Captain America: Brave New World

Bluesky

The 35th feature outing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes the franchise into territory occupied by long-running stalwarts like Perry Mason and Godzilla. It's perhaps fitting that the film follows Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson as he struggles with the mantle of Captain America.

There's an expository moment at the start, a speech by President elect Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, and subsequent television coverage. He's been played and voiced by many, including the late William Hurt in the somewhat MCU adjacent The Incredible Hulk. This draws directly from that, though you don't need to have seen it. Nor Eternals, nor streaming series The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, nor even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. To be blunt, you don't really need to see this either.

Ross is now played by Harrison Ford. It's not the first time he's played the President, nor is he a stranger to genre. However one assumes that Disney have still got his bank details from Star Wars or they've still got the parking pass for the dump truck full of cash. If I'm feeling charitable I'll say that his presence might also be meant to evoke the conspiratorial leanings of work like The Conversation or even his air-conditioning enhanced chilliness in Apocalypse Now. At one point we spend time aboard the USS Milius, named not for John who wrote that film but Captain Paul L Milius, lost over Laos in 1968.

Geopolitics abound, but their appearance on film is impacted by off-screen concerns. While competing for adamantium left over from the petrified celestial in the Indian Ocean, a belligerent Japanese Navy fleet built around the aircraft carrier Yamamoto engages with US forces. Though it's one of the most common surnames in Japan it's probable that the vessel is named after either of Gonnohyōe or Isoroku, admirals who were architects of the 20th century Japanese navy and its initial successes in the Pacific campaigns of the Second World War. At least in our reality, where there was a Pearl Harbour, but possibly not in this numbered outpost of Marvel continuity where it seems Tony Stark still hasn't pushed his cardiac treatments through medical testing.

True believers might recognise adamantium as a component of Cap's shield and one of the elements that made Logan into Wolverine. I was looking, but beyond some jokes about Ant-Man there's no connections to anything else in phase five, including the various weapons-x. It could almost be a parallel, but it's hard to balance this level of conspiracy with the mention of the Sokovia Accords and all the uncovered secrets that we've apparently had.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Brave New World only really manages one of those, and I'm not sure that brief visits to Japan and the Virginia Coast and the Indian Ocean count. Giancarlo Esposito's capability as an actor seems to have been hidden behind weaponry that's got familiar silhouettes. Though it's not actually an AK-47, it's an Arsenal SLR-104FR and what I'd thought was a Ghost In The Shell nod in the form of a Mateba Autorevolver was actually a Chiappa Rhino from the same designer. Realising it was a Rhino reminded me of Kraven The Hunter and this has the same sense of trying to tell a story where the greatest constraints are contractual.

There are five folk credited as writers, in various combinations. Director Julius Onah has a familiar pedigree in music videos and advertising. He's demonstrated ability with action and franchises in work like The Cloverfield Paradox but the subtleties of assimilation in work like Luce are lost here. Tim Roth presumably couldn't be tempted to reprise his role as the Abomination. His death in what amounts to the previous film more than a decade ago wouldn't ordinarily be an obstacle. Rob Edwards contributed to Treasure Planet so he's no stranger to old stories. Malcolm Spellman created The Falcon And The Winter Soldier so he's got good claim to knowing the characters, and he too is no stranger to retellings. He also created the oddity that is Bel-Air, the dramatic retelling of the Fresh Prince. He works again with Dalan Musson, who contributed to the Falcon series and also penned for Iron Sky sequel The Coming Race. Finally Peter Glanz makes a feature début, though he too has plenty of television, advertising, and music video work.

It's impossible to say who brought what to the typewriter, and what Marvel would let them do. At times it seems there's a smarter and angrier film trapped in this one hoping to break out. It never quite manages it. The difficulty living up to a legacy is palpable, but it's the film that struggles with it more than its characters. There are all manner of references and Easter eggs and I'm sure there's room for a deep dive into all of them but there comes a point where ingredients stop being a recipe and start resembling a shopping list. It's totally unfair to compare this to Andor, which took the stylings of 1970s conspiracy thrillers and used them as a lens for Star Wars and then those reflections as a meditation on power and paranoia and even patriotism. I'll do it anyway, because it's a movie where there are secrets involving the president and the thing that's at threat is a treaty.

Sam Wilson used to be the Falcon, and now he's Captain America. This might be trying to reflect Three Days Of The Condor, but it's barely worth two hours. Some of its most consequential elements are effectively offscreen, but I'd love to watch something that explored the truth and reconciliation required to rehabilitate mind-controlled assassins. This ain't it. It's big moment, such as it is, can be found in the trailer, and the scene after the credits is not most shocking for its content but how clumsy the compositing looks to put an actor in front of a static background.

I counted 12 VFX houses, two of which were just the name of the firm. There might have been duplication with the four outfits doing visualisation, and the three doing motion capture, and I think the two doing 3D conversion. At its ostensible peak in the 1990s comic buying was buoyed by crossovers and world shattering plots that kept trying to extract more and more from hard-core fans while appealing less and less to newcomers. One of the things fuelling that was even more egregious exploitation of artists, no mean feat in an industry where love of the medium could cover for shortfalls in wages and long hours to meet tall orders. Among the credited personnel from those visual effects firms was a bidding team. Despite a sequence where a man in a suit flies to stop a cruise missile diving towards a target I fear that the most heart-stopping race for the bottom was budgetary. You might think that moment shares something with Avengers Assemble and you'd be half right. Despite a bit of effort, this comes nowhere near rebuilding that charm.

More's the pity. I still feel Black Panther is a high water mark because it had a something to say and did it well. I think Captain America Brave New World might have wanted to say something but it stuttered. There's no briefcase full of gold, except perhaps in Mr Ford's driveway. There's no big kahuna to get the royal treatment, there's just a film that's managed to replicate the worse habits of its parent genre. Not Pulp Fiction. It's barely chip paper.

I had the feature film count at the start of this, but the MCU has television shows too. Characters and plot elements here are drawn from one of them, and with Harlem mentioned a couple of times there's room to talk about the Defenders. That's the street level shows with this continuity's Daredevil. It set a marker with a brutal corridor fight, one that would be echoed in other halls for eternity. Those included the other shows in that stable, your Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, one of the Punishers, and so on. It had an influence on the wider MCU too: one of the big setpieces in Guardians Vol III draws (brightly) from the same tradition. A slow-motion bit with the shield recalls Zach Snyder's excess in 300 and we come full circle with Frank Miller. His darker, grittier take on Batman way back when, in 1986, is one of the reasons we're where we are today. It looks incredible on the page, still, but it had characters with complex motivations and dialogue a bit better than repeatedly saying a specific character "can't change" when anyone who's seen the trailer will know that's ironic, even radioactively so.

Its saving grace is perhaps that it is just under two hours long. Even then its pacing suffers a little, and its bigger reveals are somehow kept for the last act. There's precedent for some of the investigations in The Winter Soldier and again that's a hard act to follow. Which is where most of the film's problems lie. It's spending so much time trying to fill shoes and follow in footsteps that it never finds its footing, and from a scheduling perspective it's one that can be kicked into the long grass.