Films for Breakfast

To say that Marvel Studios needs a win goes beyond just a string of underwhelming box-office failures – the audience needs to experience hope and genuine excitement from these films and characters to remind us all about why we fell in love with them in the first place. But, perhaps, that’s a bit of an unfair expectation to set on Captain America: Brave New World, which is the first theatrical outting for Sam Wilson taking on the mantle as Cap. This puts me in a tricky situation as a critic, where I feel the need to address the clear elephant in the room regarding Marvel’s reputation as of late but also want to be objective about films as singular entries. Brave New World falls somewhere in the middle of these expectations. Will it save face and reignite passion in one-go? Definitely not. Did I find it to be an entertaining outting? Yes!

Captain America: Brave New World picks up a few years after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, finding Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) fulling accepting the role of being Captain America after Steve Rogers handed him the shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame. After a relunctant meeting with newly-elected President of the United States, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford), Sam finds himself in the middle of an interntional incident that could truly hurt his friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who gets framed for a crime he didn’t intentionally commit. Sam, with the help of his partner Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), races to uncover the true masterminds of this global plot and stop them before its too late.

One of the best tools Brave New World has in its arsenal is that of the character of Sam Wilson, who I’ve always enjoyed but found really cemented himself as a worthy successor to Steve Rogers in his show The Falcon and Winter Soldier. Mackie once again shines in the role, exuding the empathy and courage that Wilson is supposed to embody. Even in the wake of a global conspiracy that pitts unions against each other, Wilson doesn’t loose sight of his humanity and compassion; making his absolute goal to deescalte situations and see the good within almost anyone he comes across. This sentiment is echoed effeciently throughout the film, and I found it to be a truly strong emotional core that kept the film running.

On the opposite end of this, I found Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Thaddeus Ross, once played by the late-great William Hurt, to be one of the absolute best aspects of the film. I found his character arc to be truly compelling, as we find him in the aftermath of his questionable decisions in films like Civil War and Infinity War. Ross truly feels like a different, more evolved character this time around – clearly the same man who made enemies with a lot of our favorite heroes, but with a true sense of regret and urgency to change for the better. Ford does a genuinely fantastic job at conveying these regrets in a way that matches perfectly with Sam’s eternal optimism and belief that everyone has the capacity to be good.

It’s no secret that the film has gone through a lot of reshoots, but I try to only judge what is presented in front of me and look at the film in a fair context. And I can honestly say while the film has a bit of a scrappy quality where you can tell it has been reedited more than once, it largely flows pretty well and I didn’t mind the bits that you can tell are reshoots. If anything, the parts of the film that feel recently included are some of the best moments and feel integral to the films’ best qualities being even better. Sure, the film could’ve potentially found a way to make the connective tissue of these sequences flow a bit more organically – but for a film with as much publicized drama as this has, I expected far worse.

On a surface level, I think the film does a solid job at just simply being an entertaining Marvel film. There are certainly some rough visuals at points when it feels like it is going overboard on green screen, but the action is largely exciting and frenetic in a way that keeps you entertained. The through-line plot that connects all of this together is just compelling enough to make the film feel like a bit more than just weightless entertainment. While I wouldn’t put this on the top of the Marvel rankings list, I do think it shows potential for a better path moving forward.

All in all, does Brave New World have some questionable editing choices and a bit of a convoluted plot? Sure. I can’t imagine that anyone who isn’t completely drenched within the lore of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will fully understand all the callbacks the film is going for to make sense of the plot – but as someone who has found a lot of the recent outtings to be disappointments, I think Brave New World is a more than solid return to form for the studio and delivers a worthwhile entry for the character of Sam Wilson to prove his worth as a leader.