Captain America: Bland New World

As soon as I saw Captain America driving a Hummer EV, all hope was lost.

Captain America: Brave New World was heavily marketed as a return to “classic Marvel”, yet only further shows how jumbled and directionless this mega-franchise has become. My expectations for this movie were quite low, to put it lightly, and they were still unmet. There are aspects of the story where you can see an attempt at a cohesive plot, though it is quite obvious that the many news outlets reporting the reshoots and restructuring of the overall story were accurate.

In a nutshell, the movie lacks a plot. Most of the runtime from an audience perspective is sitting on the edge of your seat… waiting for the story to kick into high gear and get good. This never happens. New World is a very underwhelming experience. Another marketing tactic was showcasing the Red Hulk, which does the film a huge disservice, as all the tension and setup to the moment he appears on screen feels worthless, given that it’s already known he’s coming.

There is some good found here, surprisingly. All the performances are pretty solid. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, now Captain America, is giving his all. Mackie does everything he can to make this his ‘Rocky Balboa’ movie and have us root for his character, which he succeeds in doing. Harrison Ford as Thunderbolt Ross was the highlight of the film. He’s probably the only character who’s written well, playing politics, with his own agenda. This made for a compelling dynamic between Ford and Mackie that, at times, keeps you at least entertained.

The screenplay is awful in every sense of the word. The dialogue is riddled with cringeworthy one-liners and exposition. Rarely do you care what anyone is saying, or even fully understand what is going on. The characters in the movie are just as confused as you (how relatable). The script keeps setting up ideas and ideas, ultimately leading to either never getting resolved or being dealt with very poorly.

New World has too much happening and the pacing is too quick to give you time to grasp why “that big thing that just went down in the last scene” matters to the plot. This story attempts to follow up on The Incredible Hulk, Eternals, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and references Black Widow, all within a runtime of less than 2 hours. Sam Wilson happens to be in the middle of all these different threads, kind of just because. They were trying to use these plot points to show how ‘regular-guy Sam’ can still be Captain America even when he’s just helping. It falls straight out of the sky, trying to execute this idea properly.

The action is clearly directed by a man who has no idea how to direct action. Is that sentence a bit redundant? Maybe, but so are the action scenes in this movie. Sam’s character arc is supposed to be him rising up and proving that he can take on the Captain America mantle. Yet his suit is made out of vibranium, so he can’t really be hurt, which counteracts the whole point of, like, you know, the movie.

Had they hired a real director and people who know how to write a script, Captain America: Brave New World could have been something really special. Unfortunately, they hired people who historically have not worked on good movies. This should’ve shown everyone, “Marvel is back!” Instead, it is a poor man’s attempt to recreate The Winter Soldier and fails at nearly every aspect of filmmaking.