Marvel and the people who made Captain America: Brave New World were not counting on Donald Trump winning re-election. This isn’t simply a statement on the personal politics of the people involved, most of whom were likely Democrat supporters, but the themes and very thesis of the movie are designed around a post-Trump America; an affirmation of so-called American ideals in the aftermath of great turbulence and controversy. What happens with President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt) is meant to symbolize several American sins, but most of all the burst of chaos that Trump and his movement wreaked; unstable and frightening, but something that can be withstood and defeated. That no longer seems so true. And when Ross does things that cause alarm, when he nearly sparks a war with an ally that is treated with severe gravity; and yet are things that resemble what his real counterpart is currently doing to seemingly less outrage, the movie can’t help but feel hopelessly quaint and utterly naive.
The Captain America movies have always been more willing to engage overtly with politics than the other MCU brands, albeit still in terms without much nuance -especially when they pertained to America itself. The most common tact was to see genuine issues and concerns raised, but the agitator always being some vengeful individual or outside party -America itself and its institutions are for the most part, blameless, as should perhaps be expected given the implied jingoism of the title. That is stuck to firmly by Brave New World, a movie that raises issues with its President -critiques both domestic and diplomatic that are extremely vague in an effort to disassociate him with either political party- but pins them squarely on an apolitical actor out for revenge.
And on the sidelines is the new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), taking up the shield from Steve Rogers and begrudgingly acquiescing to cooperate with the new President Ross. A failed assassination attempt at the White House kicks off an investigation by Wilson into a conspiracy to sow international discord and undermine the President.
The plot first takes shape with this incident, as director Julius Onah and a band of writers attempt to harness The Manchurian Candidate the way The Winter Soldier lightly riffed on Three Days of the Condor, albeit far less subtly. That figure is Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), apparently introduced in The Falcon and Winter Soldier series that the movie very much presumes you’ve seen -an old friend of Wilson’s with reservations about his closeness to a President with so shady a past. Reference is made to Ross and Wilson having a sour history (based simply on Wilson being Steve Rogers’ sidekick during Civil War), but the new Captain America’s moral compromises don’t really factor in. Indeed he’s more than willing to uphold a status quo by working with this new President. Defending normalcy is almost verbatim the movie’s theme.
And in that spirit, even in his own movie the black Captain America is marginalized by the script. The lion’s share of the focus is on Ross, the character the story is much more compelled by (and it helps that Ford for his part, does seem genuinely interested in his performance). The narrative revolves entirely around him, his politicking, and a plot explicitly targeting him that Wilson is just required to be invested in. Mackie is a good actor, but he is given table scraps to work with here, as even a few promising character points -such as his lack of superpowers and what it means to represent America at this time are left completely behind in favour of turning him into “Generic Marvel Superhero No. 16” or something. The writers clearly have no idea what to do with him or his own obligatory sidekick Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) beyond the by now calculated make-up of action scenes and quips.
Where the movie reaches for its narrative priorities in lieu of its titular character is baffling. Chances are the bulk of Marvel's audience don't remember when Ross (whom Hurt had spent most of his appearances playing as a glorified cameo) was last a character of consequence -many of them weren't even born yet. But that didn't stop Marvel from deciding this was finally the place to follow up on the lingering threads from The Incredible Hulk, a movie from seventeen years ago that popularly ranks as one of the MCU's worst and is almost certainly its most obscure. And indeed, the plotting and character this is in aid of really does feel like something from 2008, with a supervillain as dramatically weak as they are broadly silly, and convoluted machinations to simply get to the point where Ross becomes the Red Hulk, as showcased by all of this movie's advertising.
And that is mostly for the sake of a single battle, and not a terribly compelling one at that -a climax that feels more like the mere second-act scuffle of other Marvel entries. As has been the case in the franchise for a while now, the action scenes are incredibly dull, weightless, and at times incoherent -especially with the CG involved obscuring Mackie and Ramirez in their suits of armour. Despite the power differential and the point made of Wilson not taking the serum -essentially making him just a normal guy in a robot suit- there’s no stakes in any confrontation he winds up in. And the same could be said for the larger world, regardless of the efforts at relating geopolitical tensions. As we are in the midst of some very real and drastic ones, the fantasy of this movie is all the more clear.
Brave New World posits a sense of justice in the world order and America’s place in it. Even where it endeavours to critique the actions of a U.S. administration -foreign policy actions specifically- it’s too cowardly to say anything with it. Every move and stance by Ross is taken as neutral; we don’t know the specifics of this international agreement with the Japanese he is so keen on brokering. He is controversial and unpopular, and the movie does explain a little why -but with no ties at all to anything real. What does stick out, unintentionally, is Ross’s notions of being a “peacekeeper” President, and the benefit of the doubt he is automatically assigned for this. The movie is so out of touch it still presumes good faith on the part of its political actors -we’re meant at least to some degree to sympathize with Ross’s humanity, his affection for his daughter who we hardly remember exists. The makers of this movie want the veneer of a political thriller without daring to actually have any politics -as though they see movies like The Parallax View as wholly apolitical. The previous Captain America movies held this approach too, but were admittedly better at hiding it; and crucially weren’t made against a reality of such galvanization. And it should be noted too that the myth of America that this hero represents has been all but annihilated. Even before Trump’s re-election when this movie was in production, it couldn’t get away with this image of national identity as a bastion of the free world, with just a few warts that can be written off as individual fringes. And harnessing that idealism in the person of a patriotic, mostly unquestioning black man comes with its own set of regressive implications.
The movie isn’t long, but there is still a fair bit of fat to it. An entire subplot dealing with a terrorist played by Giancarlo Esposito, who turns out to be a mere goon of the real villain, as well as the workings of Ross’s steely Israeli security advisor played by Shira Haas, who is rather stiff and awkward in the part, amount to minimal narrative development apart from stretching out an already thin plot and giving Wilson something to do to justify his protagonist status. Of course Esposito is left as another hanging thread in spite of this movie (a sequel to three separate movies and a TV show) proving most definitively that the interconnected universe has worn itself out. Regardless of all other problems, this is just a movie that feels tired -it’s understandable why it was such a laboured production. Captain America: Brave New World fails to be relevant, clever, thrilling, or even interesting. An antiquated movie on arrival and a low point of even this era of Marvel Studios.
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