Captain America: Brave New World Review - This Winter Soldier-Like Entry Fails To Push The MCU Forward

After suffering through some highly publicized reshoots and changes, it's been something of a mystery as to what kind of film "Captain America: Brave New World" would be once all the post-production dust has settled. Initially purported to follow in the last Cap chapter's "Captain America: Civil War" footsteps as an "Avengers" level crossover film, its trailers painted a picture that picked up from where the Disney+ series "The Falcon and The Winter Soldier" left off. But with storyline changes drastic enough to excise an entire villain played by WWE's Seth Rollins, anything was possible.

The good news is, for folks who have felt the MCU has gotten too far from its origins and too cumbersome to enjoy, "Brave New World" will feel like a breath of fresh air. It's, perhaps by necessity, a stripped down affair that plays like a purposeful rhyming piece with the Russo brothers' work on "Winter Soldier." But for anyone hoping for more than secondhand nostalgia — a 2025 film homaging a 2014 film homaging a broad simulacrum of the 1970s — "Brave New World" will likely disappoint. The same gripes about post-"Avengers: Endgame" features remain, yet they may have been easier to ignore were this a stand-alone film that truly stood on its own and not something feverishly stitched together from the past.

When "Captain America: Brave New World" begins, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) has held down the mantle of Captain America for a few years since we last saw him accept Steve Rogers' (Chris Evans) legacy. His former rival Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (Harrison Ford), once a staunch antagonist to super-powered folks, is now the president, and Sam fights alongside his administration, both to keep an eye on him and to inspire hope. Ford's Ross may have shaven William Hurt's mustache, but a tiger doesn't change its stripes. Or can it? Whether or not President Ross can be trusted is a through-line that runs through the whole film, but the structure and tone are clearly attempting to recapture the magic of Evans' second outing as Cap. 

Director Julius Onah seems to be inspired by the same paranoid conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s that the Russos famously shouted out a decade ago, though his efforts feel more earnest in their stylistic adulation. Kramer Morgenthau's cinematography and Laura Karpman's unsettling score both go a long way to selling the throwback intent, separating the film from some of the more fantastical chapters in recent MCU memory. It would require more spoiling than we would like to outline all the ways this film rhymes with "The Falcon and The Winter Soldier" but suffice to say, some engagement farmers on X are going to have their hands full doing shot for shot comparisons and gif-set echolocation once the film reaches 4K VOD.

While a continuation of the energy and themes from the original Cap trilogy, "Brave New World" is also decidedly Sam Wilson's journey, with Mackie finally getting his own headlining turn after sharing his last outing with Sebastian Stan's Bucky. For fans of the Disney+ series, Carl Lumbly, reappearing here as Isaiah Bradley, is also a delight, and his chemistry with Mackie feels necessary for the film's thematic heart. Mackie's work is impressive, though likely not enough to overcome the rampant, racist refutation from a subset of the fandom at a Black man holding the shield. On that note, the film isn't as aggressive politically as one might hope for, given the obvious narrative parallels for our current national moment.

Normally, a lot of corners must be cut in big MCU releases with regards to storytelling ambition or tackling more difficult ideas, because there's a lot of mythology work and brick laying for future crossovers and events. Here, though, "Captain America: Brave New World" doesn't plumb deep enough into its thornier concepts, and it can't be blamed on franchise management. There just isn't much to speak of here to use as a scapegoat. Ever since the epic climax of "Avengers: Endgame," few new MCU films are doing a strong enough job of building out the world and setting the stage for the next big "Avengers" productions. So, when this film uses "a divided nation" as its backdrop, it's not meaningfully tethered to what is going on in the MCU, but rather cheaply mirroring our own in a way these films are just not sturdy enough to accomplish. 

Positioning a former villain as the president and making his redemption arc the backbone of the film, especially with a Black hero being the biggest proponent of giving him a chance, feels naive and tone deaf in a world where America is stripping back every progressive, DEI ideal that these films have otherwise espoused. It feels even stranger to have to shy away from setting up the future of the MCU when so much of this project has its roots in the oft-forgotten "The Incredible Hulk" from 2008. Looking to the past of the Cap franchise and making it new for Sam's journey is one thing, but recycling bits from a 17-year-old feature that few revere in the first place just comes off as odd. 

If nothing else, it's a true feat that a movie with this many writers and this tangled an editing process ultimately wound up as solid as it did. Yeah, a lot of the action set pieces are inconsistent and choppy. Much of the CG work is reliably cheap-looking and rushed. But in the end, they pulled together what could have been an embarrassing disaster into something entertaining and, at times anyway, inspired. 

Based on the latest "Thunderbolts*" trailer from the Super Bowl, we may not have to live in an "Avengers"-less world much longer. When all is said and done here, it's a shame that Sam didn't get the ball further down the field, and six years after "Endgame," the MCU is still running in circles.

"Captain America: Brave New World" hits theaters on February 14.