‘Captain America: Brave New World’ is dire

The fourth film to bear the Captain America name—albeit the first without Chris Evans’ time-slipped super soldier Steve Rogers—the Julius Onah-directed Brave New World is the 35th installment of the gargantuan Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition to picking up where the limited Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier left off, with former sidekick Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) donning the shield and the stars & stripes along with his robotic Falcon wings, it also acts as a sequel to several other movies, including Eternals from 2021, and the Incredible Hulk from 2008, all the way back in Marvel’s infancy.

If you have no memory of those films, don’t fret: neither the superpowered Eternals nor the green and formerly rageful Hulk actually appear, and the movie’s connections to them are explained in excruciating detail via expository dialogue no real person would think to speak. (“Where’s Betty, my daughter?” rasps Harrison Ford in his first line as President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, taking over the role from the late William Hurt). Presenting an inter-connected Marvel universe was once a seamless affair—few characters in The Avengers explain themselves; their behavior does the talking—but Brave New World feels like a tipping point for the studio’s shared continuity. Knowing who’s who (and why now) feels like homework, but the movie spends much of its time laying out a cheat sheet instead of trying to entertain.

That’s a shame, considering how much its actors seem to be enjoying themselves. Ford seems delighted to be there, despite his much-teased action scene lasting five minutes, tops. Mackie can barely contain his joy at playing a quipping, ass-kicking Captain America with near-indestructible wings designed by scientists in Wakanda, Black Panther’s secretive, high-tech African nation. In fact, the introduction of Wakanda was the last time this series was politically charged (for better or worse), with the resource-rich kingdom feeling like one thread in a larger global tapestry. Brave New World tries to re-create that feeling by way of a giant, god-like Celestial half submerged in the Indian ocean, a world-changing event that’s finally taken center stage after serving as Eternals’ climax four whole years ago. This being is made of the fictitious metal Adamantium (used, in the comics, to make Wolverine’s claws), and its presence has kicked off a geopolitical jigsaw puzzle, given the materials’ applications in tech, medicine, and above all, weapons manufacture.

At the center of this rigmarole is the United States, with Japan, France and India not far behind, leading to brittle treaties that fall by the wayside amidst perceived double crosses and an assassination attempt on Ross’ life. Someone lurking in the shadows appears to be pulling the strings by mind-controlling Secret Service Agents and calculating the most probable outcomes of certain events, but all this means is that bog-standard action scenes happen to have additional explanations discussed ad nauseam by Wilson and the Falcon/Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), a soldier-turned-sidekick whose superpower is a one-tracked joking tone and flat personality. Assisting them is the Israeli former Black Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), a much more problematic character in the comics, though like most people in this film, she doesn’t have enough presence to make an impact.

The plot isn’t hard to keep track of (its supposed political machinations are explained in great detail), but it’s nigh impossible to track what’s happening spatially or geographically, especially during fight scenes. Kicks and punches land without impact, scale changes at random, and the movie’s capital “M” Moments—its heroic poses and jovial one-liners—are filmed and edited with so little impact that they may as well not occur. Several action beats recall previous Steve Rogers-centric movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier but don’t have even a fraction of the intensity or panache.

These moment-to-moment problems go hand-in-hand with larger structural ones as well. Basic themes have no follow-through; the film’s super-intelligent villain is never outsmarted. Setups have no payoffs (Wilson’s cracked rib in an early scene never comes into play; how can it, when his high-tech suit and drone weaponry renders him practically invincible?) and climactic exchanges seem to reference versions of this story and these characters we never actually see. Wilson and Torres hint at having gone through the movie with monumental expectations on their shoulders—a seemingly oblique reference to their status as non-white heroes—but this isn’t something that ever comes up along the way. At best, it references Wilson’s dilemma to take up the shield as a Black man on Disney+ but that was something of a non-struggle too, and it led only to malformed political apologism.

If there’s one thing Brave New World does successfully carry over from Wilson’s series, it’s this same awkward, mealy-mouthed political approach. A film such as this one, in which numerous U.S. military uniforms and vehicles appear, was never going to be some scathing critique of American imperialism. To use this imagery requires engaging in a D.O.D. contract, which gives the Pentagon approval over the script—something Marvel has done numerous times—so the resultant view on using the U.S. military to fight for territorial control of resources, à la Iraqi oil fields, is presented as value-neutral at best (the aforementioned Celestial is, after all, not a country). However, where the film gets especially strange is in the central relationship between Wilson and President Ross.

On one hand, the duo references their potential for ideological disagreements over how to handle threats (an echo of previous Marvel entry Captain America: Civil War). On the other hand, this is something that doesn’t actually ever happen in Brave New World, a film in which no one seems to ever have anything approaching a moral dilemma. Instead of difficult decisions, the movie has the appearance of a redemption arc; which is to say, Wilson continually insists that Ross is a redeemable person on the precipice of change, and his past mistakes (as a military general, and as a world leader) ought not to be held against him. Mind you, in the context of the film, these actions, as very much known to Wilson, also include active, ongoing, extra-judicial torture. It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when Wilson’s close friend, the super-soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly)—who also appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—harbors a grudge against the U.S. government for imprisoning and torturing him for 30 years, but then again, Wilson doesn’t seem to have an opinion on anything or anyone except how Ross should be seen in the context of the plot.

To present optimism as a hero draped in red, white and blue making the case for sweeping torture under the rug is at best an outcome of messy and thoughtless filmmaking. However, the result is ugly nonetheless, and it’s the closest thing the movie and its title character have to an actual ethos. That’s pretty grim, all things considered, but Captain America: Brave New World also isn’t about to churn out a generation of enthusiastic foot soldiers or Forever War apologists—despite its propagandistic military recruitment ads—because it’s the furthest thing from convincing filmmaking. It’s a weightless, mechanical movie that loftily pontificates about nothing in particular. It has nothing to say about the world, or about its characters, and it’s never even fun.