I used to be a MCU fanboy. I faithfully caught every movie, in theaters, from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (the first film I drove myself to) until Avengers: Endgame. I’m not breaking any new ground by saying that, since Endgame, the MCU seems to have lost its way and has declined in quality. Most of the films and myriad Disney+ shows have not interested me at all. I had not seen a new Marvel property since Spider-Man: No Way Home back in 2021. The fanboy is dead, and I am not too sad about it.
And yet, I still retain a love for Captain America, and Harrison Ford is one of my favorite living actors. Despite all of the production drama surrounding the new Captain America movie (or perhaps because of it?), I wanted to give this one a fair shake, fully prepared to reminisce sadly about the glory days and turn my back on this franchise once and for all.
But you know what? I kind of enjoyed this one.
Yes, yes, I know, this film has tons of flaws, and you can find countless articles and youtube videos picking apart each and every one of them. I’ll come back to the flaws later, but first I want to praise the things I enjoyed about this film. It greatly benefitted from my low expectations and the fact that Marvel seemed to return to its “Phase Two” philosophy of telling separate, self-contained stories that build on each other rather than forcing every single film to carry the franchise on its back and set up the “next big thing” that is going to happen. (Seriously, the first movie with the (since scrapped) “next Thanos” was an Ant-Man film?) This felt like a throwback to Marvel’s glory days, and as someone who remembers those days fondly I appreciated it.
The best part of the film is, without a doubt, Harrison Ford’s President Thunderbolt Ross. Ford brings a gravitas to this project that Marvel has been sorely needing for years now. He does not phone in his performance, giving us a character that resembles Jack Ryan or President James “Get Off My Plane!” Marshall. His character arc is the most compelling as well. This is a character that we have seen before in the MCU, mostly as an antagonist, the symbol of jingoism and government control over the righteous individual. He’s done some pretty terrible things to our heroes in the past, but in this film he claims that he is trying to change. The film asks whether or not he can, ultimately siding with Captain America in looking for the good in him and helping him to repent and atone for his past misdeeds. This theme has strong Christian undertones and is fully consistent with the character of Steve Rogers’ Captain America (the only explicitly Christian character in the MCU). In our cynical age it may seem a bit corny, but it warmed my idealistic heart.
Of course, you may remember that Thunderbolt Ross was first introduced in The Incredible Hulk. Or you may not, because that movie came out 17 years ago and for years Marvel did everything it could to make you forget it ever happened (including changing Hulk actors). One of the movie’s most bizarre choices is that Captain America: Brave New World is, essentially, a direct sequel to The Incredible Hulk. It brings back most of the major players from that film (besides the Abomination and Bruce Banner himself) and makes their unsettled conflict the heart of the film. It’s as if Marvel is bringing out the ugly step-child who has been locked in the attic since 2008 and expecting the entire family to remember who they are. As someone who does remember that film, I was able to follow along fine, but there are many MCU fans who weren’t born when The Incredible Hulk came out. On the other hand, people like me who lost interest after Endgame will find it hard to pick up the threads of Captain America and the Winter Soldier and The Eternals that inform this film. Marvel films have always been deeply interconnected, but it has become difficult to keep track of all the different threads that go into even one of their more grounded films.
Like I said before, there are significant flaws in this film that I will touch on briefly because everyone else is picking them apart at length. Yes, there are some ludicrous effects in the third act that are laughable considering the rumored amount of money this film cost. Yes, it is very obvious that they shot a horrible film and had to scramble to patch in significant reshoots, including completely adding a secondary antagonist to try and make things make sense. Yes, the movie treats the appearance of Red Hulk like a huge reveal even though everyone knew he would show up because he was in every trailer and on every poster. Yes, it’s disjointed, poorly paced, and feels at times like a retread of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Not a bad movie to retread, in my opinion.
The biggest tragedy of the film, though, is that this Captain America movie pushes Captain America almost to the periphery of the film. Yes, he is the person through whom the audience experiences the story, but the story is not about him; it’s about Thunderbolt Ross. Sam Wilson does not have much of a driving motivation for most of the runtime, and the attempts to have him struggle with his identity and the heavy mantle of Steve Rogers fall mostly flat. Sam Wilson has been a supporting character in the MCU for more than a decade now, and it seems as though the writers at Marvel don’t know how to properly promote him out of that role. He’s supposed to be the guy who pulls the Avengers back together, but in this film he shows little ability to be able to do that. Although I enjoyed the movie fine and Sam Wilson is fun when he’s in detective mode as he is through most of this film, his character did not stir the embers of my MCU love or heighten my anticipation for future Marvel projects. From here on out, it seems to me, Marvel films will live or die by the quality (and star power) of their villains; the heroes simply can’t fill the shoes of the ones who came before.
Captain America: Brave New World is a perfectly enjoyable popcorn flick, if you go in with low expectations. Harrison Ford is eminently watchable, the mystery and drama are well-done, and the themes of redemption and atonement are quite nice. It is, however, highly flawed, and if you are invested in the MCU’s salvation or downfall this one will be frustrating to you. It does not hit the heights of the best MCU films, but nor is it utter garbage like some of the low points they’ve hit in recent years. If you can go in expecting a mid-tier action thriller, I think you’ll have a fine time.
Seems like it would be such a cash-in role for Ford, but it sounds like it was giving him the time of his life.