Last year only one Marvel movie came out, Deadpool and Wolverine, and that was it. I heard that the goal behind only having one movie last year was to help get their story back under control, so that they could go back to making the fun and entertaining movies we know and love. The first movie back from this long break was Captain America: Brave New World, but this Captain America differs from the one in the most recent iterations, because Steve Rogers is gone, he went back in time after End Game, so the shield was passed to Sam Wilson, previously the Falcon, but I think this shield proved too much for him to wield.
To be honest, I saw this film a few days ago, and not much of it stuck. The basics are that the new Captain America is trying to figure out some government conspiracy that led to his trainer and a former super solider being brain washed into trying to kill the president, and there is also a plot about the U.S and Japan fighting over the element in the giant celestial in the ocean, adamantium, which is the element that they pump into wolverine to make him basically invincible. Sadly, this relatively basic plot takes two hours, and it is more convoluted than it sounds.
So it is safe to say that the Marvel hiatus did not actually help them get their stuff together. Not only was the story uncompelling, but the movie also looked terrible. I saw the movie in the RPX theater in 3-D, and 3D is not my favorite format to watch a movie in, but the time worked out well. Initially I thought maybe my eyes just were not adjusted to the 3-D and that is why the action looked horrible, but as the movie progressed, the problem persisted. Most of the action scenes were disorienting. I had no idea what was going on when there was a fight. It just felt like a blurry mess filled with fast cuts of the camera.
Another issue that this movie faces and all Marvel movies now face is their need to address the larger story. For over a decade, Marvel built up a story and connected so many pieces together for a grand finale, that was absolutely incredible, but now they have those lofted expectations put on them again like a team trying to make a repeat championship run, but so far they have failed to come close to reaching the same heights, and it feels like the stories they are trying to connect are barely touching each other in the Venn diagram. It does not help that they basically had to scrap one of their potential major story lines after the whole Jonathon Majors fiasco, but overall, Marvel still seems directionless in both the movies and the television shows.
Also the trailers for this movie heavily focus on the Red Hulk, but the Red Hulk does not show up in the movie until the very end. Throughout there are a few allusions to the fact that he is going to emerge from Harrison Ford, but it is just fake hype. Then once it happens, there is some brief destruction of the Cherry blossoms in D.C, then the Red Hulk is gone. It was a letdown, but I did not really care about the existence of a different hulk in general or the new Captain America for that matter, and the movie failed to make me care.
The one redeeming aspect of this movie was Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres. Torres is basically Sam’s side kick, and he takes up the new mantle as the Falcon since Sam is now Captain America, and Torres is only fun part of the movie. He has charisma and flair, and the scenes that he was in were hands down the best. That is part of my problem with Anthony Mackie. He just does not have that same superhero charisma that Chris Evans has, or any of the main Marvel characters that preceded him.
The movie overall just felt like a bunch of nothing. I felt like nothing was advanced plot wise, there were some fights, and there were some discussions about an element that will supposedly play a role in future Marvel stories, but I never felt like there were any stakes on the micro or macro scale. I was not bored, but I was not on the edge of my seat either. Everything about the movie just felt okay. Since Endgame, there have been thirteen new films, and very few of them have been good, and even the ones I look back on and liked, I have a more soured view on now because some of the others have been so bad. The next Marvel movie is The Thunderbolts, starring Florence Pugh, so despite all the negatives, they still keep finding a way to get me excited for the next one. Hopefully it will be better than this. 2.5 stars.
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