Marvel’s highly anticipated “Captain America: Brave New World” hit theaters on February 14th, a couple weeks ago, and I made sure I saw it. “Captain America: Brave New World” is the first Captain America movie that follows Sam Wilson as the new Captain America, who is played by Anthony Mackie. The movie received many mixed reviews, grossing $192 Million after only 10 days in theaters, but only scoring a 6.1/10 on IMDB and a 49% on the Tomatometer.
After seeing the movie myself, “Captain America: Brave New World” did not meet my expectations, with it being lackluster at times, containing little action, and having too little interaction with the villain.
First, the “Captain America: Brave New World” was often dull and wordy. Although it is Marvel’s debut of Sam Wilson as Captain America, the bulk of the movie was filled with conversations and interactions between Sam and the other characters. The movie seemed less concerned with providing the viewers who had not seen the TV Show “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” with a background of Sam Wilson as Cap. Even though this isn’t technically a fault of the movie and rather the viewers, I would have liked to see more of it. Much of the movie dealt with Sam Wilson’s issues with Thaddeus Ross, the fictional President of the U.S. and Red Hulk in the movie, rather than with the main antagonist Samuel Sterns. Much of the interaction between Sam and both Ross and Sterns were conversations and not any fighting or action. That leads me to my next point, the action.
The action and fight scenes of “Captain America: Brave New World” were either short lived or unexpected. The advertisement of the movie made it appear that much of the movie would concern battles between Thaddeus Ross as the Red Hulk and Sam Wilson as Captain America, but this is only partly true. In the movie, there is only a single fight scene between Red Hulk and Cap, which seemed to only last around 15 minutes.
This was disappointing in the fact that Red Hulk is a character that marvel fans have yet to see in a film adaptation and were anticipating in this one, only to see a short, and rather typical, fight scene. Almost every other fight scene in the movie had to do with Sam Wilson and his allies battling mind-controlled U.S. soldiers. This is not inherently boring, but only so many scenes of ordinary hand-to-hand combat and Cap throwing his shield around can be entertaining for a near two-hour movie. The most interesting and exciting fight scene, or perhaps moment of the movie, was Sam’s apprentice, Joaquin Torres, and his fight against the mind-controlled U.S. fighter jets at the Celestial Island. This fight was actually exciting and provided something new and entertaining that marvel fans had yet to see.
The scene had a lot of emotion, from Joaquin being brutally wounded to Thaddeus almost losing control to Sam saving lives and the chance of a war between Japan and the U.S., the scene was the highpoint of the movie.
‘Captain America: Brave New World’ wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either. The movie was slightly above average. The lack of anything that was super exciting or deeply emotional caused a lack of entertaining moments for those who saw it. I don’t necessarily think that the movie was a failure for marvel, but it definitely could have been improved. A lot.” Alex Jenks ’25 said.
In conclusion, “Captain America: Brave New World” was a film that did not quite meet my expectations due to its lack of action and plot pertaining to the interaction between characters. Even though this is my opinion, I would still recommend those who enjoy marvel to go and watch it, as it is still somewhat entertaining.
