Captain America: Brave New World

I've talked many times about not being a big blockbuster guy, which has been true for most of my life. The same goes for franchises: a big reason I focus on movies at the expense of television is a general distaste for stories which refuse to end. As such, it may come as a surprise that I was once an MCU fan. I saw the majority of the Infinity Saga in theaters (although there are still a few I've never watched at all). I enjoyed many of them to some degree or another, while acknowledging precious few were anything special. As with many other people, I mostly washed my hands of the series with Avengers: Endgame. I've seen a few since then, but as the story came to a satisfying conclusion, I wasn't particularly interested in what came next. I was released of my obligation.

But I'm always up for a good movie. So when the trailers for Captain America: Brave New World evoked some of the same ideas that make Captain America: The Winter Soldier my favorite MCU film (a spy thriller shot through with distrust of the government), I perked up. It played up the conflict between Sam Wilson aka Captain America (Anthony Mackie) and President Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (Harrison Ford), once again testing Cap's adherence to his ideals. What do you do if the POTUS is at the center of a conspiracy? While not a particularly provocative idea in the grand scheme of things, especially as it echoes the reality in which Americans live, that something so salacious made it into a post-Endgame Marvel film had me intrigued.

Ah, to imagine what could have been.

Although I was getting The Winter Soldier vibes from those trailers, I didn't expect so much of Brave New World to be a direct rip-off. The first chunk of the film is almost a beat-for-beat recreation of the opening mission. Cap must retrieve a high-value item he knows little about before the thief makes contact with the buyer, plunges into the area from an airplane with no parachute to the astonishment of a newbie, and he fights a mid-level heavy before getting to the bigger bad guy who will show up again later. The difference is we're in a Oaxacan compound instead of an aircraft carrier. Not that it stops there. Now that Sam is Cap, he's selected Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) as the new Falcon. Which apparently means his job is to be a snarky quip machine who follows around Cap like a puppy dog, jettisoning any of the cool or charisma Mackie brought to that character a decade ago. Cap is joined by a Widow trainee (Ruth Bat-Seraph aka Sabra, portrayed by Shira Haas), so you can't help but compare her to Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, which isn't fair to anyone. There's even a secret lab in a military bunker where Cap and the Widow find the real Big Bad, the mad scientist pulling the strings behind the scenes in an attempt to destabilize the world, sans the cool, retro-futurist construction of the earlier film. I could go on.

But it's the differences and fumbled imitations which doom this movie to the garbage heap. For all the ideological conflict between Ross and Sam promised by the trailer (and the aping of The Winter Soldier), the most we get is Sam's resistance to restarting a POTUS-controlled Avengers. Driving this home is how little they interact after the plot is kicked off by Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) attempting to assassinate Ross, leading to Sam's firing and determination to prove his friend was set up. Of course, we know from the moment it happens he was under mind-control (despite Cap not figuring that out for another 45 minutes or so), which drains most of the tension from that plot line. It could have shifted our focus to Ross, but we already have a sense of his role in the situation due to a myriad of unsubtle hints. And the ultimate Big Bad is scantly used, hanging out in the shadows while his mind-control and other remotely activated schemes do his dirty work.

It would have been more forgivable if we spent the intervening time playing with those conceits, or if it ever impacted people we care about. Maybe they were counting on audiences being familiar with Isaiah Bradley from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and thus caring about him being framed, which illustrates a huge challenge with managing cross-medium sequels. In any case, after that initial hit, there's just one more use of mind-control, over an hour later. It's meant to be grand, as it kicks off the big end of act two set piece, but what follows plays out as a puzzle for Sam and Joaquin to solve, robbing it of a sense of danger. Even worse, it's a puzzle they only solve due to some incredible contrivances and stretching of time.

All the while, the action is bland. Thankfully, it doesn't succumb to the flurry of cuts which dominate blockbuster action scenes, and there are a couple medium-wide shots of the combat to help locate it. But it consists of a lot of CGI shield and wing work, which is fine enough I guess, just a lot less impressive. Especially when they establish his wings' ability to power up early on, then forget about until the end fight (which doesn't deserve to be called the climax). That fight is itself a CGI mess where things just happen without build or escalation. Most egregious is how pleased with itself the film is, giving us three separate action sequences involving slo-mo. They're trying to yell "Wasn't that super freaking cool?", but given the preponderance of CGI and stunt doubles, and the lack of stakes in each fight overall, all it could ever elicit from the crowd is a groan.

The VFX have become one of the major talking points of the post-Endgame MCU films, and rightfully so in the wake of dumpster fires like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Overall it wasn't that bad here, although it was incredibly uneven throughout. It looked fine to good in some scenes, although it never blew me away. Conversely, there were a handful of abysmal monstrosities, especially noticeable since they included both the Big Bag and the Final Boss. The compositing on the other hand...oh boy. I wasn't especially looking for the seams, yet they constantly jumped out at me. It was alarming how frequently the actors were obviously standing in front of their environment, instantly disrupting any chance of immersion. Similarly, some of the shot-reverse shot setups feature mismatched lighting, highlighting that they weren't filmed at the same time. It stands out most starkly in the end fight, breaking the movie magic before it even begins.

In the middle of this maelstrom is Anthony Mackie. It's hard to say "Poor Anthony Mackie" with a straight face, given his key role is the biggest franchise in history for over a decade. But Evans was such a perfect fit for Cap, quick-witted yet earnest, able to convincingly pull off the action-heavy and emotionally heavy scenes equally well. Mackie's attempt to slot in feels like what it is: an impression. He's perfectly fine, but he doesn't have the star power nor acting chops to pull it off. As such, he's unable to make anything of this mess. He's not aided by Ramirez, who's downright bad while admittedly not being helped one iota by a script which saddles him with eighty percent of the exposition while trying to make him as quippy and naive as Spider-Man with exactly zero success. Haas makes no impression with her acting throughout, although I'd be lying if I ignored her unique physical presence. Meanwhile, Ford growls his way through all of his lines as he's wont to do, landing on exasperated more than anything else. He does seem to be putting in some effort, but is hampered by the undercooked character of Ross and their need for him to keep referring back to the events of a much earlier film.

Capping off my frustration is that everything presented as an idea is simply an empty continuation from a previous property. For example, it may seem notable that the first villain we see a Black Captain America face in his first movie is a Black man (Sidewinder, portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito), especially given the plot is then driven by the wrongful re-imprisonment of another Black man, and the director is Nigerian-American Julius Onah. But the brief history Isaiah mentions of having been a super soldier before being wrongfully imprisoned for thirty years was a big part of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And Sidewinder was added entirely in reshoots for the purpose of returning in later MCU movies (which also explains why he disappears for more than half the movie). So none of this represents Onah's vision, or even Kevin Feige's. They were just obligations.

Which is what the whole MCU has felt like since the end of the Infinity Saga. This train started moving over fifteen years ago, and it's picked up an incredible head of steam. There's no stopping it. The longer it lasts, the more its insistence on weaving together its stories and characters results in a knotted mess rather than a satisfying multi-threaded approach to world-building. Part of what made the Infinity Saga so successful is how many entries were good individual stories first, and worried about connecting to the larger overall plot later, which was itself strong yet simple. However, the past six years have seen these films flail as they seek direction in vain. The plots keep their characters in relative stasis, while their connective tissue is built around cameos we're supposed to care about and tying up loose ends whose source most people have forgotten. Far from the exciting prospect it once was for all these characters to converge, the aimless fan service has become exhausting. Over thirty movies into the series (ignoring the TV shows) and with no end in sight, you have to wonder when audiences will finally lose their patience. I know I have.