Captain America has been an important figure for a very large part of my life.
I still remember when I opened a present from my dad on Christmas morning.
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I unwrapped a heavy cardboard box that had one of the best Christmas presents I will have ever received.
A brand-new stainless-steel life size replica of the very shield Steve Rogers used to fight alongside the Avengers.
I remember being so filled with joy, I was so filled with excitement, so grateful to have a dad that understood me to a level few people do.
I... remember being 22 at the time.
I bet you thought I was a kid, didn’t you?
Now you don’t know what to think... other than the fact that this grown man clearly is obsessed with Captain America and possibly even more Marvel characters.
Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame were my Super Bowl as a teenager.
Seeing the sendoff for Steve Rogers and Chris Evans was a bittersweet moment for a lot of people, me included.
But seeing him pass down the shield to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson was nothing short of an exciting moment to see on-screen.
It felt like we were watching a private moment between Evans and Mackie that accidentally got filmed and put into the movie.
I knew whatever Marvel had in store for Sam Wilson was going to be exciting, and I just couldn’t wait to see it.
That was almost 6 years ago... a lot of mixed reviewed Marvel movies and Disney Plus series later... and here we are finally with the newest film in the franchise, Captain America: Brave New World.
The film stars Anthony Mackie as his version of the Star-Spangled Man with a plan.
So, what did I think of it?
The Good
Captain America: Brave New World is the generic action movie that the average moviegoer will have a pretty good time watching.
For fans that don’t pay a ton of attention to the “Marvel lore” or to the comics, I think this movie will be right up your alley.
The film references a few things from past movies, however through some dialogue mostly explains what you need to know to get a basic understanding of the film’s premise.
The film’s strongest standpoint is the action scenes. If you don’t know, Sam Wilson is not a super soldier like Steve Rogers, so he can’t go around using super strength or running insanely fast. The film does a pretty good job at making that a defining point in Sam’s fighting style.
Sam knows he’s not a super soldier and has to fight like any punch thrown his way could be a fatal one. You can tell he’s grown more accustomed to the shield and I like that. His comfort with the shield feels like a nice evolution to his arc in the Falcon and Winter Soldier series.
The next positive I can give the story is to Harrison Ford as President Thaddeus Ross.
For those who don’t know, Ross was originally played by the late William Hurt, who was recast by Ford after Hurt’s untimely death.
I was a little worried about an 82 year old Harrison Ford coming in to play such a prominent character that Hurt brought his own unique style to.
However after seeing the film, I feel Ford gave the best performance out of any actor in the entire movie.
I was appalled by how much Ford carries the film on his back from his performance alone.
If Ford didn’t want to be there, you wouldn’t have been able to tell very much by his acting in this movie.
However, as much as it pains me to say it, these are the nicest things I could say about the film.
The film has a lot I feel it could improve on.
Problems with the Film
I never take pleasure criticizing anything related to Marvel. It’s been such a major part of my life for so long, so admitting that it has issues is not something I take pride in.
That said, I went into this film trying to have positive expectations despite not being very hopeful.
The first thing I’ll say… a lot of what I’ll be talking about is for you medium to hardcore Marvel fans. One of the things I wanted to do for this article was keep it simple so anyone reading could follow along, but I have to address some of the issues with the story.
Just for some reference, this is the first time we’ve seen Sam Wilson’s Captain America since the Falcon and Winter Soldier Disney Plus series in 2021, and for many it’s the first time seeing Sam since Avengers: Endgame all the way back in 2019.
I don’t know how Marvel wants to do it nowadays, but keeping one of your “cornerstone” Avengers off the big screen for 6 years, and out of the loop entirely for 4 years probably isn’t the best way to go.
Marvel wants its audience to love and accept Sam as Cap, yet chose to keep him off screen for so long.
It creates a dichotomy many including myself don’t understand.
However, that’s not even the worst example of this problem.
I said the film gives you enough background to understand the basics of the plot, and it does… through lengthy dialogue scenes that you will have to sit there and decipher. If you really want to understand everything about the characters and plot, get ready to brush up on two past Marvel movies. One of them is one of Marvel’s most recent flops from four years ago (Eternals) and the other is the Edward Norton Hulk movie… a film that’s coming up on 20 years old.
In my honest opinion without spoilers, it feels like a sequel to the 2008 Hulk movie that Captain America just happens to be in.
I feel like Sam could have been replaced by any generic Marvel character and it would have been the same.
If anything, I feel like it should have been Bruce Banner starring in this film, since he has a connection to almost every villain in the story.
Speaking of the story itself… If you didn’t know, reports came out over the past year or so about the film getting plagued with horrible audience test screenings, and several reshoots.
Let me say, a lot of those reshoots stand out like a sore thumb when watching this film.
There were a lot of reports of some character’s storylines and presence entirely being cut after these reshoots.
However what is left is a Frankensteined version of what was one idea, and quickly became seven other ideas shoehorned into an already jam packed film.
So for many medium to hardcore Marvel fans out there, you may feel the effect of those reshoots, especially in the storylines if you look past the surface.
First Week Box Office Returns
Like I said, some of the issues surrounding the film included horrible audience test screenings, and several reshoots to the film that ballooned the budget to a reported almost half a billion dollars.
That budget means Captain America: Brave New World would’ve had to make at LEAST a billion dollars just to break even financially.
The only Cap film to cross that threshold was Captain America: Civil War that grossed nearly $1.1 billion on a $250 million budget.
That film had almost all the Avengers, included new characters like Spider-Man and Black Panther, and brought one of the best arcs in Steve Rogers’ story to screen… all on a $250 million dollar budget. That’s barely over half of what this film’s budget allegedly was.
I wanted to give the movie a full week at the box office to see if it had any potential to make back any of what it set out to do.
At the time of writing this article, the film has been out for over a week, and has gone through two full weekends.
The film’s reported box office returns is only a little over $140 million, not even half of that alleged $400 million budget.
While many films would see that as a great return, it’s chump change in the eyes of Marvel.
The company could likely consider this a failed opening weekend like many others in recent years, which is a bittersweet reality.
On one hand, it shows Marvel that it can’t go around throwing hoards of money at every film if they don’t have a clear idea on where they want to go with it.
However it also means another Marvel movie has failed, which I always hate to see.
Final Thoughts
Like I said, I never take joy in criticizing a Marvel movie for its flaws, especially if it was a movie I really wanted to be good.
I think the film wanted to go a lot of places, but I think got caught up in the execution so much that the story ended up going in too many directions… hence the massive reshoots.
I don’t think it’s completely over for Mackie as Captain America, however I do think if Marvel wants to make him the important Avenger I know they want him to be, they have a lot of ground left to cover.
Captain America will likely return in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, which is being directed by the Russo Brothers.
The same directors who did Captain America: Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.
I have a lot of hope for the future of Cap, despite this middle ground movie.
I can tell you one thing though, I’ll be in a seat ready for whatever movie Cap shows up in next.
The hero will always have a soft spot in my heart, no matter who carries the shield.
