Captain America: Brave New World

A Spy Thriller Suffocated by MCU Obligations

Marvel has lost much of the goodwill it built with audiences after its grand climax in Avengers: Endgame (2019). The ensuing years featured a barrage of TV shows and films with no clear narrative direction, diverging wildly in tone and style. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that the studio pioneered began to restrict rather than support its projects, leading to contradictions and inconsistencies. With Bob Iger’s return as CEO of Disney, which owns Marvel, he cut back the number of releases in an attempt to bring clarity to the studio’s direction. It has been eight months since the last Marvel property, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), and now we return to one of the original Avengers in Captain America: Brave New World (2025).

Captain America: Brave New World follows Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as he grows more comfortable with the mantle of Captain America. He has a new Falcon sidekick in the form of cheery Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). Wilson is brought under the wing of the newly elected U.S. president, his old frenemy General Wilbur Ross (Harrison Ford), whose legacy is at risk of being undermined by a shadowy foe.

The film was plagued by heavy reshoots and delays. Marvel guru Kevin Feige has placed immense pressure on Brave New World to course-correct the MCU after several misguided years. The film is tasked with linking disparate projects, incorporating events and characters from The Incredible Hulk (2008), Black Widow (2021), and The Eternals(2021). Strangely, it ignores the rather significant and thematically relevant events of Secret Invasion (2023), which featured a different U.S. president and would have been an easier fit. The resulting jumble means that the spy-thriller elements Brave New World aspires to are not given room to breathe. Instead, the film serves as a band-aid, undercutting any meaningful character development for its protagonist.

This marks director Julius Onah’s first entry into the MCU, but he has dealt with problematic and misguided franchises before. While he made a name for himself in indie cinema with Luce (2019), audiences may recognize him from the ambitious yet ill-fated The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), another film hamstrung by franchise obligations. Onah seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Marvel machine, and as a result, Brave New World feels like yet another factory product churned out by the studio.

That’s not to say Brave New World is boring—the Marvel formula of structure, humor, and action has endured for 17 years for a reason. However, its tired and worn-out beats make the narrative predictable. Mackie is given a few intriguing moments where he wrestles with the weight of the Captain America mantle and what it means to be a black man representing the character. Likewise, Ford, taking over the role from the late William Hurt, delivers moments of emotional depth, convincingly portraying Ross’s internal struggle between politics and morality.

As in many other Marvel projects, however, the villains are flat and forgettable, while side characters remain one-dimensional clichés. The most frustrating aspect of Brave New World, however, is its marketing. As I’ve criticized in other reviews about over-revealing trailers, this film spoils its main twist and grand finale by making them centerpieces of its marketing campaign—plastered across trailers and posters. The result is that audiences, bombarded with these images, are robbed of the chance to experience what could have been an invigorating and bold twist. Instead, Brave New Worldfeels like a film you’ve already seen before.

Marvel still doesn’t seem to have a clear plan for where it's heading. That’s a shame, given the likable characters and rich world it has built. Feige clearly had no direction after Avengers: Endgame. Brave New World aspires to be a spy thriller in the vein of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), but its cinematic universe obligations, muddled and overcrowded script, and suffocated character development result in a superhero film that, while enjoyable, is ultimately forgettable.

6.0/10