One Thing I Like About Captain America: Brave New World

For quite a while now, the consensus around Captain America: Brave New World was a shrug and “it’s fine.” Critics were eager to dismiss it as yet another symbol of Hollywood’s cultural bankruptcy, a sign of how the MCU is destroying the very notion of art itself, but that’s nothing new. But even long-time fans seem to have been giving it a tepid response.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it! It jumps right into some Mission: Impossible-ish action sequences, playing like a modern action-heavy spy thriller but with a hero who has giant wings that absorb energy. Then it picks up the storyline about Isaiah Bradley from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier1, and before you know it, we’re at the White House and Harrison Ford is the President on a futuristic podium talking about the Celestial buried at the end of The Eternals and how it’s giving the world adamantium.

I’ve said lots of times how I was never a Marvel guy when I read comics, so it still comes as a pleasant surprise whenever I see an MCU reference work on me the way it’s supposed to. As soon as they mentioned adamantium, I was mentally doing a fist pump and silently saying “Hell yeah!”

There’s one scene in the midst of all that which I especially liked, because it was so odd that it took me out of the movie. The scene had new Captain America Sam Wilson in a room somewhere in the White House having a private conversation with newly-elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. The topic of the conversation is that Ross wants Wilson to re-start the Avengers.

I didn’t put a spoiler around that because it’s about the least surprising thing he could’ve said. Even if you didn’t assume (as I had) that this was the whole reason for having a Captain America in the first place, you’d know that it was going to happen because they’ve already announced the titles of the next two Avengers movies.2 This conversation was about as unexciting as it gets… which is why it was so odd that they scored it with suspense movie tension music.

It actually took me a minute to notice it was happening; it just kind of washed over me like the lingering Big Action Movie Soundtrack meant to make every punch and explosion seem momentous. But this was different. It was going for actual tension, clearly implying that I was supposed to be on the edge of my seat while watching this innocuous conversation between an old man with heart problems and a superhero I’d just seen take out an entire castle full of bad guys.

I don’t think that the choice worked, exactly, but what I like about it is that it reminded me just what a weird mashup of genres this movie is. And how remarkable it is that the MCU has grown so huge while making these bizarre, nerdy movies that, for the most part, don’t give a damn about awards season. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was one of the best in the franchise, and a huge part of that was how it transitioned from big-budget action movie to super-paranoid 1970s spy thriller and then to something far weirder.

Brave New World doesn’t reach the heights of The Winter Soldier, but I’d argue that it’s trying to tie together more disparate stuff. It feels more like a synthesis of the modern Mission: Impossible movies with the Top Gun school, but playing out in front of the body of an ancient, colossal, god-like being buried halfway in the Indian Ocean, featuring two guys with mechanical wing suits. And also a mad scientist with his brain exposed, a plot to turn people into mind-controlled slaves, and of course the President turns into a Hulk.

I didn’t put a spoiler around that, either. It frankly would’ve been foolish not to include it in the marketing, but it does mean that the movie is more a question of when it’s going to happen rather than if. One of my biggest complaints is that I think they could’ve elevated it from “fine, B-” to one of the most memorable parts of the MCU, if they’d leaned into that. Don’t pretend that it’s a secret he’s going to be hulking out; establish it at the start and then make every scene with him a Final Destination-style suspense scene.

Which I think they were trying to foreshadow back with the conversation about re-starting the Avengers. They did their best to remind us how much animosity there’s been between Ross and the Avengers — and with Sam Wilson in particular since Civil War — but that was so long ago that it just wouldn’t have felt tense even if Ross had been played by the same actor. And of course, since William Hurt’s passing, they recast Ross with one of the most familiar and recognizable actors of our time. I don’t think it’s a bad choice at all; Harrison Ford as Grouchy President is a no-brainer. He’s just not going to read as the same guy as William Hurt unless you put a lot of work into it.3

He does do a good job of it, I think. Ford is at the stage in his life where he reads as a guy who could just lose his shit at any moment. I’ve often wondered whether he’s going to hulk out during talk show interviews. And because he’s possibly been CG-modeled more than any other actor, the Red Hulk model was impeccable.4 But it was also kind of a missed opportunity, not allowed to be a stunning surprise, and not used enough to make a significant enough difference in the franchise.

It’s also unfortunate that Ford has such star power that he took much of the attention away from Anthony Mackie, who always does a good job but is still tasked with playing a character trying to live up to someone else’s legacy. Maybe the Avengers movies will actually let him embrace being Captain America.

If it sounds like I’m damning the movie with faint praise, I’m absolutely not. It’s true that you’re not going to hear me being dismissive about the MCU unless it’s truly awful, but that’s not because I’m a Marvel Simp so much as I like the entire premise baked into the MCU: that it’s this huge, decade-plus-spanning stew of pop culture and genre fiction.

And I especially liked it in Brave New World because I went in expecting to be disappointed but found myself enjoying a movie that works completely on its own terms. There are clips I keep seeing from an MTV interview with a genial and funny Harrison Ford that seem to be trying to take the conversation out of context. Interviewer Josh Horowitz asks Ford if he feels silly having to act out the Red Hulk, and Ford replies “that’s what the money’s for.”

The people complaining about Marvel Fatigue delight in this, as evidence that Ford is whoring himself with material that’s clearly beneath an actor of his caliber. It’s baffling to suggest that this is his first involvement with commercial art, seeing as how I own at least eight dolls of the man. And personally, I’d say that I have a lot less respect for him as an actor seeing him take a Yellowstone spin-off than I would seeing him doing mo-cap for the Red Hulk. In the full interview, I think Ford has the right idea: these movies (and TV series) are spaces to play. They explore the kinds of pulpy, genre storytelling that would never see these kinds of budgets or this big a marketing push otherwise.

And I guess sometimes that means taking a scene between a super-hero with mechanical wings and a President of the United States who used to be his enemy but is now an ally but is slowly being turned into a Hulk by an evil genius super-villain, and scoring it as if it were a horror movie.

1
Or more accurately, from Kyle Baker’s Truth comics

2
It was more surprising when they mentioned Celestial Island, since I’d assumed they were just going to pretend like The Eternals had never happened.

3
It’s ironic later on when Ross angrily and pointedly yells at Sam Wilson for not being Steve Rogers, “you’re not the other guy!”

4
A sign of just how much I’ve been intently watching Mr Ford’s performances over the years: as soon as he turned into Red Hulk, my first thought was “he doesn’t have that much hair on his chest.”

1 Or more accurately, from Kyle Baker’s Truth comics

2 It was more surprising when they mentioned Celestial Island, since I’d assumed they were just going to pretend like The Eternals had never happened.

3 It’s ironic later on when Ross angrily and pointedly yells at Sam Wilson for not being Steve Rogers, “you’re not the other guy!”

4 A sign of just how much I’ve been intently watching Mr Ford’s performances over the years: as soon as he turned into Red Hulk, my first thought was “he doesn’t have that much hair on his chest.”