The newest Marvel entry offers political intrigue, social commentary, and boring spectacle.
This creates a dilemma for Disney. Kevin Feige and the Marvel Films cabal attempt to create as broadly appealing media as possible. And in case you haven’t noticed, the current political environment in America is fraught for conflict and division. This reared its head when the newest Captain America film entry, Brave New World, went through multiple rounds of revisions and reshoots, largely due to needing to reconsider the delicate political elements of the film. This includes even the name of the film. Originally it was subtitled New World Order, a phrase associated with multiple conspiracy theories.
All of this is why it is surprising to see so much of Brave New World’s political backbone still intact. It’s not a film that stakes specific grounds on the progressive-conservative divide in the United States, but it does have a perspective on the nature of political corruption at the root of American government. It is absolutely a fluke of timing that the film is laser-focused on a newly elected President attempting to project strength and worth in his first 100 days. But it is hard to not watch the film through the prism of currently political realities. To that end, the film both is bolstered and falters slightly.
Picking up from the events of the Disney+ Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) finds himself still getting used to being the new Captain America. The film doesn’t shy away from Wilson’s Blackness causing friction as he takes up this role. In fact, in one of the more objectively political plotlines of the film, Wilson has created a deep bond with Isiah Bradley, the second man to take the super soldier serum who was subjected to extended incarceration and human experimenting. With echoes of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Bradley is the voice of Wilson’s conscience to be clear-eyed on who he is serving when he becomes a tool of the US government. The weight of being a Black man serving a country that has done little to serve him hangs over the whole film.
Meanwhile, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) has been elected president, with a message of conquering the rising challenges of the superhero age with a vague direction of “Together.” His first order of business is to help guide a treaty between various countries all vying for a piece of adamantium, a new metal discovered on the remains of Arishem (a nice nod to my beloved Eternals.) As a major act of international diplomacy, Ross is mutually motivated by assisting his country but also cementing his own legacy.
This plan is disrupted when several sleeper agents, including Bradley, all attempt to assassinate Ross. It becomes clear pretty quickly the shooters are victims of brainwashing, and Wilson takes it upon himself to discover who is responsible. But President Ross appears to know more than he is letting on.
Thus is the thorny plot of Brave New World. Like most MCU films of this era, it pulls from dropped plotlines from previous films, ranging from classics like Winter Soldier to less remembered fare such as The Incredible Hulk. Unlike some other entries however, the film is more or less readable with or without those references, though they certainly heighten the effect. Any details that you need to be made aware of, the film will certainly fill in the gaps.
As the film’s ostensible co-leads, Mackie and Ford make for a formidable pairing. Mackie is in full movie star mode here, his kind-hearted but stern masculinity cementing him as a cornerstone for the MCU going forward. Ford, by contrast, is fully flexing his old-man grumpiness to full effect here, though tinged with an ongoing sense of grappling for redemption. A common thread across both characters is a mirrored imposter syndrome; Wilson is attempting to prove he is up to the task set forth by his predecessors, while Ford’s sight is set on proving those who question his character wrong.
The intermixing of political intrigue and personal narrative is nothing new; it has been in the DNA of the Captain America sub-franchise from the beginning. But it really takes center stage here, where the characters are given room to breathe and explore their inner lives in a way that impresses when compared to the most bombastic impulses of these movies. It is a movie of two men who are uncertain of their place in the world, questioning if they really have earned their spot.
The cast beyond Mackie and Ford is a bit shakier. Danny Ramirez returns as Joaquin Torres, Wilson’s partner/sidekick who is clearly inspired by Sam. Ramirez never quite finds a voice for the character, and often seems to exist simply for Wilson to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Similarly, Shira Haas debuts as Ruth Bat-Seraph, an Israeli agent who went through the same training as Black Widow, who is the head of Ross’s security detail. Her character was massively trimmed out of the film, and you can feel the gaps, as she appears throughout without any major purpose or direction.
The other let down of the film is that it’s action can’t quite live up to the standard set before it. Comparing any MCU entry to Winter Soldier is an unfair ask, as it is still the film that set the standard for a reason. But comparing any action sequence in Brave New World to just the elevator sequence in Winter Soldier, and the deficit becomes clear. Multiple scenes in Brave New World look weird thanks to obvious compositing and CGI. The setpieces feel overly contained, oddly cheap and unimaginative.
If you’ve seen any marketing for Brave New World, you likely know President Ross’s ultimate fate. Viewers should know going in it takes the film a while to get there, and when it does the end result is slightly hollow, feeling lifeless in the final conflict. For all the promising aspects of the movie, it is that much more frustrating that the theoretical payoff of all the drama leaves much to be desired. Still, compared to other films with competent action but little in terms of depth, this outcome is much preferred.
