‘Captain America: Brave New World’ is neither brave or new

Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World wants to be a grounded, politically charged spy thriller in the vein of The Winter Soldier, but instead, it’s a relic from a bygone era—both of better comic book movies and the golden age of paranoid political thrillers. It’s a film caught between two worlds: one where the MCU still has the juice to make these stories feel urgent and compelling, and another where everything has started to feel like a perfunctory obligation. The result is a movie that’s not even bad enough to be interesting and certainly not good either. Just a dry as dirt espionage flick that’s too afraid to say much of note about, well, America.

Anthony Mackie steps into his first solo film as Captain America, and he does everything he can to make the transition work. If only Marvel gave him his actual own movie, one built around his strengths as a performer. Mackie’s always been charismatic as hell, and when the movie lets him, he gives Sam Wilson the kind of layered, thoughtful performance that makes you wish the script was playing at his level.

Sam is still grappling with what it means to wear the shield, and unlike Steve Rogers, he doesn’t have a super soldier serum to fall back on—just his wits, his Falcon training, and the world’s most underwhelming rogues’ gallery this side of the multiverse. The movie’s central premise—Sam meeting with newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, fully in his “I’m too old for this” era) and getting caught in an international conspiracy—should be thrilling. Instead, it’s the kind of generic geopolitical intrigue you’d find in a mid-budget action flick from 2008.

And speaking of villains, let’s talk about the Serpent Society—or rather, SERPENT, because I guess cool comic book names are embarrassing now. Giancarlo Esposito, playing their leader Seth Voelker (a.k.a. Sidewinder), delivers the kind of menacing performance that has become his trademark, but even he can’t make these guys feel like anything more than a bunch of mercenaries with branding issues. They exist to give Sam something to punch in the early goings, and while some of the action sequences are solid (particularly a brutal aerial chase sequence that lets Mackie show off his Falcon-era agility), none of them are particularly fresh or inventive. We’ve seen all of this before, and we’ve seen it done with better effects, choreography, and thematic weight.

The supporting cast is brimming with talent, but the movie doesn’t know what to do with them. Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres is technically the new Falcon now with a coat of green paint, but he spends most of the movie either sidelined or delivering “guy in the chair” exposition. Shira Haas makes her MCU debut as Ruth Bat-Seraph (get it? all bets are off?), an Israeli super-soldier known as Sabra in the comics. But her role has been sanded down so much she barely registers, and don’t even think the movie is going to say anything meaningful about certain world events involving her nation of origin. Carl Lumbly returns as Isaiah Bradley, the forgotten super soldier, and while he’s probably the most interesting character in the movie, his screentime feels more like an obligatory nod to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier rather than something the movie genuinely wants to explore.

Harrison Ford’s Thunderbolt Ross should be the film’s biggest selling point. After all, this is Harrison Ford, stepping into a role that the late William Hurt made iconic. And while Ford does bring a gruff, no-nonsense energy to the character, the script doesn’t give him much to do beyond bark orders and make ominous pronouncements. There are hints that he has his own agenda, and for a brief moment, you think maybe the film is going to do something genuinely interesting with him. But no. Just like everything else, his storyline plays out in the safest, most predictable made-for-TV movie way possible.

Director Julius Onah (Luce, The Cloverfield Paradox) was brought on to bring a fresh, modern approach to the Captain America franchise, but the final product is more of a by-the-numbers Marvel assembly line project than a film with a distinct voice. The cinematography from Kramer Morgenthau (Creed III) tries to capture the paranoid thriller energy of The Winter Soldier, but it pretty much drops this motif after the first thirty minutes in favor of MCU gloss-action factory settings. From there, the action sequences lack the raw, visceral impact that made Winter Soldier stand out at a time when people didn’t really expect much from a Captain America franchise movie.

And that extends into the script—credited to Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, and Peter Glanz—which feels like it went through one too many rewrites, smoothing out anything remotely bold or unexpected in favor of broad, easily digestible plot beats. Remember how Winter Soldier turned the entire MCU on its head? Brave New World is basically the opposite: a messy blink-and-you-won’t-care-what-you-missed episode of a TV show you forgot existed.

Sure, Brave New World tells “a” story. It checks the usual MCU boxes and delivers a handful of entertaining moments. But there’s nothing here that truly builds upon the previous foundation, nothing that makes this entry feel essential. For a movie that’s supposed to cement Sam Wilson as the new Captain America, it never quite figures out what it wants his Captain America to be. Instead, it leans too heavily on the past—trying to recapture the magic of The Winter Soldier while avoiding anything that might actually make it stand out as its own film.

Sam Wilson deserves a great Captain America movie, one that embraces what makes him different from Steve Rogers instead of making him play dress-up in someone else’s legacy. Instead, we get a movie that, much like the MCU itself these days, is merely running on autopilot. Captain America may still stand for something, but Brave New World sure doesn’t.