Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

Director: Julius Onah

Cast: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Harrison Ford

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Somehow I’ve made it halfway into the month of February and this is my first film both released this year and seen in theaters.

Did I Like It: Giving it a moment’s thought, I’ll say this was a nice little action movie that will soon be forgotten and have a relatively benign place on any number of lists on Disney+. There is some action, a couple of dodgy special effects moments, and a tag scene that hardly seems worth it anymore. The film may truly be suffering from the moment it is unleashed and/or a pronounced deficit in the wow factor, as the money shot in this film of the President of the United States (Ford, still feeling like he’s awake for all of this, which is something) transformed into the Red Hulk and standing on top of a slightly demolished White House elicited a bigger laugh than anything I saw in Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

It is weighed down by some of the same problems that would weigh down any series approaching its 40th—yes, you read that right—film. As a public service announcement, I’ll list here a couple of the touchstones this film hits and some feelings about how lost you, the viewer, might be if you missed them in the glut of material from the franchise:

1. I’m real glad I somehow bothered to watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or nearly every second of the first hour—and let’s not kid ourselves, pretty much the entire movie—would be desperately searching for some semblance of context. I might have just given up and accepted that Isaiah Bradley (Lumbly) is important to Wilson (Mackie), but just accepting that Wilson is now Captain America coming off the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019) is too much. The film would have had to have a cameo from Chris Evans to set us all right, and even with that context present, I think we still could have used him thematically. It’s not like he’s above still showing up for these films, right?

2. I’m also infinitely glad that I have both seen, mostly remember, and kind of liked that mostly forgotten entry in the series, The Incredible Hulk (2008). The film ultimately is a direct sequel to that entry, but a cameo (spoiler) by Liv Tyler at the end really doesn’t have the same hit it might because a) she isn’t reuniting with Harrison Ford, she just met him, and b) I’m now wondering more about how she might relate to Mark Ruffalo. Honestly, both of the actors she worked with in that film were recast for various reasons, did we have to have her back?

3. I’m apparently not at all bothered that I still haven’t seen Eternals (2021). It seems like it might be a charming film, but as long as I accept there’s a whole mess of adamantium in the Indian Ocean (and I do) the film remains on my watchlist.

But, ultimately, this is held together not by an idiot plot, where people aren’t communicating with each other in an effort to keep the story moving along, but instead populated by idiot elements, where things that simply don’t add up are injected into a film with confidence that the audience would not notice.

I noticed. Yes, they are mostly related to the Presidency and the politics of the whole situation.

Why is the Secret Service agent (Xosha Roquemore) also a close adviser of the President? That seems like an unwise conflict of interest.

Never mind that every single person on planet Earth and beyond—including and especially Secret Service agents—should probably know that shooting any particular Hulk isn’t going to do much. They probably shouldn’t be shooting the President anyway, even if the cabinet somehow has had time to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Finally, and most importantly: It’s established we are hovering around the end of Ross’ first 100 days in the White House, but when Bucky (Sebastian Stan) shows up for a cameo, he has to immediately leave for a campaign stop, because he apparently is running for Congress now. Really? You’ve both announced and are running a full-time campaign for a House seat less than six months since the last election? I don’t believe that, and neither should you. Had he tried to shake down Wilson for campaign funds, then maybe.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Director: Joe and Anthony Russo

Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johannson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan

Have I Seen it Before: I saw it when it was released…

Did I Like It: …and I liked it so much that it almost, almost made Disney’s Marvel’s ABC’s Joss Whedon’s Agents of Shield(s) in its lurching first season. 

Marvel’s Phase Two is experimental at its core. It doesn’t experiment with form, necessarily. Every Marvel movie is exploring already well-trod territory. They are more accurately experimenting with a sustainable model for continuing making these movies. Iron Man Three (2013) would be the one exception to this idea, as it was potentially (and now clearly) the last in a series, and they could therefore afford to make a Shane Black movie masquerading as the annual May superhero tentpole. 

Thor: The Dark World (2013) and this particular film try to adopt a television model, bringing in reliable small screen directors to see if their journeymen skills can be brought to bear on a cinematically larger scale. In the case of Thor, frequent cable director Alan Taylor, and the results—while thankfully not embarrassing—do add up to a certain blandness. Here, the idea really starts to sing, as they have brought in the Russo Brothers to liven things up. At first blush, its a potentially counterintuitive idea, as they cut their teeth on multi-camera sitcoms like Arrested Development, and Happy Endings. To make the link between that work and big action movies is too much of a leap.

Except, the Russo Brothers also cut their teeth on Community. They were making big-budget spectacle at twenty-two minute stints for several years. That show was great training for this canvas, and it shows. Especially when you realize that they are the only directors from Phase II to come back and direct any more Marvel movies, Joss Whedon included.

And so, this second outing for The First Avenger operates like the bleak mix of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), that both Cap’s story and the Marvel series (this film coming fairly close to the middle of what will eventually come to be called the Infinity Saga) as a whole needs, bringing the whole thing into stark, yet, dark relief, and still acting as a pretty passable political thriller in the process.

As the film largely works, I feel I would be remiss in my role as a critic here without bringing up a few nitpicks:

~Why is the Captain America exhibit housed in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum? Like, the one time Cap notably took the helm of an aircraft, it didn’t exactly turn out so great for him. Why not the American History museum? I mean, that seems like a really easy fix.

~Shrimpy Steve Rogers—presented here in flashbacks—still doesn’t work beyond the scope of a better-than-average photoshop effort.

~I get that it serves some manner of an emotional through-line for Cap to go get his WWII uniform before the third act gets cooking, but am I honestly supposed to believe that in the middle of trying to hide from every government agency on the planet, he takes a break to enter a government facility to steal a museum piece from an exhibit that will pointedly, almost ridiculously be one of the first places the bad guys will look?