'Captain America: Brave New World' Puts Cap in the Shadow of Red Hulk
Marvel's latest feels more like a sequel to 'The Incredible Hulk' than a new movie for Sam Wilson's Captain America.
When The Falcon and the Winter Soldier wrapped its six-episode series in April 2021, Marvel immediately announced they would make a new Captain America movie with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as the new Cap. One would think that a film based on this character would continue the struggles of what it means to be a Black man carrying a symbol of America, Sam’s insecurities of following a super soldier like Steve Rogers, and trying to forge a path separate from his friend and predecessor. One might think that and perhaps at some point in the film’s development, that’s what Marvel intended. But over the course of reshoots and Marvel’s post-Endgame growing pains, we’ve arrived at Captain America: Brave New World, which feels more like The Incredible Red Hulk featuring Captain America.
Picking up three years after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam and the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) have been doing good deeds, but now there’s some friction with America’s new leadership, President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford but played in previous Marvel films by the late William Hurt). Sam and Ross want to start fresh (“Sorry for that business of making you and your friends fugitives for a few years between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War,” is the sentiment), but before they can even start their relationship anew, Sam’s pal and America’s discarded and secret Captain America Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) tries to assassinate Ross. While Ross survives, it almost scuttles his precious treaty pact to share the world’s new supply of adamantium, an indestructible metal that Earth now has in ready supply, courtesy of the Celestial that died at the end of Eternals. Ross quickly discards Cap to focus on salvaging the treaty deal while Cap and Falcon investigate what happened with Isaiah and who’s masterminding this nefarious plot.
Sam Wilson may be the film’s protagonist and hero. And yet, he’s not its emotional center despite clumsy attempts to forge a bond with Bradley or have an awkward conversation about the weight of being the new Captain America (conversations that feel redundant after Falcon and the Winter Soldier as if there’s no new ground to cover). The emotional center belongs to Ross, a man trying to make amends and show his daughter Betty that he’s become a better person despite still retaining the hair-trigger temper and shortsightedness of his past.
There are quite a few problems with making Ross’ emotional journey the centerpiece of the movie, not least of them being that the film is called “Captain America.” For starters, Ross was never that interesting a character in past movies. He exists to be a frustrated authority figure either chasing Bruce Banner or irritating the Avengers, but never a threat, and certainly not with any shading. This is not a supporting character who captured our hearts like Luis (Michael Peña) in Ant-Man or Korg (Taika Waititi) in Thor: Ragnarok. That means Brave New World rushes to backfill a character and hope that Ford can provide some kind of pathos for a guy who previously existed largely as a plot device.
Furthermore, the preexisting enmity between Sam and Ross is weak. They’re more like bitter acquaintances than old foes. If there’s bad blood between Ross and an Avenger, it’s not Sam Wilson, but Bruce Banner. But since the Hulk rights are complicated, he’s not here, and that means you’ve got to deal with the new Captain America. As the plot unfolds, Sam constantly feels like he’s simply catching up to what’s happening with Ross, who, as the marketing tells us, becomes Red Hulk.
Ross’ inevitable transformation into Red Hulk (a machination of the film’s villain, who hasn’t been revealed in the marketing, so I won’t do so here) is where the film derives what little weight it has. It’s almost a tragic storyline of a guy wanting to show he’s more than his past mistakes and instead, he’s consumed by rage to become a version of the thing he hates. That’s kind of interesting for a Hulk movie, but it’s a bizarre redirect for a Captain America movie.
The emphasis on “The President is a Red Hulk now,” becomes even stranger when you consider how steadfastly apolitical the film wants to be. On the one hand, it’s probably not ideal that I longed for the movie’s political reality where Ross is a flawed but well-meaning individual who loves someone other than himself (say what you will about Red Hulk, but he didn’t hand over the administrative state to Justin Hammer). But rather than have a single thing to say about our politics or what it would mean to empower a Black man in a role previously held by a white guy or anything about the world today, Brave New World takes the coward’s view from nowhere. It settles on the old canard that politicians have no choice but to be duplicitous crooks, it would be nice if they owned up to their flaws, and hey, can’t we just try to look for the best in each other rather than the worst?
Captain America: The Winter Soldier may never reach the highs of the 1970s political thrillers it invokes, but at least there’s a serious idea at its center about the trade-offs between security and privacy. But even that broad political question is too thorny for Brave New World, which wants to borrow the spy-thriller aesthetic and pacing of Winter Soldier yet removes the heart and earnestness that drove the film forward. In Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers didn’t know who he could trust because of political allegiances. In Brave New World, Sam doesn’t know who he can trust because the villain basically has magic powers. Winter Soldier says that there are Nazis in our midst (Hydra being the stand-in for fascists), and we must root them out. Brave New World says no one is truly at fault for their bad behavior, so let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt.
The best thing Brave New World has going for it is that it moves so fast that you hardly clock these deficiencies while you’re watching it. Director Julius Onah made a capable spy thriller, and while it’s weird to center it on Thaddeus Ross, at least the whole enterprise feels affable enough to avoid the grating self-importance of a misfire like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or being a bloated disappointment like Thor: Love and Thunder.
That being said, we know what it looks like when a Captain America movie has emotional stakes for Captain America. If we ever get a fifth Captain America, maybe Sam Wilson will finally get the respect Marvel afforded Steve Rogers. -Matt Goldberg
David Chen’s Quick Take
Captain America: Brave New World feels like a film ripped out of time. It seems to come from an an era when Marvel-mania was at its peak, when you could create a basic genre film, throw in a few half-hearted references to other superhero characters, and get the fan base frothing at the mouth (the movie was originally slated to come out in May 2024 before it was delayed).
I can’t know what this film’s original form was before it reportedly underwent extensive retooling and reshoots. But the final result is a bizarre continuation of the stories from The Eternals, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, The Incredible Hulk (a movie that came out 17 years ago) — three properties that are probably among the least successful in Marvel history. As a result, as Matt indicates above, it also jettisons any pretense of being a consequential introduction or celebration of Sam Wilson as the successor to Steve Rogers. There’s too much universe-building to get to.
Beyond this, the filmmaking doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself. Earlier Captain America films like Civil War and Winter Soldier had some of the most memorable action sequences in the MCU. They were intense, tactile, and had an undeniable momentum. Here, the action is uninspired, with the framing often so tight that it’s difficult to appreciate the stunt work or choreography. Sam Wilson’s EXO-7 suit has always felt more like a visual effect than an actual physical piece of machinery to me and it’s no different in Brave New World; I’m rarely convinced I’m watching an actual human do anything real.
I still think the MCU has a few other tricks up its sleeve this year. Fantastic Four could revitalize interest in those beloved characters and Thunderbolts looks like some irreverent fun. But Brave New World feels like the latest entry in a universe that’s rapidly running out of steam, and not the inauguration of a new era (even a dystopian one!) that its title might imply. -David Chen
I wonder... if William Hurt were still alive, do they still make this movie? Does it become a team-up movie with someone like the Hulk? Does it tie even more heavily to "Eternals"?
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