Captain America Brave New World Movie Review

A film that feels like it’s held together by duct tape Brave New World isn’t one of the worst MCU film but is one you will not remember much from ether

After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red. Marvel continues to put out mediocre entries that have horrible scripts that are paper thin thematically, character wise, and with a lack of vision of what the films story should be. You can tell they wanted to draw echoes to Winter Solider, but the writing is nowhere near that level, so it comes off a bit similar and hollow.

The direction of the film is so mediocre at best at worst it is scattershot and all over the place it has no sense of pace or focus to it every choice made just feels like what is the easiest way to do this not the most creative. The first example is the way the action is shot there are moments like when Sam uses his wings and the shield in some cool ways but that is very short supply the rest of the time the action scenes are over edited that make the fight scenes very hard to follow with no sense of geography of the environments that felt like green screen which was disappointing. The camera placement in this film is so uninspired there is no energy there is no sense of confidence in telling the story like you see in Winter Solider the boat scene in the beginning was a great beginning that announced the Russo’s in the MCU in this film there is none of that its lifeless or just barley good enough.

The cast of the film is good despite how horrible the script is they all do their best with what they are given starting with Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson taking over as the new cap but in the first half of the film, he given nothing but plot and expositional dialogue that is brutal in how inorganic as it can get. This a shame because Mackie is good, he has proven he can carry the shield but this film gives him almost nothing to play the best scenes are with Isaah Bradley and president Ross but those are few and far between all the garbage that feels like it’s been held together by duct tape and the idea of him not taking the super solider serum is great but feels tacked on and not focused on where he is doubted by everyone around him making him question himself but then comes to believe in himself that he would not need it but it just thrown in there. Harrison Ford as thunderbolt Ross is great he does the lords work making up for how the script not having any specificity he brings a lot of emotion to this character if they had done a better job establishing what his arc is that he is a father who wants to prove to his daughter he has changed and wants to atone for his mistakes in the past but it’s not laid out clearly enough so it’s not as satisfying. One way they could have set it up would have been if after Infinity war and endgame he sees that he was wrong about the avengers combined with his health issues he wants to seek redemption but then the leader exposes how he helped Ross get ahead in politics so you question if he has really changed so by the end it has the emotional impact they were going for between Ross and his daughter Betty. The rest of cast acting wise are fine they are just wasted and cut down to the bare minimum just to try to make the plot make some kind of sense, but they are all barley one dimensional characters just for plot which was so bad.

The writing in this film is awful the exposition is nails on a chalkboard none of it felt naturally weaved into the story the dialogue was so stilted no human talks like this you can tell in reshoots they just tried to limp over the finish line it was approaching Rise of Skywalker territory. A big problem I have had with the MCU is the style of humor always feels forced that sucks the dramatic tension out of the film and in this film man it reared its ugly head at its worst in this film none of the humor worked it was so grating on my nerves it made the actor who is supposed to be the new falcon so annoying not endearing like John McClain in Die Hard for example. Thematically the film is so thin, unclear, and felt so neutered which is confusing when you are doing a political thriller called Captain America the idea of having Sam and Ross who have been at odds try to work through their differences to come together to rebuild the Avengers to give the country hope is great but because of how sloppily written the film is it is not flushed out the way you would want which is so unfortunate.

The look of the film is so unimaginative in how the film is shot particularly the action scenes are so choppy, over edited, and you can’t tell what is going on that you have no investment in as a result. The production design compounds those issues like when Ross is talking with the other world leaders it’s so boring that they just went what can we do easily, quickly, that doesn’t cost too much which hurts the film that makes feel so blandly put together just to get something out when this film could have been great.

Final thoughts are this was another example of what goes wrong in modern blockbusters that I hope that now they are past just relying on reshoots and post production to fix everything that Fantastic four, Daredevil, and thunderbolts can give you excitement that marvel is headed in the right direction but for this one I give it 2 and a half out of 5 cannot go fresh on this one.