Captain America: Brave New World Pushes the MCU Doomsday Clock Closer to Midnight

“Consider the optics.” This warning, spoken by President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), is a telling line of dialogue in Brave New World. The fourth Captain America film has seemingly done nothing but consider its optics: the title was changed from New World Order during filming in 2023 to avoid connection to an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Nearly every textual connection between superhero Sabra (Shira Haas) and her native Israel has been scrubbed from the film – instead of a mutant Mossad agent, she is an ex-Widow and government agent. When an assassination attempt nearly claims the President’s life, the news dubs it a “White House shooting”, a strange choice of words that defensively distances the film from last year’s Trump rally shooting.

Marvel and Disney have worked hard (presumably over those substantive but downplayed reshoots) to assure the broadest range of audiences that, although their “political thriller” superhero film embraces provocative issues, they’re committed to no divisive or financially risky stance on any of them. The values the film espouses are predictably conservative or inapplicable to our real world systems – an assumed, fixed faith in the U.S. military, the belief that institutions can only harm us with direct external interference, and that the personal, empathetic growth of destructive power players means something. Directed by Julius Onah, Brave New World is as visually lifeless as the most lifeless MCU thrillers, marred by needless overcutting, flimsy digital backdrops and stilted composition; thematically, it says nothing confidently and even less coherently.

Some of its self-conscious alterations, like the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it news copy, feel like knee jerk overcorrections, but others point to the poor foresight and ugly politics at the heart of the Marvel project. The Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) National Committee renewed their call to boycott the film, saying, “Disney’s superficial changes to the character cannot erase its decades-long complicity in Israeli propaganda.” Recalling Kevin Feige’s words from 2018 that “the movies should represent the world in which they are made, and should be made by people that exist in the world and that bring new stories to it”, it’s clear that Disney damage control still has the final say on what stories make it out there.

The first Captain America film in nine years is also the first where Mackie’s character has truly accepted the mantle from Steve Rogers – an offer that the previous Cap made, in our timeline, five years ago. The fact that the MCU’s momentum has stalled so severely since pre-pandemic days is the least of this film’s problems – as is the lackluster passing-of-the-torch story that recycles the wheel-spinning inertia of Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and succeeds only in pushing its protagonist to an emotional state we should have reached years ago.

There are no real people in Brave New World – only important heroes (the wise-cracking duties have been passed from Mackie to a new Falcon played by Danny Ramirez), interchangeable military personnel (who all valorize Sam Wilson), and snarling villains (played by Tim Blake Nelson and Giancarlo Esposito, who are trying harder than the material deserves). In fact, the closest thing to a believably human person in the film is Isaiah Bradley (Curt Lumbly), the elderly Black super soldier who was subject to government experimentation early in his military career – after inexplicably trying to kill President Ross, he is imprisoned and threatened with the death penalty. A shot of Bradley sitting in prison uniform, staring out his prison window at a sliver of sunlight with fragile, fearful eyes, is a candid example of Brave New World’s desire to evoke real world pain within the borders of misguided and anemic franchise extension.

The script (which has five credited writers) consists of plot threads that feel like they were written in isolation and stitched together in the editing suite. The Serpent Society make their live-action debut wearing – you guessed it – bland tactical gear; the mummified Celestial that has been sitting in the Indian Ocean since Eternals is an incentive for nation states to learn to work as a team to do resource extraction; Secret Service agent Leila Taylor (Xosha Roquemore) watches passively as President Ross falls under the influence of a string-pulling brain trust. Every set-up feels labored, and every explosive pay-off under-delivers – even the heavily advertised Red Hulk looks eerily similar to a cutscene from Mortal Kombat DLC (and is capped off with the MCU’s most baffling cameo to date).

Political thrillers only work if they’re built off paranoia and cynicism – they regard recognizable institutions with suspicion and let their characters become slippery and fallible. It is functionally impossible to use characters as varnished as these in political thrillers because the overarching franchise demands they remain consistent, unimpeachable, and will only change to set up a yet-unmade project. The egregious military fetishism in Brave New World also reminds us that the relationship between the US Armed Forces and Marvel movies is very similar to that between Marvel Studios and the character of Deadpool: it’s fine to them to take potshots in small doses, so long as they get permission first and it financially benefits them. Not exactly a good faith foundation for Marvel’s brave new world.

Brave New World copies shots and setpieces from its Cap predecessor The Winter Soldier – a film that’s still revered by Marvel fans but contains many of the same flaws as this copy. Both of these Cap films flirt with ideas of allegiance and subterfuge, but draw explicit, unmissable lines between noble soldiers and bad actors. This moral clarity doesn’t just neuter tension, it reinforces the idea that advanced military powers are basically virtuous if they’re in good hands. The “Marvel’s political thriller” moniker raises its head again to confirm it is just branding; Marvel Studios wants us to believe they’re capable of a rich variety of content more than they’re actually committed to making a good, genre-specific film.

Brave New World tries to project confidence for the next steps of a core series; instead, it faintly reaches for substance and makes naked displays of self-protective anxiety. The film spends a decent amount of time arguing the merits of forgiving vindictive and powerful individuals; this may be the inevitable closing argument for a costly project hyper-aware of the tide turning against it.

Director: Julius Onah
Writer: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz
Stars: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Xosha Roquemore, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson
Release date: Feb. 14, 2025

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.