The Replacements — Captain America: Brave New World
There’s nothing wrong with an honest mistake. Human beings are inherently fallible creatures, and our entire lives are spent in one giant exercise of trial and error, hoping to achieve a level of balance that allows us to prosper and reach a state of contentment once we’ve adjusted enough to meet our individual goals properly. In order to accomplish this, we must all learn from our own personal gaffes as we go, and the first step to that is to admit that the flaws exist.
If you want to know why Captain America: Brave New World comes up so woefully short, it’s because Kevin Feige and his ilk at Marvel simply refuse to make even that basic gesture of self-awareness. While the film is by no means a disaster, it is a complete waste of time, because it shows that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has still not gained any knowledge or wisdom from the blunders of the past. In fact, in a baffling display, the flick seems more concerned with tying up loose ends from previously derided entries that no one was really asking for than actually becoming a showcase for the newly-promoted title hero. In what should have been a fantastic adventure to usher in a new era for the franchise, the movie is instead a retread of irrelevant characters and plots that renders its lead as little more than a placeholder in his own story.
The first major faux-pas is that the MCU is still trying to commoditize the audience with online homework, as the picture is more a continuation of the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier than it is a true Captain America sequel. During that show, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) was officially named the new Cap and given the shield. If that were the only detail that carried over from the streaming program, we’d probably be okay, as Sam was a good friend to Steve Rogers, so it would only make sense that he would be the successor. Unfortunately, though, the main plot sort of revolves around characters introduced on TV, and a late cameo from Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) pretty much makes it clear that the intention was for you to watch it beforehand in order to understand the context of these relationships. Once again, Feige decides that it’s more important to shake every last penny out of fans’ pockets than it is to just tell a coherent story.
This complete lack of clarity in continuity is firmly established in the opening sequence, where Sam infiltrates “The Serpent Society” and fights off “Sidewinder” (Giancarlo Esposito) — two entities we’ve never heard of in the movies and thus do not care about — in order to free some hostages and recover something classified that was stolen. He’s aided in this raid by the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), who debuted in the TV show, so unless you paid extra you have no idea who he is, and again, nor do you care. After the successful operation, Sam takes Torres to train with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly from M.A.N.T.I.S. back in the day, so he knows a thing or two about superhero derring-do), a supersolider like Steve created during the Korean War, and who was imprisoned and tortured through experimentation by the government after his service. I’m sure all of this was fascinating in the streaming program, but for those of us who watch the movies, we’re left wondering who the hell this guy is and why he’s suddenly Sam’s bestie. We’re essentially a half hour into this flick, and so far pretty much all the crucial information we need to even engage with the plot is locked behind a Disney paywall.
Meanwhile, Thaddeus Ross has been elected President. He’s now played by Harrison Ford after the death of William Hurt, their difference in appearance brushed off with a line about how Ross had to shave off his mustache in order to win the election, which I guess is a reference to the fact that no President has sported facial hair since William Howard Taft. This represents the second high-level fuck-up of the movie, a lack of consistency in messaging. When Chadwick Boseman died, Marvel did the right thing and decided that it would be disrespectful to recast the role of Black Panther. Instead, they made Wakanda Forever as a tribute to the late hero while forging a new path forward in his memory and honor.
That was for an actor who starred in one movie and had side roles in three others. Hurt played Ross in four films as well, and while he was never the focal character, he was a noteworthy supporting player and antagonist in all of them. So what do we do with him? Recast his ass, tout suite! I mean, there’s absolutely NO WAY that the audience would be smart enough to accept a different character as the primary foil, so it’s far more respectful and appropriate to just bring in a bigger star and pretend the dead guy just got a shave (I’m choking on my own sarcasm). It’s not the first time that Marvel has recast certain roles (Rhodey and Banner chief among them), but it’s the first time since Boseman that a performer’s death necessitated a change, and this is what they went with. Oof. For what it’s worth, Ford does a good job, in fact he’s arguably the best thing about the entire flick. But this is about principle, something Marvel rarely acknowledges, and it honestly just makes things feel more confusing to have a replacement Ross. We’re not connecting with the character we know from previous entries. We’re just seeing Harrison Ford, and not once does he say, “Get off my plane,” so what are we meant to do?
The actual story begins when Ross invites Sam (along with Torres and Bradley) to the White House to celebrate their victory and announce the formation of a treaty with Japan and other world powers, centering the entire plot on the second-most exciting element of The Phantom Menace (and all that implies). The container that Sidewinder stole was filled with adamantium, because we have to figure out some way to incorporate the X-Men and Wolverine into the MCU outside of Deadpool’s separate multiverse timeline. The adamantium comes from “Celestial Island,” the land mass formed by the aborted emergence of the Celestial Tiamut from Eternals, because if there’s one movie in all the MCU that definitely needed a follow-up, it was fucking Eternals. Ross wants to task Sam with reforming the Avengers, but the positive envoys are quickly ended when a mysterious entity plays the song, “Mr. Blue,” which triggers something of a hypnotic response in the crowd, resulting in several secret service agents and Bradley firing guns at Ross in an apparent assassination attempt. When the effects of his blackout wears off, Bradley surrenders himself, having no memory of what happened, but that doesn’t stop Ross from seeking an immediate death penalty (not a thing that can happen) and employing former Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) to investigate the incident and keep Sam and Torres on a very short leash.
There isn’t much suspense in who the mastermind is behind all this, just incredulity at the nature of the callback. Pulling the strings is Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), the dark web nerd who aided Banner back in The Incredible Hulk when he was still played by Edward Norton (the song choice is a reference to Sterns’ online alias, by far the most clever Easter Egg we’ve had in a while). You may recall that in that film’s climax, Sterns got injured and a few drops of Bruce’s blood dripped into his open wound, which began some sort of transformation. That was nearly 20 years ago, so most fans had dismissed this as a thread that wasn’t worth recovering, but instead Feige et al give us Massive Misstep #3. See, Ross sent Sterns up the river as a patsy for everything that went down in that movie, apparently, imprisoning him without trial, and using his newly acquired abilities (chiefly superintelligence and forecasting advice based on statistical probabilities) to advance his political career, promising Sterns a pardon that has yet to materialize. Sterns has now escaped from his ultra secure lockup and hatched a diabolical scheme to scuttle the treaty and destroy Ross as revenge, caring nothing for whatever collateral damage and death he causes in the process. However, rather than simply kill Ross, he has instead been giving him medicine laced with gamma radiation (somehow) so that all the stress of his machinations will cause Ross to turn into Red Hulk, thus ruining his reputation and forever damning him in the eyes of his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler).
Uh, mwahahahahaha?
No seriously, this is the villain’s plan? Destroying a politician’s credibility and making his daughter not like him? That’s your revenge for years of unjust imprisonment? That’s what your genius brain came up with? Really? And for those who think I just spoiled something, believe me I didn’t. The movie spoiled it all by itself by including Red Hulk in the trailer, complete with Harrison Ford’s face (in fairness, it’s the one good effect in the whole project). That could have been a major reveal for the audience, but instead the biggest moment of the film was handed over in the marketing because the whole thing is a giant nothing burger and Marvel needed some sort of hook to sell this. It sure as fuck wasn’t going to be Bucky.
This is that last horrible error, this constant need for callbacks and references that somehow led the filmmakers down a rabbit hole to creating a story contingent on two of the worst entries in the entire MCU. The Incredible Hulk was considered mediocre at best when it came out in 2008, though it has gotten some latter-day forgiveness because it was only the second film in the franchise and Marvel clearly didn’t know what it was doing yet. But Eternals? The shared rock bottom of the series (along with The Marvels)? Who could have possibly thought that we wanted to revisit that piece of shit, and to retcon it as an eventual origin for Wolverine? This is what happens when you sacrifice artistic and intellectual honesty for the sake of interconnectivity and cross-promotion, and even then, they didn’t have the balls to actually have BANNER in this movie, even though most of the story flows from HIS picture.
The actual production isn’t actively awful like some of the other later MCU entries. Sterns’ villain look, incorporating a giant brain that misshapes his head, is goofy as hell, but it’s not nearly as egregious as the M.O.D.O.K. abomination, or even Peter Capaldi’s laughable Thinker look in the DCEU film, The Suicide Squad. Torres is an annoying character, but he eventually becomes somewhat charming, same with Ruth. Bucky is only on screen for five minutes to remind us all that Thunderbolts is coming out later this year. Mackie does the absolute best he can and definitely rises above the material. There are physical sets rather than the wall of CGI nonsense that filled the scenery of Shang-Chi and Quantumania. This is decidedly not as terrible as we’ve seen of late from the franchise.
But that doesn’t mean it’s good, either. The entire affair feels like filler, a stop-gap on the calendar because God forbid Feige let there be an absence to let the audience’s heart grow fonder. There’s not a single original note to be had, nothing that allows Sam to stand out as his own person and character. When the streaming show came out, there was a lot of uproar from racist dipshits about having a black Captain America, that he’d never live up to Steve Rogers. This was a golden opportunity for Marvel to shut all those assholes up by making a feature where Sam took control and ownership of the role, not just within the universe itself but in the meta sense, and instead he’s basically relegated to a side character in his own film. Just like Ross and Torres, he ends up feeling like a cheap substitute rather than offering a new interpretation or possibilities for development.
This extends to some of the lesser production elements as well. There were numerous reshoots done, which is never a good sign, and you see the shoddiness in the final product. None of these is more egregious than Bradley, who goes from having a high and tight crew cut to his hair growing by at least two inches while he’s in prison. You might think that’s just the passage of time while he awaits his kangaroo court trial, but it’s literally one day. Not even Cousin Itt’s hair grows that fast. There are also tons of holes in both Ross and Sterns’ plans, particularly why and how Ross was able to set Sterns up, and why Sterns with his super intelligence never bothered to break out of prison beforehand, or why he doesn’t consider basic counters to his schemes. For someone so smart, he leaves so many avenues for his own comeuppance. Even the post-credits scene is asinine, as it just hints at “other worlds” as if this is new information. Half the universe got snapped out of existence by an alien five years ago. Did Feige really think this was going to blow our minds?
It’s ironic that the subtitle of the film is Brave New World. It was originally going to be called New World Order, which sounds more thematically appropriate to everything that transpires in the actual story, but they changed the name during shooting. It’s clear that Feige has never actually read Aldous Huxley’s novel of the same name, nor did he read Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which inspired the line. Both of those literary works are about how wickedness thrives behind a façade of progress and kindness. Huxley’s book sees a dystopia where life is environmentally and genetically engineered to be almost mechanical, while the so-called “savages” live outside of society in places where art, philosophy, and individual thought thrive. They’re the good guys while the titular “new world” denizens are little more than mindless drones operating as cogs in a caste system. It’s clear that Feige doesn’t know this, or else he would have realized that this movie, with its interchangeable replacement players, is that very doomed system of lifelessness that we were warned about.
Grade: C
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Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on March 8, 2025.
