Meet the new Captain America… Sure, we got to see him in a series on Disney +, but we haven’t gotten the new Captain America in his first solo movie and sadly we could have waited a bit longer. Let’s get right to it and just say, this is one of the worst Marvel movies I’ve ever seen. I have nothing against Sam Wilson as a character, I’ve loved him as the Falcon, but you sir are no Steve Rogers as pointed out by General Ross in the movie. That is the most profound line of this film and that’s why it’s hard to get excited for Sam Wilson as Captain America. I hate to say it, but here at That Nerd Show we’re not in the habit of bullshitting you when it comes to Marvel movies no matter how much Disney would want a good review. I’m going to tell it like it is and this is not a good movie. However, it does one good thing, it sets up a new character for bigger ensemble movies. We’ve been down this road before, we’ve gotten lots of origin movies to help establish characters that will be in Avengers movies and that’s probably the best thing Captain America Brave New World does… The Avengers will eventually get back together or what’s left of them, but we know it’s coming. We know that we have to establish the new Avengers post and game with some old Avengers and new ones. And who better to start the new Avengers than Captain America… I get it, but this just makes me really miss Steve Rogers.
So the movie is set after the Falcon and Winter Soldier series. Sam Wilson is fully implemented as the new Captain America and tasked with missions by the new president, General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, this time played by Harrison Ford after William Hurts passing. There’s a new bad guy or should I say an old bad guy that you never expected from the Incredible Hulk movie with Edward Norton. That’s all I’ll say, no spoilers, but it’s not that exciting of a bad guy…hate to say it! The story centers around President Ross setting a treaty with world nations after Adamantium has been discovered and determining how it will be shared. So of course this is also a movie that will set up the future X-Men in this universe because if you know your comic books that is the substance that is covered over Wolverine’s skeleton. But the new bad guy is manipulating everything to make General Ross look bad… he succeeds. But after everything that we’ve seen with all the various bad guys leading up to Thanos, it’s just too hard to get excited for the bad guy in this movie.
The only point to this movie is to set up the new Captain America and of course the Red Hulk. That’s right folks, General Ross is the Red Hulk… not really a spoiler considering we see that in the trailer. The movie does have a lot of good action and it has some wonderful performances. I like Harrison Ford as President Ross / The Red Hulk. But there’s nothing to really get excited about with this movie. To be honest it felt like a 2-hour credits scene that is setting up something else. Oh and don’t get me started about the lackluster credit scene where the bad guy explains to Sam that he should be afraid of the others… Yeah we know, there’s somebody worse than Thanos…. Thank you for setting up the Secret Wars.
The performances are good, don’t get me wrong. Anthony Mackey makes a great Falcon and “B” version of Captain America. I mean he’s like the Gobots version of Transformers. But he’s always been good in the Marvel movies. Like I said, I don’t hate his character, he’s just not Captain America. He should have stayed the Falcon. But after over 30 Marvel movies and various origin stories, this just feels very lackluster compared to what we’ve seen over the last 15 years and it leaves us asking the question… Why should we care? The series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a good series, one of the better ones for Disney +, but all it really does is make us care more about Sam as the Falcon… not Captain America. And if you’re going to make a movie where he constantly questions whether he should have taken the serum to be a super soldier… Yeah, you should have because we don’t care about you as some ordinary man with wings playing Captain America. Cap is a super soldier. In fact, after watching this movie I care more about Isaiah Bradley as the forgotten Captain America than I do as Sam playing “New Cap.” The bottom line is there’s not enough of a good story to make us care about these characters. They’re introduced as part of an origin story to set up the new Avengers and this could have been done in a post-credits scene, not a 2-hour movie! For me, the film feels like a very long intro to something bigger with characters that I just don’t care about. Congratulations Disney and Marvel, you’ve made me stop caring about your superheroes!!! The best moments of the film are with Harrison Ford and Anthony Mackie especially when Captain America and the Red Hulk are fighting, but it’s hard to be invested when you know they’re eventually going to be on the same side. So my honest opinion about Captain America: Brave New World, it’s not even a halfway decent movie that would be good for Disney +. This is a movie that should not have been in the theaters, it should have gone straight to the streaming platform where at best we waste 2 hours of our time, but not the price of a movie ticket. After watching this “shitshow” of a movie, Disney, you owe me a refund as a fan!!! This movie should have gone straight to Disney Plus and Black Widow should have gotten the theatrical at least it deserved. But I’ll leave you with one final thought, the one scene with the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes just makes me want to watch the Thunderbolts movie even more even though I’m not sure that’s going to be very good, but it’s got to be better in this movie!
