USA. 2025.
Crew
Director – Julius Onah, Screenplay – Rob Edwards, Peter Glanz, Dalon Musson, Julius Onah & Malcolm Spellman, Story – Rob Edwards, Dalon Musson & Malcolm Spellman, Producers – Kevin Feige & Nate Moore, Photography – Kramer Morgenthau, Music – Laura Karpman, Visual Effects Supervisors – Alessandro Ongaro & Bill Westenhofer, Visual Effects/Animation – Barnstorm VFX (Supervisor – Khalid Almeerani), Cantina Creative (Supervisor – Aaron Eaton), Digital Domain (Supervisor – Hanzhi Tang), Industrial Light and Magic (Supervisor – Chad Wiebe), Luma Pictures (Supervisor – Jared Simeth), Outpost VFX (Supervisor – Sheen Yap), UPP (Supervisor – Dannis Dallen) & Weta FX Ltd (Supervisor – Dan Cox), Visual Effects – Opsis (Supervisor – Justin Jones), Special Effects Supervisor – Dan Sudick, Production Design – Ramsey Avery. Production Company – Marvel Studios.
Cast
Anthony Mackie (Sam Phillips/Captain America), Harrison Ford (President Thaddeus Ross/Red Hulk), Danny Ramirez (Joaquin Torres/The Falcon), Shira Haas (Ruth Bat-Seraph), Carl Lumbly (Isiah Bradley), Giancarlo Esposito (Sidewinder), Tim Blake Nelson (Samuel Sterns), Xosha Roquemore (Leila Taylor), Takehiro Hira (Prime Minister Ozaki), Liv Tyler (Betty Ross)
Plot
Sam Phillips, the new Captain America, is brought to Washington D.C. at the behest of newly appointed President Thaddeus Ross. Sam brings with him his companions Joaquin Torres, the new Falcon, and Isiah Bradley, an aging veteran of the super-soldier program. There Ross takes Sam aside and asks him to restart The Avengers. Ross holds a security conference to deal with an alien artefact made of adamantium that has emerged in the Indian Ocean. Without any warning, Isiah, along with several secret service agents, attempts to shoot Ross. A berserk Isiah is captured and imprisoned but has no memory of what he did. Believing Isiah is innocent, Sam traces the cause to a signal played in a song over the phone that causes people to become mind controlled. Sam discovers that behind all of this is Dr Samuel Stern who has an advanced mind as a result of exposure to Hulk blood, but was kept a prisoner at Ross’s behest and is now seeking revenge. Meanwhile, the conflict over the artifact is building towards war between nations.
Captain America is one of the central characters of the MCU. The character’s first appearance for the MCU was in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) played by Chris Evans. The Cap became central to the MCU’s first team-up in The Avengers (2012) and two further solo films with Captain America: The Winter Solider (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016). Meanwhile, Evans played in all of the subsequent Avengers films – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018), before being allowed to retire into old age at the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019).
More so than any of the other MCU films of the 2020s, Captain America: Brave New World requires that you have a detailed familiarity with Marvel’s films and tv series. Both Joaquin Torres and Isiah Bradley were introduced in the tv series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). Crucially, this was also a show that dealt with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson inheriting the shield and the role (but not the superpowers) of Captain America. If you haven’t seen the series (I never bothered – I was starting to feel major MCU ennui trying to keep up), you are stuck with wondering why Anthony Mackie, who you thought was The Falcon, is now in the centre seat playing a completely different superhero.
There is also an Alien Artefact in the midst of the Indian Ocean, which is given no explanation and requires you to remember back to the ending of Eternals (2021) to know that this is one of the Celestials about to awaken. You are also required to have sufficient memory to go all the way back to the very start of The MCU with The Incredible Hulk (2008) and remember that Tim Blake Nelson was a supporting character there who was exposed to Hulk blood that has made him into the super-villain that is known in Marvel Comics (but not on screen here) as The Leader.
I had issues with Sam Wilson recast as Captain America. Firstly, the role of Captain America is inhabited by only one person in Marvel Comics continuity (not counting multiverse alternate versions). So the change of person playing the part here is more a real-world convenience that was either a case of the actor who played the role wishing to retire, their contract expiring and/or their asking price having gone too high. On the other, the idea of a super-soldier created by a serum is not just one that feels like a CEO retiring from the job and handing the reins it over to a chosen successor, especially given that Sam states that he has not taken the serum. It feels an awkward plot contrivation created by real world issues than any plausible basis for a character transition. (You could also point out for that matter that The Falcon himself was never give a proper origin story in The MCU – he just turned up fully formed).
Around the world, Captain America: Brave New World earned some $400 million but apparently failed to still break even, which by Hollywood accounting makes it a box-office flop (whereas by any other metric, Brave New World is the third top grossing film of 2025 so far). It also received very mixed reviews. The reasons for such are open to speculation – many people are putting it down to its political themes in an era where American politics has started to get people scared. A lot of it I think is also that the invincible wind in the sails that the MCU had from 2008 onwards has started to flag through many of the uninspired efforts that have been produced since 2021.
For me, one of the reasons is also that Brave New World fails to work is because it is all over the place. Much of what goes on in the film is continuity carryover and setting the stage for the upcoming Avengers films. Even so, there are elements that sit there without going anywhere. In any other film, an alien artefact in the middle of the ocean being fought over by superpowers and the opening of it would become the focus of the show – I kept thinking of Arrival (2016) – here they go to war, but we don’t even find what is in the artefact. Similarly, we get Tim Blake Nelson up to sinister things but the character only sits in the background and it is Thaddeus Ross turned Red Hulk who emerges for the big climactic confrontation. In Marvel Comics continuity Shira Haas’s Ruth Bat-Seraph, is supposed to be the Israeli superheroine Sabra, but she just turns up out of the blue without any apparent powers, for no clear reason attached to the presidential security detail.
The main theme of characters being affected by a mysterious Mind Control signal fails to really be big enough for the basis of a MCU film. It was the same problem that Iron Man Three (2013) had with its focus around the Extremis plot. As a result, we get pieces of superfluous action pumped up to become major set-pieces – the fight to stop the outbreak of war in the Indian Ocean and the climactic scenes with Red Hulk going riot in Washington D.C. But there is the feel that neither of these needed to be there. And there is the feel of Brave New World as a whole that the film is just a transition, a filler to set the stage for what is to come next.
There are some small compensations. Julius Onah, a Spike Lee protégé who previously directed the dismally received flop of The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), which in normal circumstances would be enough to doom a director to being forgotten, does okay with the action scenes. Indeed, the scenes racing around in the air diverting missiles and bringing down fighter planes is one of the best action sequences in the Captain America films next to the big climactic dust-up in Civil War. Also I have been admiring Anthony Mackie’s growing strengths as an actor outside of The MCU and he is good given the opportunity to play the lead. Harrison Ford is always great, giving cranky support as a morally divided president.
Trailer here