“Captain America: Brave New World,” released Feb. 14, 2025, is the fourth film in the Captain America sub franchise within the powerhouse that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and was directed by Julian Onah. The film stars Anthony Mackie as Samuel Wilson taking up the role of Captain America in his first solo movie.

There are spoilers ahead. The movie follows Wilson handling the responsibilities of being the new Captain America under the new president of the United States of America, Thadeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford). The film starts with Wilson being invited to a world leaders’ summit where Ross unveils a new element: adamantium. It is harvested from the corpse of the Celestial in the middle of the Indian Ocean, calling back to “The Eternals.” The summit was going well until Isaiah Bradley, (Carl Lumbly) was mysteriously mind controlled along with a few other assailants into trying to kill Ross. The rest focuses on Wilson and the new Falcon, Jaoquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), uncovering a massive plot with Ross in the center of it. The true villain of the film is revealed to be Dr. Samuel Sterns, (Tim Blake Nelson), who last appeared in 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” as a minor antagonist. Sterns orchestrated a war between America and Japan to discredit Ross after he transformed Sterns into a monster. Wilson and Torres foil this plot, making Sterns turn to the last resort; he makes Ross transform into the Red Hulk during a press conference. Wilson then defeats the transformed Ross at the end of the film

With the current climate of other MCU movies and shows, I can’t call this movie terrible when much worse movies exist, but it certainly isn’t good. To start off, the performances: Mackie and Ramierez were impeccable but this wasn’t the script these two incredible actors deserve. Ford, as he has said in multiple interviews, was only there for the paycheck and it shows, he was not on his A-game with his performance. One surprising performance was Lumbly’s heartbreaking role as Isaiah Bradley, which the writing team clearly put a lot into.

“Captain America: Brave New World” feels like an early MCU movie in the worst way possible. It feels like it’s ashamed that it’s a superhero movie and it does not respect the source material because of that. It ends up feeling like it’s afraid of anything silly or comic book-y. They never call Sterns his comic book alter-ego, “the leader,” the Serpent Society is just a bunch of men in military suits with snake-themed names instead of half-snake people in extravagant costumes and they completely reworked Torres’ origin. The erasure of these crucial elements of the source material causes a tonal dissonance with the source material resulting in a worse end product. 

This movie is also a thinly veiled “The Incredible Hulk” sequel. Especially with the director bringing back Sterns who was left as a hanging plot thread for the past 15 years. It feels like the producers of this movie didn’t believe that Mackie or his character could sustain his own movie despite being Captain America for the past 10 years in the comics and having plenty of stories to pull from. 

On the other hand though, this movie was visually quite impressive with the CGI and cinematography. Compared to other recent MCU movies, the CGI and practical effects are top-notch and everything looks how it should. It’s nothing totally spectacular, but it’s good enough to not go unnoticed.

As a whole, this movie is a victim of numerous reshoots, rewrites and as a result it isn’t  fantastic. The movie suffers from its own fear of the medium it came from, but exceeds when it lets itself embrace those moments. “Captain America: Brave New World” is not a great movie by any means, but it is a step in the right direction for the franchise.