I saw Captain America: Brave New World on Monday and now that I've sat with my thoughts a little bit, I can share what I thought. I'll save the suspense and say I thought it was a good movie, but not great. It was a very SAFE movie. That statement is what I want to explore with my review, which will be a little different than how I normally talk about movies. Apologies if this gets a little long, but it will give you a little insight into how I feel.
Disney/Marvel missed a real opportunity here. Having a Black Captain America is a huge deal and instead of leaning into that, Marvel made a movie that is essentially color-blind, ignoring that topic completely. The "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" series addressed this and I thought this movie would take the opportunity to take that conversation further. It doesn't. The fact that a Black Captain America has a Hispanic side kick is also a huge deal. Again, not discussed here. For little black and hispanic kids, this was a chance to see someone that looks like them on the screen and that should play into SOMETHING in the story. I've said this numerous times, but I wish as a kid, I would have had movies like this.
Comics is a medium that was devoid of any substantive characters of color when I was growing up. If you want to say, "But Kevin, Marvel had Black Panther!". Yes, they did. But between 1979-1998, he did not have an ongoing series. That's out. We had Luke Cage and a smattering of others, but that was it. My point is, there were very few (Meteor Man, Steel) to watch.
Marvel could have pushed for this in their marketing, when their stars were on their press tour, etc. Poor Anthony Mackie had to tiptoe around any comments he made about being Captain America, lest the whole country got butt hurt. What is readily apparent is Disney was looking out for the bottom line. They are victim of the whole, "Go Woke, Go Broke" mentality. If they push this is ANY way to talk about it's diverse cast, they will get backlash and they will cower to it and worry about losing money. Instead of standing ten toes down, they lifted their foot up to appease the masses. I'm not saying this could have been as big as the moment we (my people) had with Black Panther, but it still could have been another kind of moment. It shows the different times we're living in now versus just over 8 years ago.
Those were my thoughts through this entire film. Their black director, Julius Onah was essentially handcuffed. You can't convince me this was the way he wanted to tell this story. This film had so many reshoots and this movie was supposed to come out LAST year. That lets you know the studio was heavily involved. How do I know last year? My son got Happy Meal toys for this movie last year and the movie itself was nowhere in sight.
So at my core, this movie was disappointing to me in this way. It comes out during Black History month, but nothing to celebrate that and that hurts.
Let me address the content of this movie. If you read this far, be warned. There are spoilers that I can't avoid to make some of my points.
Remember that Incredible Hulk movie from 2008 that Marvel conventiently forgets about? Well 17 years later, they decide to reference it. A lot. This movie is essentially Incredible Hulk 2 with an appearance by Captain America. In fact, I would argue the protagonist of the movie isn't really Sam Wilson, it's President Thunderbolt Ross. The antogonist is Samual Sterns. (The Leader to those comic book nerds). Remember him? Probably not. AGAIN, that movie was 17 years ago. They oddly choose to pull on that thread for the central conflict of this movie. Sterns is going after Ross and Sam Wilson and his sidekick Joquain are merely in the way for most of the movie. Sterns ONLY starts targeting Sam when he ruins his plans enough and that's really at the end of the movie where he goes directly at him.
This movie also tries to tell a mystery, but the audience knows what is happening throughout the movie. It's like a my first mysteries spy story. We've done this with Captain America: Winter Soldier already. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop so we can get on with it. To really get reductive, this feels very similar to Captain America: Winter Soldier and I'm sure that is very much by design. We even have a fun sized Black Widow stand in.
The hand to hand action stuff is very well done, my only fight scene issues is with Red Hulk and that's because I don't like bombastic action scenes like that in what was a pretty more realistic set of fight scenes.
My final, personal issue with the movie is the way they've portrayed Sam Wilson and some of this extends to Anthony Mackie and his portrayal. I think Marvel has gone too far to the side of snarky, wise cracking action hero. I've felt this way for a while, but that seems to be the template they use for all their characters and it is super annoying. I hate having to endure characters that seem like goofballs and then suspend my belief that they can just turn it on at will. Pick a side, Marvel. Captain America can have a sense of humor, but he is the standard and has to carry himself as such.
With as much as Sam Wilson would be carrying here, I don't think he'd be cracking wise so much. I like Anthony Mackie. He's a charasmatic and funny guy, but I feel like he has wacky sidekick energy, not leader of a team energy and that's where I think the movies have done him a disservice. No one is asking him to be Steve Rogers, but I would rather see a lot more serious side to him outside of fight time.
Ultimately, this movie feels like it is treading water for other movies and we'll see how much of these threads they actually pick up for other movies, other than trying to bring back the Avengers. Don't misunderstand me on this review, I didn't hate this movie. It's servicable. I'm just dealing with more disappointment of an awesome opportunity. I know I left a lot of meat on the bone with a bunch of other stuff in this movie (oh, now we're acknowledging something from the Eternals?!), but that wasn't what my heart was feeling.
