’t seen that character in eight whole months!
Anyway, so this conflict causes Ross to turn into Red Hulk, culminating in a final battle that is just goddamn ridiculous. As is mentioned 3,217 times throughout the movie, Sam Wilson refused to take the super soldier serum when he took on the mantle of Captain America. I didn’t watch the show, so I’ll assume it’s because he’s an idiot. So he’s just a regular dude with Cap’s shield, what appear to be Archangel’s wings and some drones that shoot freaking laser beams. A regular dude that was nearly taken out by an elderly Giancarlo Esposito. And he is going to fight Hulk. Remember when the Avengers treated Hulk like a last-resort, weapon of mass destruction? Fuck that, Sam Wilson can take him down.
Anthony Mackie is fine in the role, he just has no character arc and little interesting to do. Repeatedly telling us that he isn’t Steve Rodgers isn’t character development, it is just an annoying chip on his shoulder that constantly reminded me of better Captain America movies. Harrison Ford is also good enough; I mean, he’s Harrison frigging Ford. But he’s saddled with a character arc that I didn’t remember because it hadn’t been brought up in nearly two fucking decades. On the other hand, I won’t give any sort of pass to Danny Ramirez as the new Falcon. I’m guessing he was introduced in the TV show, but this character is insufferable. Marvel has a tradition of irritating comic relief characters (I almost dusted off my old template paragraph about this for MCU reviews), but this is the most grating since Awkwafina. If you are comparable to Awkwafina, then you should go away.
Brave New World is one of the shorter MCU movies, yet there is so much that I haven’t even touched on. I didn’t mention the subplot when it becomes a ripoff of The Manchurian Candidate for awhile or the subplot about the failed human experiment Captain America (I’m guessing that was also from the show?). This movie has so much shit going on, but never has a singular arc. It feels like Marvel executives threw darts as a wall of concepts and hit Red Hulk, adamantium, The Leader and Serpent Society. Then they told a writer to scribble some dialogue on a napkin and said “good enough, we’ll start shooting on Monday.” I’ve actually started disliking this movie more and more as I’ve written about it, as I’m really struggling to come up with nice things to say. It’s still better than a couple of other misfires in recent years, but Marvel needs a solid plan again and needs to stop treating their marquee characters as generic content. I’m still holding out hope for the new Fantastic Four, but it is really hard to go into these movies with any genuine excitement anymore. Brave New World aint the worst, but it certainly didn’t help get me pumped for the future.
