Review by Tim Robins
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
I was eagerly anticipating Captain America: Brave New World and had avoided all the behind-the-scenes news of reshoots, recasting and rewrites in the wake of negative test screenings. I’m glad I did, because the movie was in danger of being buried by critics, sight unseen. That would be a shame, because it’s a serviceable, sometimes exhilarating, action-thriller that picks up from where The Incredible Hulk (2008) Eternals (2021) and The Falcon and Winter Soldier (also 2021) left off.
Despite negative commentary, much of it before its release, the movie’s opening three days brought in $100 million in the United States, one of the top domestic openings for the Presidents Day holiday and the biggest opening of 2025 to date. It also made $192 million globally, so it seems the world was up for it as well. But the doommongering has continued after the authors of MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios used their podcast to say that the film’s budget was not the $180M claimed by Marvel but more like $380M, after reshoots, and so was unlikely to turn a profit.
Of course, you can selectively choose whatever information fits your prejudices. In one article, for example, The Hollywood Reporter, for example, cited its B- CinemaScore as “the worst grade bestowed on any title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Strangely, I’d never heard of a CinemaScore before this and even rage baiting critics had to explain it to their followers (The score is derived from ratings given by audiences leaving the cinema).
I was also sceptical about the marketing strategy behind Captain America: Brave New World. The film opened on Valentine’s Day. This turned out to be entirely appropriate, as the movie is something of a bromance between Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson (aka Captain America) and Danny Ramirez’ Joaquin Torres (the Falcon-in-waiting), and perfect for the large number of single men in the audience. In the end, I decided the movie was doing a social service for the lonely and unattached.
On-screen, almost every character is either visiting, or being visited by, people in prison. Not since the 1970’s Doctor Who story “Frontier in Space” had I seen so many in prison cells. Even the end credit sequence has an imprisoned villain warning of worse things to come, a teaser reminiscent of Lex Luthor’s warning at the end of 2016’s Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It was also refreshing to see a MCU movie without purple multi-verses and bombastic CGI, although the film does have a lot of CGI. Even without the battles between Cap and jet fighters, and Cap vs The Red Hulk, there are quite a lot of CGI head replacements insecurely attached to other performers’ bodies. Some had total body replacements. Reshoots said goodbye to WWE wrestler Seth Rollins and hello to Giancarlo Esposito in the role of The Serpent Squad’s ‘Sidewinder’.
The plot sees The Serpent Squad, reduced from super-villains to mere terrorists, run off with the American government’s sample of adamantium, a super-metal mined from the body of the stillborn Celestial, Tiamut, who died at the end of The Eternals. Meanwhile, there’s an assassination attempt on President Ross by none other than Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) under the control of Samuel Sterns (Tim Nelson), who has been mentally enhanced by the blood of The Abomination.
Elsewhere, Japan is using warships to assert their claim to Tiamut’s adamantium and President Ross is compromised by being hooked on gamma-irradiated heart medication, which is slowly turning him into The Red Hulk. Meanwhile, Giancarlo Esposito… wait a minute! Who is Isaiah Bradley? Keep up! He’s the original Captain America introduced in The Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021). Don’t you remember? No, neither did I. Worse, none of the dialogue here really introduced him to the cinema audience nor made him particularly interesting.
There’s a lot going on in this movie. The first third of its runtime is more jaw, jaw than war, war. Director Julius Onah is being praised for pulling together a coherent movie, but he has done so in the least interesting way. The movie’s many, many themes carry little emotional weight. For example, President Ross is trying to reconnect with his daughter, Betty (Liv Tyler), but their reconciliation is done over the phone with Betty off screen. There was a much better moment for this. Betty could have turned up after her Hulked-up Dad had pummeled Cap into the ground and before the monster dealt a killing blow. It could have been Betty who talked the Red Hulk down, not Captain America, who really had no emotional bond with Ross. That said, some critics wanted the Red Hulk to be defeated with a super weapon. In the original cut, Cap used adamantium to drain Ross of gamma radiation. This gave Ross a heart attack. His funeral can still be seen in one trailer.
There’s also a character arc involving Sam Wilson wondering how he can be Captain America without having taken the super serum that gave Steve Rogers his powers. But Wilson still manages to survive being stabbed multiple times in vital organs, and still manages to perform superhuman feats of strength, including standing up in his ludicrously, heavy-looking suit of giant wings (I know the suit is made of light-weight “vibranium”, but it looks ridiculous sprouting from Wilson’s backpack).
Fortunately, Anthony Mackie wears the costume well and plays his role as the new Captain America with due seriousness. A little more levity might have jollied the plot along, though. There’s one dialogue scene between Captain America and The Winter Soldier that brought back warm memories of how MCU movies used to balance sarcastic, self-aware humour with action. Even the audience laughed – a one-off moment. I honestly think one of the five(!) credits for the film’s screenplay was just for writing that scene. Sebastien Stan, reprising his role as The Winter Soldier, was another late addition.
The performances still have to contend with the editing, too. The placement of scenes doesn’t help the drama. Once the villain is revealed, I don’t see any point for withholding his identity from the audience by shooting him in the shadows. And once we have seen Ross has reconcile himself with his daughter, I don’t see any credibility left to the villain’s plan to further deepen the emotional divide between the pair by transforming Ross into the Red Hulk. What divide? Sure, the villain doesn’t know that father and daughter have reconciled their differences, but since his “power” is predicting the probabilities of things that are likely to come to pass, the fact he hasn’t factored in this possibility just makes him look like a dimwit.
Despite the film’s many frustrations, why not go see it? I can’t guarantee a good time all of the time, but Captain America: Brave New World goes through the motions enough to be entertaining. At the very least the concluding action scenes are spectacular enough and it is fun seeing the Red Hulk tearing up The White House.
That said, I am aware that there’s braver and newer worlds on the horizon. Welcome to the dawn of the era of Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and James Gunn’s Superman…
Tim Robins
Captain America: Brave New World is in cinemas now | Official Site
New York Times best-selling author Kwame Mbalia and New York Times best-selling illustrator Nikkolas Smith explore the world of Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World. This picture book is perfect for fans of Sam Wilson, a.k.a. Captain America.
Set in the world of Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World, A Hero Looks Like You is a heartwarming picture book about a young boy named DJ who steps up to help Captain America, his favourite Super Hero, and discovers along the way that heroes don’t always look big or strong or wear a suit. Sometimes, they might even look like him. This inspiring story shows readers anyone can choose to be a hero.
The latest in the acclaimed series of art books from Marvel, celebrating Captain America: Brave New World. This volume is filled with all the features you’d expect, including a stunning gallery of never-before-seen artwork and in-depth interviews with the creative team.
Jess Harrold is a British writer and journalist specialising in property law and super heroes, though not usually both at the same time. He has worked for Marvel for more than a decade, contributing extensively to Marvel Spotlight as well as other magazines and books.
On the return of Star Wars to the House of Ideas, Harrold wrote celebratory art collections Star Wars: The Marvel Covers, Star Wars: A New Hope – the 40th Anniversary and The Marvel Art of Star Wars. He also produced a retrospective of one of the industry’s most popular artists in The Marvel Art of Skottie Young and a visual history of an iconic character with Black Panther: Visions of Wakanda. His books also include The A-Z of Marvel Monsters and The Art of War of the Realms.
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
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