Marvel Less: CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD

Marvel is still in its flop era, I fear. I’d love to like these again. When they were fresh and fun, telling reasonably coherent, colorful sci-fi action stories, they were breezy popcorn satisfaction. Even if rarely stylistically adventurous or thematically engaging, that initial couple dozen movies had a low ceiling for quality, but a pretty high floor for fun. Alas, they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Captain America: Brave New World is another widget marking time between projects. Used to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe would tell a story while teasing the next one. At worst it was an okay movie promising a better time next time. Now it’s all tease. This movie’s ostensibly a feature about Anthony Mackie taking over for Chris Evans as Captain America. Evans passed the shield to him at the end of Avengers Endgame, and the Disney+ mini-series The Falcon and the Winter Solider found Mackie tussling with the government about whether or not he could take on the official role. Brave New World could follow up on those threads, but instead decides to tie off some loose ends from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk set in the geopolitical backdrop of the aftermath from 2021’s Eternals. When the MCU was firing on all cylinders, there was a kind of enjoyment to be had from the unexpected call-back. But when a new movie is based entirely around gesturing vaguely in the direction of characters and plot lines that, in some cases, have gone unmentioned in nearly 20 years, at the expense of its own potentially interesting lead characters, I found it to be unusually empty stage setting. Even the post-credits teaser is atypically cryptic, in which a villain mumbles, almost verbatim: hey, um, maybe next time something big will happen.

Though under the direction of The Cloverfield Paradox’s Julius Onah the action is workmanlike and the personalities appealing, the whole endeavor is warped by its reversion to the blandest, least compelling way through a scene or sequence. The movie idles its engines, never finding a story or conflict to kick it into higher gear. Even the Big Climactic Action Sequence is a pretty small, predictable shrug. The way there involves Captain America investigating an assassination attempt while the President of the United States (Harrison Ford) tries to salvage a treaty as he edges closer to the line for proper POTUS conduct. What little energy the movie has comes to life when Ford—drifting off of his Clear and Present Danger and Air Force One throwback gravitas—and Mackie—bringing the charming MCU credibility—talk to each other. The performers generally are just likable enough to make the movie feel pleasant and frictionless—not exactly the goal in a conflict-oriented genre. Add to that, the plot's problem arises from the sequence of events around them having been so clearly pro forma slotted in and retooled—by five credited writers and rounds of reshoots—to be the least they could be. (Every scene could be a deleted scene to almost no change to the overall arcs.) The movie has the moves of a conspiracy thriller, but is too simple to be convoluted, and too obvious to be mysterious. It also desperately avoids politics of any sort. (Not even a Red Scare reference when there's a Red Hulk hiding in the government.) It must be pretty difficult to make an action movie set in the White House completely apolitical, but here we have it: a movie that goes nowhere and says nothing. Mission accomplished. In this movie about a president testing the limits of his authority, the fantasy isn’t who’s secretly a Hulk, but the fact that he can be stopped within minutes and no one much cares.