The Marvel Cinematic Universe already de-yassified Sam Wilson’s (Anthony Mackie) pet hawk Redwing from the comics into a yawn-worthy drone. As Captain America: Brave New World begins, it’s revealed director Julius Onah, producer Kevin Feige, and company overhauled another important Captain America mythos fixture into generic realistic sludge. In the comics, the Serpent Society were villains-for-hire who never left the house without wearing a brightly colored snake costume. Now, the team wears only black and grey outfits with no ophidian costuming flourishes in sight.
This unimaginative Serpent Society reflects Brave New World's clumsy juggling of grounded emotional ambitions with restrained comic book tomfoolery. Ironically, other superior comic book movies like Ang Lee’s Hulk, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy titles, and the two Spider-Verse masterpieces proved so successful by pushing both the pathos and comic book ridiculousness to the max. Brave New World’s constant subdued tendencies, meanwhile, often make it the opposite of a Hannah Montana hit track: the worst of both worlds.
Brave New World begins depicting General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) giving his acceptance speech after winning the U.S. presidency. Onah and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau demonstrate a frustrating lack of razzle-dazzle visual imagination in this sequence. Sam Wilson is reintroduced to viewers in a very flat shot depicting the character watching Ross’s acceptance speech on TV). A quick cutaway to the nefarious Samuel Sterns/The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) is similarly devoid of theatricality.
After these fleeting glimpses of Brave New World’s heroes and villains, the story flashes forward a few months. With Ross staring down the barrel of his 100th day as President, he’s become the face of global cooperation of countries working together to exploit the adamantium contained within that gigantic Celestial poking out of the ocean from Eternals. Wilson, Joaquin Torres/The Falcon (Danny Ramirez), and falsely imprisoned super-soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) are guests of honor at an event where Ross announces his grand plans to unite countries for this new mineral. Things go sideways when Bradley suddenly tries to assassinate Ross, putting this poor man back in jail.
Ross and associates like Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) believe Bradley committed these horrors, full stop. However, like Steve Rogers in The Winter Soldier and Civil War, Wilson doesn't listen to orders when something smells fishy. He and Torres suit up as Captain America and Falcon, respectively, to find out what’s really going on A whole web of conspiracies and secret evil forces begin to surface the closer these two get to the truth.
Onah and a slew of screenwriters (including Peter Glanz, Treasure Planet scribe Rob Edwards, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier veterans Malcolm Spellman and Dalan Musson) hinge Brave New World around masculine vulnerability. This story about a Captain America with nary a drop of superhero serum flowing through his veins is ultimately about how men react to feeling powerless. Do they hurt others? Do they opt for just lashing out at the folks around them? Or do they extend out an empathetic hand? It’s a nifty notion conceptually giving this Captain America movie a bit more thoughtfulness than a typical Deadpool outing.
Frustratingly, though, that concept manifests without much depth or compelling drama. For one thing, Brave New World is juggling a lot of plotlines and supporting characters. That often leaves Wilson’s distinctly human nature under-utilized. For another, lingering so much on powerful American political figures like a POTUS dilutes Brave New World’s dedication to moral nuance. These people already get the benefit of doubt in the press, general public, and global political stage! It’s not subversive to treat these powerful individuals with kid’s gloves and suggest they’re always working with the best intentions. Hearing Sam Wilson say lines about boiling down to “no matter who’s in the office, it’s still an honor to meet the President!” makes the whole film feel like a PSA for the status quo rather than an important lesson to children about recognizing the larger world's moral complexities.
The standard style of Marvel Cinematic Universe screenwriting also lets down Brave New World’s weightier thematic ambitions. These movies really need to take a cue from the comics and have a little yellow text box pop up in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen saying things like “as seen in Eternals (2021)”. That’d be a fun visual-oriented alternative to individuals like Isiah Bradley or Joaquin Torres standing around rigidly spouting dense MCU lore. This didactic speaking style leaves explorations of masculine vulnerability and moral nuance severely undercooked.
It's difficult to communicate ideas about the nuances of male characters when those same figures talk in verbiage itself lacking ambiguity. At least this screenwriting drawback produces the comedic sight of having Ruth Bat-Seraph (whose comic book incarnation has been accused of being racist towards Palestinians) just turn to the camera and say “a person’s past doesn’t define them.” They might as well have had her shout “moviegoers, please don’t Google my character, I beg you.”
Believe it or not, Brave New World fares better as an action-oriented superhero movie. Recent MCU installments like Quantumania and Love and Thunder have elicited shrugs with their spectacle. Huzzah that this Captain America installment actually has some exciting skirmishes to offer. The director of 2019’s terrific thriller Luce equips himself well to some set pieces leaning into Wilson’s specific “wonderful toys”. A sweeping set piece where Cap and The Falcon fight back against jet planes on the Celestial Island is a particular highlight. The sheer scope of that cosmic entity comes through effectively, echoing the scale commanded so effortlessly in Gareth Edwards blockbusters. On an IMAX screen, this particular scene delivers the goods.
My personal favorite of Brave New World’s action sequences, though, concerns the devious Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) trying to assassinate Sam Wilson (who doesn't have his super-suit) in some small American town. Stripping a Marvel hero of his techno gizmos and the fly-over state backdrop evokes some of the best scenes from one of the most underrated MCU installments, Iron Man 3. As Shane Black realized 12 years ago, it’s fun to take a crime-fighter apart and see who they are at their basic core. Watching Wilson use his wits rather than Vibranium-laced wings to take down a foe is mighty fun and lends some tangible suspense to this sequence. Plus, it’s a hoot that Esposito is just reveling in being a villain with a capital V. This is no ”misunderstood hero”, Sidewinder’s just a baddie that Esposito excels in portraying.
Brave New World’s greatest assets are its action-heavy sequences, a compact runtime, and the tremendously welcome MCU return of Buster Scruggs, er, Tim Blake Nelson. Its drawbacks, though, are utterly baffling in some cases. Director Mohammad Rasoulof shot certain sequences from 2024 masterpiece The Seed of the Sacred Fig in a car miles away from the set just to keep himself and his performers safe (Rasoulof was always under intense suspicion and surveillance from the Iranian government). Even with this restriction, he orchestrated such outstanding blocking throughout a feature brought to life under incredible restrictions.
Brave New World, meanwhile, has all the Disney money you can imagine at its disposal. Naturally, then, its third act features Wilson and Sterns “talking to each other” in awkwardly composed shots that never see the two characters interacting. Surely these actors were on set together on the same day! How else to explain Nelson standing around in green-screen work evoking this 2011 Rebecca Black parody? A key moment between protagonist and antagonist instead elicits unintentional chuckles over obvious indicators that this scene was cobbled together in reshoots. Elements naturally ingrained into low-budget films with minimal resources prove elusive to Brave New World.
This includes the importance of showing and not just telling important character details like Ross and his desire to see his estranged daughter Betty (Liv Tyler) again. No matter how many times Ross says he misses “walking in the cherry blossoms” with his offspring, it rings hollow compared to how it would hit if audiences saw this event. It’s one of many disappointing Brave New World qualities, which includes how a superhero like Captain America that used to fight corrupt U.S. presidents now coddles them.
Great actors like Nelson and Lumbly (the latter of whom nails the film’s best intimate scene when Wilson visits Bradley in prison) can only add so much to a production that never quite works as either an over-the-top comic book movie or a more intimate meditation on masculine vulnerability. In the middle of all these larger artistic drawbacks, I suppose the de-yassified Serpent Society is one of the lesser problems here…but surely some maximalist snake costumes couldn’t have hurt the proceedings!