Captain America: Brave New World

All good teams lose sometimes and so it is that Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t usher in the brave and new world of its title so much as, shockingly, a valid contender for the worst film of the entire and storied franchise that is the MCU.

It’s hard to know quite how we got to this point. Marvel smartly took a breath last year in their hectic release schedule, released Deadpool & Wolverine to record numbers and teased and announced some really exciting projects for this phase.

A grounded, down to earth, political thriller which could build on the decent Falcon & Winter Soldier series, further integrate The Incredible Hulk into the MCU (after the successful reintegration of Tim Roth’s Abomination) and hard launch Anthony Mackie as the new Captain America should have been an easy win and the absolute correct choice to kick off the year.

However, despite Mackie’s best efforts (he’s easily the redeeming element here) the film around him is so obviously a hastily assembled, tampered with, unfinished, blurry, incoherent, retconning, safe and old-fashioned mess.

There must come a point in a film’s development, especially one in a franchise of this length and backed by a company with such deep pockets, where the question of whether to just give up arises. This is one where that option should probably have been taken.

It’s such a shame but this film feels much more akin to the dreaded SPUMC films of Venom et al than anything usually associated with the Marvel Studios banner.

It doesn’t even kick off with the Marvel fanfare, immediate alarm bells raised, and as we drop into a distinctly noughties feeling, messy action sequence you’re left desperately hoping for something to latch onto.

As mentioned, Mackie mostly provides it and the underlying dynamic between Sam Wilson and Isiah Bradley is the film’s high point.

A plot to assassinate the President sees Isiah once again as the fall guy and Sam’s attempts to clear Isiah’s name and also find a place for himself amongst the shifting universe have real political, emotional and personal stakes. You feel this was the original vision for the film before they shoehorned in a number of superfluous elements which fall flat.

Finally making mention of the Celestial in the Indian Ocean and having it contain Adamantium is a nice development but the ensuing battle and competing factions just doesn’t really make any sense.

We get two villains thrown into the mix who make little impact (a huge waste of both Giancarlo Esposito and Tim Blake Nelson) and the reveal of the Red Hulk (ruined by the trailer and promotional material) also has little to no bearing and makes little sense in the context of the film.

It requires a herculean memory of the original Incredible Hulk and subsequent films and doesn’t move the universe in any significant way like it could, should and occasionally hints at.

Instead it raises infinite questions that Marvel themselves now need to wrangle into future content and simultaneously drops elements in never previously mentioned which causes issues with what’s come before.

A rush job that clearly no one bothered to watch or think about before releasing it which sadly goes against everything the MCU has previously stood for. It doesn't even look good visually with a few weak CGI moments and a largely blurry, zoomed in feel that feels off.

Hopefully this is just a blip that won’t last as long as the in-universe 5 year version.

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