The Super Powered Fancast

Captain America: Brave New World

Marvel Studios

Written by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman and Dalan Musson

Directed by Julius Onah

Starring Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Tim Blake Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Xosha Roquemore, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, William Clarke McCullough and Takehiro Hira

Rated PG-13

Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan.

As a fan of Marvel movies, I was excited to hear that Sam Wilson’s Captain America was getting his own movie and the Disney Plus series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier does a great job of setting up who Sam would be after taking on the mantle. For his big screen debut, I was worried that Marvel Studios would take a too much too soon approach to the story and not allow Sam to be a focus in his own film. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The story revolves around General Thunderbolt Ross, played this time by Harrison Ford, becoming President of the United States. After getting elected, Ross convenes other world leaders to discuss and come up with a solution for the Celestial sitting in the middle of the ocean. I appreciated that this film addresses the events of The Eternals instead of ignoring a giant dead space god. The Celestials body has a new element that rivals vibranium called adamantium (the Wolverine fanboy in me smiled widely during that reveal) and its discovery is causing an arms race of sorts leading to covert actions and a theft of a sample that Captain America is sent to retrieve.

Things become more complicated politically when Sam brings Isaiah Bradley (Lumbley) to the White House for a party and something triggers the former super soldier into making an attempt on Ross. This gives the story personal stakes for Sam who continues to act in his role as counselor to the forgotten Captain America, but also puts him at odds with Ross who wants to work with Sam to reform the Avengers under his command. As Sam and Joaquin Torres (Ramirez) investigate both the theft and the attack on the White House, they find themselves being drawn into both dark political dealings and a personal vendetta from Samuel Sterns (Nelson) who has a long history with Ross.

I think the movie balances both parts of the story well with Sam’s Captain America being put into the position of disobeying orders to not only get to the truth, but to help a friend and fellow veteran. I really enjoyed the dynamic between Sam and Isaiah as well as with Joaquin. There are no big egos between them and I appreciated their camaraderie. I think the fact that Sam is relatively new to the mantle means that he wasn’t going to face off against a supervillain of either his own creation or who has targeted him personally. I think having the conflict focused on Ross was a smart choice and its connections to the events of The Incredible Hulk made sense to resolve that story as well as showcase that Ross’s choices have consequences.

Tim Blake Nelson is great as Sterns, but I wanted something more from the character with his time on screen. His plan is relatively sound and I like that his stakes were personal. In fact, that’s one of the things I liked about the movie. Brave New World has some relatively low stakes and feels more like a political thriller than a superhero movie. That’s what Sam Wilson’s first film should be. Sam shouldn’t be trying to take on a global or universal threat, not because he couldn’t find a way to overcome it, but because it wouldn’t be about him.

One of the things Sam struggles with is feeling like he deserves to be in the position he is despite all the work he puts into it and I appreciate those moments of doubt where he questions whether or not he should have taken the super soldier serum. Mackie does a great job of reflecting that in his performance while also giving great moments of humor.

The film isn’t perfect. There are moments that drag during Sam and Joaquin’s investigation into the conspiracy against Ross. Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder feels wasted and the Ruth Bat-Seraph (Haas) character felt lifeless most of the time. While the action is great, especially the sequence of Sam fighting to stop an all-out naval attack between two nations, I was expecting more. Also, the resolution of the Red Hulk storyline felt rushed because there was only one instance of the struggle Ross was dealing with shown in the film. I wish it had been a running storyline that would have felt more like a payoff when it finally happened.

Captain America: Brave New World is a good movie, not a great one. It does what it needs to do in order to establish that Sam Wilson is Captain America and that he is the only one. I wanted it to have more personal stakes for him, but that stakes it did have were well done. It needed to be a small film that was big on adventure and thrills while also giving Sam a mandate for how he moves as Captain America going forward and it does that. Hopefully, his next outing will push the character forward in a way where he and the audience embrace the mantle and the man behind it.