Captain America Brave New World, another Marvel Mess

The messy and tiring Captain America: Brave New World Have a few ideas, but it handles them in the most shallow, simplified ways.
Photo: Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Everett Collection

“You’re not Steve Rogers,” Snarl’s newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) to our newly anointed Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), during a particularly dramatic moment in Captain America: Brave New World. The line is intended to really cut deep. Sam cares that he does not measure up to the legacy of Rogers, the former Captain America. It is assumed that all this pro-forma emotional blather about our hero’s fear of inadequacy came up with the initial manuscript, but it would also not be shocking to hear that it was added later, as a way of acknowledging that the new movie itself liver and wilts – in the shadow of his mostly loved ancestors. “Steve gave them something to believe in,” Sam is told. “You give them something to strive for.” Brave new worldUnfortunately, is not a movie that anyone would strive for, at least in its current state.

This is technically the fourth Captain America movie and the first starring role in Mackie (a very good actor and a prominence in previous items such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Ant-Man). Sam Wilson has inherited the mantle (and shield) from Chris Evans’s Rogers after he bent out of Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Endgame. (Evans even came back in Deadpool and WolverineBecause nothing in these movies ever gets gone.) Of course, Sam was Steve’s Pal Falcon in previous films and he was also one of heroes in the Marvel -Tv series Falcon and the winter soldierAlong with Steve’s second best bet, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Sam is perhaps the new captain, but he refused to take the special serum that turned the disposable Brooklyn boy Rogers into a beef, Brawny Super-Soldier, which just adds the impostor syndrome. Fortunately, the future congressman Bucky Barnes himself (long story, probably) is there to bend our guy up: “He gave you that shield not because you’re the strongest, but because you’re you,” he says Sam. (Don’t worry: As is traditional, the false sincerity is then undermined with a limp joke. ”Did your speech writers help you with that?” Asks Sam Bucky.)

The notion of the self -evident hero is nothing new. It could still have been interesting to pursue if it had been handled here with something similar to Vidd, or intelligence or depth. It would certainly have created a compelling role for Mackie, an actor who has proven his ability to convey tension and inner turmoil. But astonishing he has been left in Lurch by his own film. The script pays lip service to Sam’s anxiety, but does little to explore or dramatize them. It also foams over another potentially interesting moral dilemma, in Sam’s decision to do business with Ross, the obsessive general who spent a lifetime pursuing the hole and another lifetime of knocking Avengers for submission. (The grade was played by deceased William Hurt from 2008’s Edward Norton-Staring The incredible hulkAn underpresting post that appeared to have been spread from MCU Cosmos, but which runs a surprising number of recalls here. As I said: Nothing remains gone in this universe.)

“I know Ross will never change, but he is president,” Cam tells Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), an aging black veterinarian whom we learn was “The forgotten Captain America”: Bradley fought in the Korea war and was injected with super-soldier serum; He was also imprisoned and experimented by the US government. Understandably, he can’t quite understand why Captain America is now making a common case with Ross, a man who has done some outrageous things in his career like a Marvel Nemesis, including (which the film reminds us to blow up much of Harlem in his quest For Hulk. On their best, superhero stories can make solid vessels to explore such ideas. At Marvel and Disney about their own willingness to suck up to certain real recently chose presidents.

Even at the level of basic genre pleases, Brave new world Feels more mandatory than exciting. It seems to be hard to remember now, but once staging these Marvel movies actions in quick, fun, creative ways to use advanced visual effects to realize their superheroes’ unique abilities. Today, more often than not, we become boring, derived drudgery-a symptom perhaps of confidentiality (there have been 35 of these films so far), but also an overwhelming sense of cash checks living in the last few years. Is it that they have all just made every move, every kick, every stroke, every launch to death? Last year, Deadpool v. Wolverine Assuming Marvel with a much-needed mega hit, but even it felt like a knowledgeable nod to the fact that the study had run out of ideas. That movie succeeded by piercing fun at its existence. So what are the other movies doing now?

To his credit, Brave new world Do okay with the matches themselves stuntwork is effective and there is still fun to be with the way Captain America Throws that protects around, plus now he also has the fake wings — but its dog matches and several VFX-heavy sequences are so lifeless And tiring that I felt my eyes were running closed a few times. When Ross actually became Red Hulk I began to imagine one Has fallen Series input where Slobby retired Secret Service Agent Gerard Butler had to protect President Red Hulk from a trick of murderous goons. Is there a worse sign of a movie than for the viewer to start the image of others, similar mediocre movies they could watch instead?

There is also the somewhat predictable problem of having to convey any urgent or threat to all the things these people have been through. One does not need a living memory of the previous films to understand this; President Ross even mentions the fact that the world still expects the fact that half of humanity was wiped out by existence for a few years, although the fact that it remains a reflection is (unintentional?) Funny. The main villain of Brave new world is the leader (Tim Blake Nelson), a classic hulk —nemesis from the cartoon whose grown brain appears to have pushed out through his skull. (In the comics he has a tremendously elongated and let’s realize it, itchy-pan.) One of his powers is the ability to predict what will happen by calculating the statistical odds of things. How should anyone worry about such a guy in a world where Dr. Strange exists? Here, too, we wonder if the leader (as despite being this film’s main antagonist does not really get much to do), could initially have meant to be a more pointed criticism of our tech-bridge-empowered dystopia. It wouldn’t have been a particularly original idea – but it would have been something.

One can sometimes shoot to try to watch the movie Captain America: Brave New World Maybe I would be-not so much a repeat of the old Chris Evans Captain America movies and more a shorter, tighter, close quarterly action flick, one without foreign invasions or heavy fantasy elements, one where the villains wear suits and hoodies and use Cannons and fist instead of room weapons and what not. One without epic tasks for magical elements, the video game incident that was already tired a decade ago, and yet still drives so many action movies today. And certainly the concept of a hero who uses its sense and its courage instead of a special serum would have fit nicely with this approach. But somewhere along the way it seems that it has all spun out of control in the confused and low mess we have in front of us. It’s enough to make one wonder if, given the level of interference and other guesses involved, it could ever make such a movie. Victims of their own success, they have somehow transformed their exciting production business into a huge slot machine.