Captain America: Brave New World Movie Review: The Marvel Cinematic Universe of recent years has been strange, fluctuating between highs and lows after the narrative and emotional peak reached with Endgame. We knew well that the difficult part would come after that film, and they probably also knew it within Marvel Studios, but the feeling remains that not everything went as planned, starting with the pandemic that turned the tables.
After several films dedicated to less consolidated characters, however, with Captain America: Brave New World we return to what can be considered the main thread and to that figure who had animated the Marvel Universe since the beginning, albeit with a different face. Symbols more than character, the new Captain America is Sam Wilson, the one we had known as Falcon and who is now the holder of the iconic shield. Will he be up to the task?
Captain America Brave New World Movie Plot:
Captain America: Brave New World immediately makes things clear, with an incipit that focuses on the political context in which we will move, focusing on the newly elected President of the United States Thaddeus Ross.
A first look, a flash before diving into the action to follow a mission of Sam Wilson, to immediately introduce us to the two souls of the new film: on the one hand the political intrigue, on the other the inevitable action when we talk about cinecomics.
In fact, the narrative heart of the film is not the most action and dynamic one, but the international scandal in which Cap finds himself entangled after meeting President Ross, which leads him to investigate, accompanied by famous and unknown faces, a dangerous conspiracy that can have global repercussions.
America Brave New World Movie Analysis:
"You may be Captain America, but you're not Steve Rogers". Ross says this to Sam Wilson right from the trailer of the film, because it is clear that this is the heart of the new chapter of the series dedicated to the character, as well as the development of the character played by Anthony Mackie: the legacy of the shield is heavy, the doubts inevitable.
Sam cannot help but wonder if he will be up to expectations, to that important load of responsibility that the role entails. Just like its interpreter Anthony Mackie, who proves charismatic enough to hold his own and the comparison. And just like the film that hosts him, which has the burden of continuing that politically-oriented trend inaugurated by Winter Soldier and continued with the wealth of themes and characters of Civil War.
If it is to those titles that we must refer, Brave New World is placed a step below, because it does not fully exploit the good introduced in the first act of the story, developing the premises without particular flashes.
It is still a more than decent political thriller, which has moments that work better than others, but which seems not to want to dare as much as would have been necessary, perhaps a victim of the same psychological pressure of Sam in the awareness of a task that weighs on his shoulders: not to make us regret what has been and to take the future of Captain America, character and storyline, on his shoulders.
Beyond Captain America: Brave New World:
The new film also has another merit, that of tying up many things introduced in the past of the Marvel Universe and left somewhat pending, as well as introducing a couple of interesting novelties, not least a charismatic and significant actor like Harrison Ford, and ideas that will be useful in the future of the saga.
From this point of view, it is a chapter that acts as a bridge between old and new, that goes to fish out some elements that the public may have forgotten and adds new details that can open up scenarios that we are sure we will see as protagonists of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from now on, with the arrival not only of the Fantastic Four next July but with the new Avengers in Secret Wars and with the mutants and the X-Men, now that they are in the hands of Disney.
Also for this reason, there is a certain feeling of some passages being hasty, not very in-depth, as if there was a hurry to move on to what the spectators, and perhaps also the authors, are anxiously awaiting. Brave New World has the merit of doing it better than other recent MCU projects by setting up a story that has its reasons for interest and hooks with the current events we are living. For now, waiting to be amazed again, let's make do.
Conclusions:
Captain America: Brave New World builds its ideas well, but it seems to develop them without much conviction and suffer the weight of the legacy of the previous Winter Soldier and Civil War, like its protagonist Sam Wilson who must make his own and accept the responsibility that comes from having the shield that belonged to Steve Rogers.
The film remains a decent political thriller that also has the merit of taking up some ideas from the past of the MCU that were left pending, also introducing some elements that will be useful for future developments. If Anthony Mackie shows shoulders broad enough to support this difficult legacy, Harrison Ford is a prominent addition with his undeniable charisma.