Captain America: Brave New World info:
Director: Julius Onah
Writer: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, and Dalan Musson
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, and Shira Haas
Hello and welcome to another week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day and that if you’re in an area where the weather isn’t great, you’re staying warm and dry. Personally, where I am is too cold for my blood and I long for warmer days. However, cold days also make for great movie days, so that’s what we did for a Valentine’s Day double date night this past weekend. A nice dinner and a good movie, that’s about as good as it gets for this one mindless guy.
The pick this week was a no-brainer. I’ve rarely missed an MCU movie during opening weekend. There is normally too much content that I don’t want to get spoiled on and this one was no exception. Even though “Captain America: Brave New World” didn’t have the big epic summer movie premiere slot, it definitely comes across as a big epic film. But speaking of spoiled… before I go any further if you have yet to see Brave New World, there are spoilers ahead. I would go check out some of my other reviews here first, then come back to this. Or catch my recent ranking of MCU franchises here.
Ok, onto the fun. “Captain America: Brave New World” is directed by Julius Onah. This is s big-time step up for him since his biggest picture before this was “The Cloverfield Paradox”. This one picks up after every other MCU film has taken place. Meaning, that the Infinity saga has come and gone and “The Eternals” movie has taken place. Thaddeus Ross (who is played by Ford after the passing of William Hurt who took on the role in five previous MCU films) is now the President of the United States. He calls in Sam Wilson (Mackie) to bury the hatchet and then calls on the new Captain America to reassemble the Avengers.
Wilson thinks he’s in a good place right now since he’s been assisting the United States military with different missions anyway, but then it all goes wrong when Wilson, his partner Joaquin Torres (Ramirez), and Wilson’s friend and mentor Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) get called to the White House to meet with President Ross. At one point, Bradley tries to kill Ross and tries to escape but ends up being put in prison. That’s when Ross puts his head of security on the case… Ruth Bat-Seraph (Haas). Whom we find out was trained in the Red Room like the Black Widow.
There are lots of fun callbacks to the greater MCU early on and I likely missed a few as well, but the biggest ones are the direct ties to “The Incredible Hulk” from 2008. We even get a Liv Tyler sighting near the end reprising her role as Betty Ross. First time we’ve seen her in a movie since 2019’s “Ad Astra”, so that was fun. The other big news to come out of “Brave New World” is it appears that Torres is going to be the new Falcon in the MCU moving forward. A lot of people online seem upset about this, but I say let’s give him a chance. After all, who would have thought RDJ would have been a good Iron Man when this whole thing started more than 20 years ago.
As the movie goes on, Ross and Wilson continue to butt heads on how to best handle what is going on. Even though Ross has a treaty that he is trying to get signed, it also seems like it’s a bit of a race for several countries to get their hands on the adamantium that is located on the Eternal Island… a material that is stronger than vibranium from Wakada. While this is going on, Ruth has discovered the same truth that Wilson and Torres figured out… that all of the events taking place were all because of Samuel Sterns (reprised again by Tim Blake Nelson) as a way of getting revenge on Ross. Ross had promised his freedom if he figured out a way to fix his heart and keep him alive, yet here he was still locked up.
After Captain America and Falcon save the day at the island, Wilson finds out exactly what Sterns is up to. He has been slowly increasing the amount of gamma radiation in Ross’s pills and that all comes to a head when during a press conference, Ross gets mad and it turns him into Red Hulk. After a pretty epic battle, Ross eventually calms down, returns to normal, and is locked away for safety.
If you’re wondering why I never talked about Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) this whole time, it’s because his character brought nothing to the story. I just summarized the entire movie without mentioning his name… that says a lot. I found out that they added his character in during re-shoots, so he wasn’t even originally supposed to be in the movie anyway. Honestly, it’s a shame because I really like Esposito and would have loved to see Sidewinder play a bigger role and maybe even be included in future MCU content.
Overall, I don’t think this deserves the bad rap it’s getting. But this is the position that the MCU has put itself in during recent releases (other than “Deadpool and Wolverine”). They had such a hot streak over the last 2 decades for putting out successful hits that anything less is graded on pretty harshly. I get where people are coming from, but if you watch this movie in a vacuum, it is a solid piece of work and you can tell that they put a lot of love into it. Is Brave New World up to par with “Avengers: Endgame”, “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, or any of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films? No, not even close, but it’s a good movie overall and it introduces some new characters in the multi-verse, a possible connection to the X-Men, and solidifies Sam Wilson as the true (albeit current) Captain America.
With all that as a guide, I give this a solid 7 out of 10. Lots of action, and some humor, it fits right into the MCU, and I will definitely be watching this again when it becomes available to stream.
Now it’s your turn. Have you seen “Captain America: Brave New World” yet? What are your thoughts if you have? Do you think Red Hulk helps drive more people to the theater to see it? How do you think Anthony Mackie did as Cap? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and I will be back next week with a mindless movie review of some sort.
