Captain America: Brave New World (2025) Review: A Briskly Paced, Though Cumbersome Superhero Action Thriller With Political-Movie Tropes
Poor Captain America: Brave New World, which was originally subtitled New World Order, can’t seem to catch a break ever since the fourth Captain America movie was in development in 2021. Delayed release (it was initially scheduled for last July), middling test screening results and extensive reshoots were among the alleged production issues that this movie had gone through.
But the biggest takeaway lies in Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson/Falcon taking up the mantle of Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers as the new Captain America. Evans made the star-spangled hero uniquely his own, leaving a legacy worth remembering after a long tenure in the MCU before he gracefully exited the role in Avengers: Endgame.
Yes, Sam Wilson did become Captain America in the Marvel Comics in 2014 but looking from the movie perspective, I always figure Mackie lacks the much-needed star power to carry a lead role as vital as playing Captain America. He did lead Disney+’s six-episode Falcon and the Winter Soldier alongside Sebastian Stan’s Bucky and by episode six, he fully embraced the new identity being a Captain America upon taking down the radical anti-patriotism group the Flag Smashers led by Karli (Erin Kellyman).
The aftermath sees the new Captain America delivering a long monologue, one of which acknowledges he’s a “Black man carrying the stars and stripes” and that “there are millions of people who are gonna hate [him]” for each time he picks up the shield. That was four years ago and fast-forward to today, I remain sceptical of seeing him leading the new Captain America movie. Personally, I find The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is mostly generic, one of the many letdowns in the erratic Disney+’s MCU television series.
In the MCU movies, Mackie fits well playing second fiddle to Evans’ Steve Rogers as his trusted friend and sidekick Sam Wilson/Falcon from the time he appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Now, with Captain America: Brave New World finally seeing the light of day as the penultimate chapter of MCU’s Phase 5 before concluding with Thunderbolts* this May, it’s an ultimate litmus test to see if Mackie and the movie itself can surprise me otherwise, despite everything.
Credited to a whopping five screenwriters including The Cloverfield Paradox‘s Julius Onah, who also directed the movie, Sam Wilson is now working for the newly-elected US president Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt who died in 2022), previously an army general and a Secretary of the State. Sam also served as a mentor to U.S. Air Force lieutenant Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), his trusted sidekick who backs him up as the new Falcon.
The story follows Sam, who is tasked to retrieve an all-important canister, where he encounters new enemies including the ruthless mercenary Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from the Serpent Society and Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), the biologist who was last seen helping Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner (who has since played by Mark Ruffalo in the subsequent MCU entries) to control his gamma-infected DNA and later, the already genetically-enhanced Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) transformed into a sizable humanoid monster known as the Abomination in The Incredible Hulk seventeen years ago.
And just to refresh your memory further, a lab accident happens, causing Sterns to experience unusual physical changes after being exposed to Bruce Banner/Hulk’s blood substance. That accident has since forever changed Sterns and he has been orchestrating an elaborate plan, which somehow has to do with President Thaddeus Ross. The movie also brings back Carl Lumbly and Liv Tyler, both reprising their respective roles as the elderly super-soldier Isaiah Bradley and Ross’s biologist daughter, Betty Ross from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and The Incredible Hulk. All this and more under the surprisingly shorter-than-expected running time of just two hours
Typically, an MCU movie would run an average of 2 1/2 hours and although how long a single movie plays shouldn’t be a direct indication of a quality check or representation, it remains interesting to see how Onah (or whoever behind the scenes actually calls the shots) places all the moving bits and pieces together into a coherent whole or worst-case scenario, a messy affair.
Well, the good news is, that Captain America: Brave New World isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It’s more of a middle-of-the-road superhero movie that feels like Onah tries to replicate the look and feel of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, albeit in a political thriller-lite manner. The movie trims down the usual Marvel jokes that often get in the way in favour of a more straightforward superhero action movie. Onah keeps a reasonably brisk pace right from the start and the story is busy with plenty of things going on to keep you occupied.
But it’s hard to shake off the feeling that the movie is overcrowded where certain plot threads feel either perfunctory or underdeveloped. It sure does suffer the familiar case of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too syndrome, evidently with Onah attempting to pull off both sides of the stories: a feature-length follow-up to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and a semi-sequel to The Incredible Hulk, only to end up with mixed results. The action is a hit-or-miss affair with inconsistent CGI and I’m not sure whether it’s me or the IMAX screen looks dim with Kramer Morgenthau’s murky cinematography regardless of daytime or nighttime scenes.
Onah’s camerawork tends to suffer from quick pans and staccato editing styles that don’t hold the shots long enough to let us appreciate its elaborate choreography. This is especially true with the somewhat incomprehensible aerial fight scene at one point in the movie but other times, namely the eventual Captain America vs Red Hulk as prominently featured in the trailers is competently staged with enough flair.
As for the cast, Anthony Mackie tries his best here leading an MCU movie for the first time as Captain America. Not great but decent enough while he shares worthwhile buddy-movie chemistry with Danny Ramirez’s game performance as Joaquin Torres. Harrison Ford brings his trademark gruff and world-weary supporting turn as President Thaddeus Ross and it’s nice to see him play the commander-in-chief again since 1997’s Air Force One. Giancarlo Esposito does what he can in his otherwise limited role as Sidewinder, whose no-nonsense persona surprisingly fares better than Tim Blake Nelson’s sadly underwhelming Samuel Sterns. Likewise, don’t forget to stick around as Captain America: Brave New World has one end-credits scene.
