First Take: Captain America: Brave New World - and the audience went mild

 SYNOPSIS: Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan.

A new era for the MCU began in 2025, months on from Deadpool and Wolverine coming together in a way that made the nerds happy, Kevin Feige wanted to crack on with the new stories we’ve been building since Black Widow as, somehow, we reach the end of Phase 5 and the looming releases of both Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps. So it is apt that the first review from a new cinema in Preston (which we will be profiling very soon), is a film called Brave New World - it is just a shame that the Marvel identity crisis is still very much present beyond the obvious new additions to the universe.

Julius Onah is the man tasked with directing this, coming in at 1 hour 58 minutes (a rarity for an MCU product these days), it has a lot of potential from the man who is best known for making The Cloverfield Paradox, but where this film falls apart is in its script. Five credited screenwriters. Let that sink in folks. FIVE credited screenwriters. Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Peter Glanz and director Onah all contributed to a very exposition-heavy film that doesn’t have the passion or the pride which has made previous Captain America films have utilised - it is all very cliched, predictable, formulaic, and just dull, especially with some of the more, well… politically on the nose elements of the plot that we have here. Cinematography is handled relatively well by Kramer Morgenthau, and I wasn’t really that taken with the Laura Karpman score, even if I was experiencing this film, for the first time ever, in Dolby Atmos.

With the cast though, luckily they save this film from being an outright disaster - after some stellar work on Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Anthony Mackie was more than ready to assume the shield on a bigger screen for the first time, and he is reunited with some of his TV castmates in the form of Danny Ramirez and Carl Lumbly. Supporting them is Shira Haas, Xosha Roquemore, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson and some cameos who can’t be spoiled for very obvious reasons, but holding it together though is Harrison Ford - he wanted to move on from Indiana Jones, so why not move into a franchise where it’s more CG than stunts? Replacing the late William Hurt was no easy task but he saved this film from getting a full rant, it is as simple as that. I wanted to enjoy this film but beyond the shiny, new cinema there isn’t much to bang the drum about, and that says a lot.

THE VERDICT

Captain America: Brave New World is more Same Old, Same Old - it had been billed as the start of a new phase for the MCU’s storytelling but it’s the same formula they’ve always used, predictable as all hell, and just not great. There needs to be some serious soul searching because somewhere in LA, James Gunn is rubbing his hands with glee knowing that audiences could pivot to DC content if this dry spell continues.

RATING: 2.5/5