Captain America: Brave New World Parent Guide

With Steve Rogers well and truly retired, Captain America’s shield has passed to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who is facing problems his predecessor could only imagine. A global war is threatening to erupt over the incredible technology within the Celestial Tiamut (see Eternals). America’s controversial new president, former general Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), is trying to arrange a multi-party treaty to ensure that the technology is used for the benefit of all.

Sam is skeptical of President Ross but wants to give him a chance - until an attempted assassination soon puts them at odds. One of the assassins is Sam’s old friend and mentor, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and in trying to prove his friend’s innocence, the new Captain America finds himself neck deep in a mire of corruption, treachery, and vengeance which threatens to destroy everything he has fought to save.

This film really hits its stride into a solid “meh”. It’s clearly trying to recapture the genre-bending success of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but only really manages to plod around in the same sandbox for two hours while reminding you that Eternals exists. The fight scenes are over-long, over-digital, and over-edited, and entirely too frequent. I started zoning out entirely, since nothing of plot significance happens during any of them, and it’s unlikely that Marvel is going to kill off a named character in an alley fight with faceless goons. These scenes feel perfunctory more than exciting, which is how most of the rest of the film feels too.

This is, of course, yet another superhero film, the plot relying on dozens of others; in this case, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ miniseries. Since you couldn’t force me to watch more superhero content for free, I can tell you from experience that this movie mostly makes sense without having watched the TV show. Sure, I didn’t get about 60% of the references, but I also didn’t care, so it didn’t bother me. The overtures into spy-thriller territory do keep this from feeling exactly like every other Marvel film for the past 8 years, but they don’t manage to make it fun.

Being as this is yet another superhero film, you should also have a pretty good idea of what to expect as far as violence goes. Lots of people get beat up, some quite dramatically, and a whole bunch of innocent civilians get presumably killed just off screen while the protagonists dismantle as much civic infrastructure as possible in a big fight. There are also a whole lot of stabbings in this one for some reason, as well as a dramatic murder-suicide. No sexual content, no drug use, brief social drinking, and just over a dozen scatological profanities. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I wonder how much longer studios will be willing to spend this kind of money for results this underwhelming.