Captain America: Brave New World, as the title might suggest, isn’t content with sticking to the tried-and-tested Marvel traditions.
Case in point: the fourth Captain America movie has become the first MCU entry to not use the iconic Marvel Studios page-flipping logo that has accompanied every project in the series since 2008’s Iron Man.
Instead, audiences are treated to a no-nonsense black-and-white logo that really sets the tone for what’s to come. Gone is the loud fanfare and, in its place, a back-to-basics approach that runs throughout the rest of the Julius Onah-directed movie’s two-hour runtime.
While Marvel Studios features have previously done away with the music – including Iron Man, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home – this is the first time it’s gone without both the logo and the music. A Brave New World, indeed.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, and Tim Blake Nelson, Captain America: Brave New World carries on from the events of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and sees Mackie‘s Sam Wilson grappling with an international incident. The Marvel Phase 5 movie is also set to introduce the alter-ego of Ford‘s Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross: Red Hulk.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at least year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Ford said of his character’s CGI transformation, “It was based on what I had done and it’s animated so it looked familiar.” Ford added, “I think my wife thinks I look like that all the time, so it was not that big a deal.”
Beyond Brave New World, Daredevil is Born Again on Disney Plus this March. Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four are also heading to cinemas, with the latter potentially hiding Reed Richards’ stretching powers in its first trailer.
As hard as it might be to believe, 2025 is when the MCU’s “Multiverse Saga” will be plowing through its penultimate act. Following a few box office disappointments, mixed viewership for exclusive Disney+ shows, and controversy surrounding the Saga’s prior Thanos-equivalent villain, Marvel Studios is clearly trying to get to the much-anticipated Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars as quickly as possible. After a somewhat quiet 2024 that included one very successful movie and a handful of television shows, Marvel is going hard in 2025 with three huge ensemble movies and two high-profile shows, the first of which is Captain America: Brave New World.
On paper, Captain America: Brave New World tries to accomplish quite a lot in a very short amount of time. Not only is it following one of the MCU’s strongest trilogies, but it also has the task of continuing where Sam Wilson’s (Anthony Mackie) Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, left off. If that wasn’t enough pressure, Marvel Studios has also decided that Captain America: Brave New World should tie up loose ends that have long been left behind by The Incredible Hulk and Eternals — two of the MCU’s less beloved projects. If you’re a fan of those films and take offense to that judgment, don’t worry, as Captain America: Brave New World may just be one of the weakest entries in the decades-spanning franchise.
As mentioned above, Captain America: Brave New World takes place months after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where Sam Wilson has finally embraced his inherited moniker as the new Captain America following the retirement of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans). What Wilson hasn’t embraced is the newly elected President of the United States, an old adversary of his and his fellow anti-Sokovia Accords Avengers — Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford). While both Wilson and Ross are willing to let bygones be bygones, tempers flare once again when a long-lost villain from the MCU’s history returns to enact a deadly conspiracy that has been over a decade in the making.
With an espionage story that features sleeper agents and long-standing government secrets, Captain America: Brave New World is trying to emulate Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is understandable given that it’s one of the best films in the MCU, let alone the best Captain America film. Unfortunately, where that film has themes of unwarranted surveillance and government overreach that are still relevant to this day, Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t seem to be saying anything beyond “bad government is bad.” Espionage stories live or die in the twists and turns they produce, and practically none are to be found in the fourth Captain America film, apart from the odd MCU-required cameo. It’s one of the most frustratingly predictable movies that Marvel has produced in a long time.
Where the film could make up for this with some riveting action, Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t even accomplish that. The action set pieces are all very rudimentary and, by the numbers, don’t even remotely live up to the visceral and inventive nature of the legendary battles from the previous Captain America films. The only notable exception is the finale involving Red Hulk, but it’s not so much “impressive” as it is entertaining to watch.
‘Captain America: Brave New World’s Characters Are Dull, and Its Dialogue Is Even Duller
The weak writing doesn’t end with the narrative structure either. Captain America: Brave New World also sports some of the worst lines of dialogue ever to grace the MCU. It’s repeatedly bad one-liner after bad one-liner, making for an uncharacteristically unfunny MCU adventure from start to finish. Speaking of uncharacteristic, the typically effortlessly charismatic Anthony Mackie comes across as overly reserved here. The stiff expository dialogue certainly doesn’t help, but apart from a few asides about prior Falcon and Winter Soldier characters, this particular version of Sam Wilson is incredibly bland. The same can also be said for Shira Haas as Ruth Bat-Seraph and Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder, both of whom feel like entirely superfluous and uninteresting side characters that add absolutely nothing to either the film or the broad Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Thankfully, some of the other characters do fare a bit better. Harrison Ford is pretty much playing Harrison Ford, not really trying to emulate the performance of Ross’ previous performer, William Hurt. Still, Ford does inject a lot of humanity into a previously pretty unlikable character. Humanity is the name of the game for Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley, who is the film’s almost exclusive source of thematic weight and emotion with yet another passionate performance as a truly dark and tragic character in this comic book world. Danny Ramirez is also given much more to do as Sam’s ward, Joaquin Torres, and overall, does have some decent enough points of levity. Finally, Tim Blake Nelson finally arrives to the MCU as The Leader, and while the conspiracy plan is convoluted and questionable, he’s a decent enough entry to the franchise that sets up some intriguing developments for the future.
It’s no secret that Captain America: Brave New World underwent several phases of extensive reshoots, which can be a lifeline for many great feature films or create an overtly inconsistent final project. In the case of the fourth Captain America film, it’s the latter. Apart from the odd plot and pacing decisions, other glaring technical problems are also present in Captain America: Brave New World’s visuals. Almost every single scene in Captain America 4 looks like it was shot on a green screen. That’s to be expected for the big expansive action scenes, but this is true even for basic dialogue sequences between just two characters, which is not only visually unappealing but a telltale sign of reshoots.
The garish green screen is far from the end of Captain America: Brave New World’s technical problems. The film almost proudly boasts some CGI effects that continue a trend that Hollywood blockbusters just don’t seem to treat quality visual effects as a high priority. They make everything in the film seem artificial and fake, and it’s almost baffling that The Incredible Hulk, a film that was released in 2008, has more convincing CGI monsters than a movie released almost 20 years later.
Suffice it to say, Captain America: Brave New World is not the 2025 start that Marvel fans may be hoping for, with more pressure now being put on Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. If anything, the film has more in common with Sony’s disastrous attempts to make its own Marvel movies than it does with the prior entries that turned the MCU into what it is today. In trying to do so much all at once, Captain America: Brave New World forgets what made its title character a relatable fan-favorite. Instead, we get a narrative that is as convoluted as it is boring, visuals that are as unappealing as they are uninspired, and a Marvel movie that is as frustrating as it is forgettable. Had this been a random C-list Marvel hero, that would be forgivable, but for a character as revered as Captain America, it’s a huge disappointment.
