'Captain America: Brave New World' review: Star spangled boring
Courtesy of Marvel Studios
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Watching the latest soulless offering from Marvel Studios, “Captain America: Brave New World,” a film that feels like it was pieced together with duct tape and poor insert shots, I couldn't help but wonder: how did it come to this? Once a sprawling, interconnected universe of films seen as gospel in the theatrical realm, Marvel has now devolved into cheaply veiled, visually inert cardboard replicas of much better movies. Ironically, this includes “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” where Marvel infused the shield-wielding hero’s second solo outing with a splash of “The Parallax View.”
But “The Winter Soldier” wasn’t a sequel content to dwell in the past. On the contrary, it looked toward the future of its characters. In contrast, “Brave New World” feels stuck, spending more time tying up loose ends from films like “The Incredible Hulk” and “Eternals” than giving Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) – now Captain America – anything meaningful to fight for. When Mackie took up the shield from Chris Evans, I doubt he imagined being reduced to second fiddle opposite a raging Hulk played by none other than Harrison Ford.
Director Julius Onah, working with a story by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, and Dalan Musson, handles the action competently, but it's the story where this film loses all credibility. The script throws familiar Marvel heroes into a high-tech, low-stakes political conspiracy thriller, where the world teeters on the brink of collapse. The parallels to our current political climate likely won't be lost on viewers (there’s plenty of talk about coming “together” as a nation and putting country before politics). But don’t be fooled into thinking Marvel is making some timely, insightful commentary; it's purely coincidental.
The film opens with Ford as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross – taking over the role from the late William Hurt – who has just been elected president. He delivers a speech about unity and his transformation into a changed man, seeking forgiveness for his past actions, which included hunting down the Hulk and being morally responsible for the destruction of several cities, including Harlem.
Ross approaches Sam Wilson with a proposal to forge a better future together. He also subtly wants Sam to work for the government, a recipe for disaster. However, Cap understands the game and assures his allies – including the newly anointed Falcon (Danny Ramirez) and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, returning from Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”) – that his eyes are “wide open.”
Throughout the film, the screenplay clumsily shoehorns in plenty of secondary characters. There's a forgettable supervillain named Sidewinder (played by Giancarlo Esposito, who looks like he was digitally inserted into each scene), and Tim Blake Nelson returns as the goofy Samuel Sterns (sporting a brain that literally sticks out of his head that will evoke nightmares of Peter Saragaard’s “Green Lantern”). Then there's Shira Haas, playing a national security agent whose agenda is never fully explained.
Despite the hype surrounding Red Hulk’s inclusion and a plot that culminates in an international standoff over the Indian Ocean, “Brave New World” remains incredibly dull. And perhaps that's the future of Marvel Studios. It’s becoming clear that the studio no longer cares about investing its massive budgets into improved visual landscapes, forcing talented directors like Onah (don’t sleep on “Luce”) to work within the confines of a studio that rushes movies into production.
Almost all of the exterior scenes in “Brave New World” were so obviously shot on a green screen and it was painfully apparent the actors were rarely performing opposite each other (pay attention to a cameo towards the final moments of the film to see what I mean), and the ADR (especially on Nelson) is laughably cartoonish. It didn’t used to be like this.
Maybe that's the point of “Brave New World”: it’s a film trying to make peace with a reality that was once nostalgic. At one point, Ross asks Sam Wilson to try and bring back the Avengers, and you can’t help but remember how good we had it. Once, a statement like that would have sparked cheers and excitement. Now, it just elicits groans.
Grade: D+
CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD is now playing in theaters.