I did my MCU duty. “Captain America: Brave New World”, a slog of missed opportunities and dumb motivations

 

…but not exactly “good”. 

My expectations grew lower and lower each time I saw a preview. This could have been a course correction of sorts for Marvel, but as it was, we are left with a hodge-podge of undeveloped ideas and a plot that only serves to tie up threads dangling from a forgotten entry in the series first phase. 

I wasted till. Now to see this because I really am that apathetic about the whole enterprise, but I really like Anthony Mackie as an actor and his take on Sam Wilson. Harrison Ford is going to get my ass in the seat, and - at least, originally - I was on board since it seemed the filmmakers were going for a Captain America: The Winter Soldier direction. 

Of course, Mackie and Ford elevated the material, but the script is such a collage of moments and attempts to gin up a sense of high stakes but executed so haphazardly, if not disinterestedly, that I found myself shrugging my shoulders internally. 

To recap the plot this lackluster bores me just thinking about it. However, the gist is that Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross has upgraded from General to President. He’s working hard to get a multilateral treaty signed that will ensure all world governments have access to Celestial Island (the name given to the Celestial whose birth is on hold from Eternals) and most importantly, the new element discovered on the “island”; adamantium. Ross’s inner circle is compromised by a mysterious person but to what end? Well, it’s not to start World War III, even though that would be a likely result. Let’s bugger off from this recap and join me, if you will, to some bizarrely inconsequential plot work.

And yes, spoilers, Spoilers, and SPOILERS, which won’t matter even if you do plan on seeing the movie because it’s already rife with spoilage. 

We open with Sam getting in Mexico getting ready to recapture a canister of some material that’s been stolen from our side. This leads him to a hostage situation in a church with said hostages held by the Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito, joining the ranks of everyone else in this movie of actors way overqualified for this). Yes, Sam is successful in recapturing the asset, and yes, Sidewinder gets away, and yes, questions abound like “why didn’t the buyer for the canister show up?” Danny Ramirez is back as Torres who is now the Falcon-in-training and he and Mackie have an easy chemistry.

Before we go too far, let me state that I actually liked the series Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I liked its less as an espionage thriller than as a buddy hang-out series that gave Mackie and Sebastian Stan some great character moments. Wyatt Russell proved interesting enough as American Agent, but while the series had potential, it didn’t really ramp up the suspense or the sense of paranoia a good spy story requires. Rather like the movie at hand.

Anyway, we find that Sam is pairing Torres up with Isaiah Bradley, the forgotten Super Soldier whose story in the aforementioned series provides a strong emotional beat about the treatment of Black men in American society and in the Military-Industrial Complex. Here, Carl Lumbly gets to spread his wings some more and he remains a compelling dramatic presence. When Ross invites Sam to the White House for an announcement about the multilateral treaty and the discovery of adamantium, he asks Ross to invite Bradley as a sign of reparation, of sorts. I’ll come back to this later, but file that detail away in a folder called ‘lost opportunity.”

Ross also drops a bomb on Sam; he wants to restart the Avengers. This is a changed Ross; willing to compromise, trying to move the country and the world forward, a real good guy. No. Really. And now, here we look into another folder, we’ll label it “Misguided Motivations” or maybe “Dumb reasons for characters to do what they’re doing”. While, of course, Ross wants to show the world he’s changed and likely does want to serve his country, a lot of it has to do with attempting to woo his estranged daughter Betty back. 

Betty Ross. You know that name, right? No? You didn’t watch Lussier’s The Hulk? Not many people did. It’s a dopey flick. Whether it’s as dopey as this one, I’m hard-pressed to say. I kind of think both suffer from not thoroughly fleshed out ideas and mediocre execution. Anyway, Betty was dating Bruce Banner and after deciding to hunt Banner down with every means at his disposal, Betty told her dad to pound salt and cut him out of her life.

Now, here’s the weird deal. In the ensuing years, through all the Avengers stuff and Phases 1 through whatever we’re in, Ross, as played by the late, great William Hurt in one of the best check-cashing roles an actor could ever hope to land, never mentioned how distraught he was over his daughter giving him the finger. Why? Because Ross was just a placeholder for The Man, man. He was never a character, really, in any of the flicks. He was a softer J. Jonah Jameson, whose sole raison d’ être was to get hung up on mid-rant. 

And this is where Ford is asked to do some heavy lifting. He has to sell us on the idea that he’s just a guy who wants his daughter to love him! He’ll change the world and bring in a Golden Era to prove it, if he has to. And does Han Solo succeed in convincing us? Well, yeah, actually, he does. 

And (so many “ands”) that’s a problem. Ford turns in a vulnerable performance here that deserves a separate movie. A better movie. When he has to pivot to being the old “Thunderbolt” Ross, he does a good job of showing us a man dealing with anger and resentment at other things, but these moments show up at odds with his turn as a foundering dad.

In any case, after Sam joins Torres and Bradley at a ringside seat while Ross is announcing the treaty and introducing the world to adamantium, Bradley goes nuts and starts shooting, as do five other guards/Secret Service agents. Of course, the fall-out from this is that Sam knows Isaiah wouldn’t do such a thing, that he was under some kind of manipulation, but Ross tells him to stay out of it and not investigate because the optics of the President allowing Bradley’s friend to investigate would look bad. Reasonable, I guess, but again, kinda dumb, since any investigation would likely be highly classified and not subject to public scrutiny. 

Instead, Ross turns the investigation over to Ruth Bat-Seraph’s Shira Haas, a diminutive ex=Black Widow who, and this is not a dig, reminded me of Lotte Lenya, in the sense that here’s another actor who’s done some remarkable work in a potboiler (Lenya is likely better remembered for her turn in From Russia With Love than as Bertolt Brecht’s collaborator). Bat-Seraph is steely and no bullshit, but I couldn’t help thinking she made the cut because she really does not look like Widow material. She proved me wrong; she handled herself with aplomb later in the flick, but again, meh; she’s given enough to be her own person, but not enough to be compelling.

Of course, Sam and Torres start digging and this brings them to a black site from, oh! Of course! The Hulk! Right. The same site where Samuel Sterns created the Abomination and I can’t really remember much else. The exposition we get here - and there’s lots of it - is that Sterns was injected with gamma-infused super soldier serum but instead of making him a Hulk, it just made him wicked smaht, as we say in the Greater Boston area.

In short order, a bunch of uniformed mooks descend on Sam and Torres and Sterns gets away. However, at least, now we know who’s behind it all. Big deal. At least, Tim Blake Nelson gets a good, Marvel size paycheck for this. And no, it’s not his finer work; it’s also not his fault; Sterns is the designated spewer of exposition and we learn he’s out to ruin Ross because Ross promised him he’d free him after all these years. Instead, Ross made Sterns his private think tank. 

Wait, you mean the stand-up guy who’s trying to make things right with his daughter and move the country and the world forward, used a black site for sixteen years, exploiting a single prisoner to get the odds on different strategies for winning the presidency, and didn’t set him free? What an asshole! 

In a theater, throwing up your hands is likely to go unnoticed, but I just didn’t care when all this came out. It would have been one thing if there had been more build up - as in, suppose someone had actually remembered Sterns as part of the MCU over the past umpteen movies and/or gave him a more tragic script to follow? Okay, let’s put that back in the folder and move on.

Sterns has escaped, and soon enough, Sidewinder reappears to assassinate Sam; he’s waking for Sterns and the ensuing fight is fun and thankfully doesn’t drag on too long, but by now, if you haven’t figured out where this is going, you really need to see more whodunnits (and better ones). 

While all this is going on, Ross has been downing little white pills to manage his heart problems. They look like Altoids but they are not, of course, what they seem. They are gamma-laced lozenges that have slowly been building up in Ross’s system so that he will “Hulk out” and ruin Ross’s reputation forever! Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Sterns wins! Boom!

That’s the other entry in the Dumb Motivation folder. Sterns just wants the world to see Ross for what he is; a red-hued rage-fueled monster! Dear me, writing this is dire. Anyway, we find out about this when one of Sam’s SEAL pals (I think he’s a SEAL) has tests run on the pills but is summarily executed by Sterns before he can alert Sam. How does Sam find out? Glad you asked.

After failing to get the Japanese on board with the treaty, (because intel was leaked that Ross had let the canister of adamantium be stolen so the U.S could get it back…for… some reason. Jesus H., I just got dumber writing this) Ross gets upset and when he finds out that Japan is deploying a fleet to Celestial Island, he mobilizes U.S. ships to get to the Indian Ocean and pronto. His aide, Agent Taylor, Xosha Roquemore (The Mindy Project forever!), tries to talk to sense to him, but of course, Ross is gonna Ross. Oh, and what of Agent Bat-Seraph? Well, duh, she’s been tracking Sam and Torres and of course, is on their side.

Sam and Torres head to the Indian Ocean to prevent an international incident; don’t worry, it’s a lot of special effects and so on and so forth. Sam meets with Ross, eventually gets the whole dope from Ross about how he had to keep Sterns a prisoner and how Sterns had been keeping him alive with those pills (and how much he missed his daughter and he was doing “all this” for her) and then,when it turns out two pilots have been triggered by Sterns, Sam and Torres save the day.

The rift between Japan and the U.S. is healed, the treaty gets signed, but Torres is critically injured. We cut to the O.R. where Sam is watching the procedure and is approached by someone off-camera in a mid-shot. Sam tells the person that it’s a private room and to leave, we wait a couple of beats and the camera moves around so James Buchanan Barnes comes into frame. It’s a great moment; it packs a punch and you realize just how comfortable Mackie and Sebastian Stan are in these roles. Bucky gives Sam a pep talk to end all pep talks, and for that, I’ll take a moment to recap.

Earlier in the movie, Ross had told Sam that he wasn’t Steve Rogers. Sam gets it, agrees and continues being the Captain America we know him to be. Here, he tells Bucky that he should have taken the super soldier serum and Bucky asked why, because he thinks he could protect everyone? Even Steve couldn’t do that and in a great line delivery, Stan/Bucky says “Steve gave [people] something to believe in; you give them something to aspire to.” There’s a beat. Mackie/Sam is taken aback and says that was really good; did Bucky’s speechwriters come up with that? Why, yes. Yes, they did. Oh, yeah, Bucky is running for Congress; we already know that from the most recent Thuderbolts* trailer. 

This little moment was a welcome reminder of what it means to be invested in characters. And this is this latest phase of Marvel’s biggest problems. Investment in characters has lower returns because most of the recent spate don’t give us much to care about. The plot in most of these films is secondary to the overarching themes of coming together, overcoming differences, and very often, seeing people who care about each other do their best to protect the people they love, right wrongs, and so forth.

Sure, sure, there are special effects and loud, dumb fights. But come on, these are buddy movies where dysfunctional families work through their issues - often with fists and laser beams and what-not - and move onto the next adventure.

Oh. Special effects. Ross does “Hulk Out”. It’s in the trailers. Red Hulk is likely not as powerful as Banner and the SFX are good enough. He looks like Ford. How does he make his appearance? Ross gets upset at questioning at a press conference in the Rose Garden and Sterns’ voice is heard over the outdoor speakers egging him on. He takes out a chunk of the White House, pursues Sam hither to the cherry trees where they’re blossoming. All this is part of a plan, of course. Sam, ever the counselor, tries to bring Ross around to recognizing that this is where he would take Betty as a little girl and somewhere in the big red lug’s brain pan, that memory would revive and Ross would be his old self again. Yeah, that worked. 

The treaty is ratified, Ross is imprisoned at The Raft (where bad superheroes are imprisoned, see Captain America: Civil War) and is no longer President. As Sam gets ready to take his leave, he mentions someone is here to see him and, lo, ’tis Betty. Liv Tyler gets a Marvel check, too! 

The post-credits scene is Sterns alerting Sam to the coming threat from other worlds and - Jesus H on Toast - berates him for thinking that this is the only world. Okay. I’ll take a lot of stupidity, but this is the kind of writing that - look. These scripts are mostly written by committee. This one certainly was. But you would think someone would point out that, hey, New York was invaded by aliens thirteen years ago and more recently, half of humanity was dusted by this Thanos guy. This is referred to repeatedly by regular folks in the movies and TV shows. It is common fucking knowledge, but here is Sterns warning Sam of “other worlds” and asking if he and other heroes thought ours is the only one? With a fucking giant-ass Celestial in the Indian Ocean? Goddammit, when scripts suck this bad, I almost never want to see another one of these movies ever.

Okay, so we looked at Dumb Motivations. Let’s look at the Missed Opportunities folder. The biggest revolves around Sam, as a Black man, as Captain America. This is likely something that in the world outside the movie theater, must rub the alt-right movie goer very much the wrong way. The subject is approached more head-on in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, as well as Sam’s lack of credit and not being able to secure a loan to save the family’s boat in New Orleans. 

Here, somewhat to the movie’s credit, how a Black superhero is treated or expected to carry himself is approached more obliquely. When Sam is talking to Torres, who’s recovering and has just told Sam that he was Torres’ hero, nothing is stated explicitly. Torres alludes to the idea that Sam is the first person of color who was a superhero he could look up to. And Sam points out that he has to be on point because “you feel like you’re ‘never enough’.” That’s as close as we get to any serious dialog about race that is frankly, a necessity. 

To the MCU’s credit, they have done a credible job of giving a rich diversity of voices representation. Not that this has to be the mandate all the time, but a Black Captain America is exactly the platform for addressing the current moment head-on. Sure, Marvel and Disney might be apprehensive about push-back from the current administration, but all the more reason to emphasize the state of affairs and speak more loudly for diversity and inclusion. 

I really wanted this movie to be the one that would move the MCU forward. Wolverine and Deadpool is proof that there is still life in the franchise, but Marvel Studios is still having problems building on the edifice of almost three dozen films. Captain America: Brave New World isn’t as egregious in its failure as, say, Ant-Man: Quantumania or Thor: Love and Thunder. But it’s a far cry away from top tier. Mackie deserves better. Cap deserves better.