Captain America: Brave New World Can’t Fix Marvel’s Identity Crisis

No one wants to admit that Steve Rogers is irreplaceable. Fifteen years ago, Chris Evans felt like an odd choice to play yet another superhero, let alone a hero as stalwart and true as Captain America. Against all odds, though, he managed to make the character his own — to the point where now, five years after Steve’s retirement in Avengers: Endgame, Cap fans within and outside of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe are still struggling to accept his departure.

It doesn’t help that Steve’s successor, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), has never truly gotten a fair shake. The hero formerly known as the Falcon was always a strong complement to Cap: a great leader in his own right, with a will and sense of humor all his own. It made total sense when Steve passed the shield on to him — though, if we’re being real, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) might have been a more logical choice. Sam’s appointment was intriguing, but it felt more like Marvel’s way of making A Statement™ about what it meant to be Black in America, rather than a natural progression for the character. And though The Falcon and the Winter Soldier made attempts to explore that paradox in a meaningful way, clumsy political storylines undermined Sam’s arc at every turn. The burden of being Captain America seemed to strip him of anything that made him interesting — and years later, it’s cast a pall over his first solo outing.

With Captain America: Brave New World, Sam Wilson has another chance to make the mantle his own. But he also, essentially, has to save the MCU from itself, reconciling years of forgotten storylines. That responsibility puts our hero on the back foot in a major way: not only is Sam still struggling to fill Steve’s shoes, but he now has to compensate for the absence of Bruce Banner.

By now, it’s no secret that Brave New World is basically a sequel to The Incredible Hulk. Marvel’s latest, directed by Julius Onah and penned by a small army of screenwriters, takes many of its cues from the 2008 film. Characters like Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) and Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) are back to continue their respective arcs, in a way — but with 16 years and an entire cinematic universe separating one film from the other, Brave New World spends most of its time bringing audiences up to speed.

So many aspects of the film — from the state of the universe to its villain’s mysterious motive — are relayed through rounds of tedious exposition. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) is the primary sounding board for it all... and at times feels like the de facto protagonist. Our story begins on the night of his presidential nomination, and follows his administration through its first 100 days. This is a period that, as he explains again and again, will define his legacy. After trying and failing to reinvigorate the Army’s “Super Soldier” program — a scheme that created the Hulk, the Abomination, and a slew of geopolitical headaches — Ross has been working hard to rehabilitate his reputation. His presidency is the next step in a decades-spanning strategy: he’s seemingly the first president to take office after the events of Endgame and Eternals, and he’s determined to steer the world away from yet another existential threat.

Ross’ master plan begins with the “Celestial Island” jutting out of the Indian Ocean, which has introduced a new natural resource, adamantium, to the world. Unlike vibranium, which is fiercely protected by the nation of Wakanda, the adamantium within the dormant Tiamut is entirely up for grabs. Surprisingly, though, Ross isn’t interested in hoarding all the metal for himself: in a clever move, he proposes a new treaty that will allow America and her allies to divvy adamantium equally. It’s one of the diplomatic moves designed to show just how much Ross has changed. The other comes when Ross summons Sam Wilson to the White House, suggesting that he rebuild the Avengers.

Sam’s history with Ross already makes a potential partnership difficult: in Captain America: Civil War, Ross threw Sam in maximum security prison for defying the Sokovia Accords. There’s also the little matter of Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), America’s first Black super soldier, who spent decades locked away for crimes he didn’t commit. Isaiah’s distrust informs Sam’s hesitation, at least at the beginning of Brave New World. But when dormant programming is awakened within Isaiah — along with a handful of other government operatives — and he tries to assassinate Ross at his Celestial Island Summit, Sam finds himself torn between loyalty and duty. Our new Captain America has to race against time to save Isaiah from the death penalty (which, bafflingly, still exists in the MCU), investigate a new conspiracy tearing the country apart, and keep Ross on the righteous path.

Brave New World certainly gives Sam a lot to do, but he still doesn’t feel like the true focus here. At best, he’s sharing the spotlight with Ross, whose own inner struggles — and his eventual transformation into the Red Hulk — are at least marginally more interesting. At worst, he’s cycling through conflicts and dynamics that have already been explored in other Marvel projects. Isaiah is to Sam what Bucky was once to Steve; Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), a former Black Widow, awkwardly tries to fill the void Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) left behind; and Sidewinder (a totally wasted Giancarlo Esposito), the leader of the “Serpents,” feels like an amalgam of the mercenaries who’ve lurked throughout the MCU. The latter especially is less a character than he is a plot device, supplying Sam with motivation and murky exposition as he works to draw out the true villain of Brave New World.

Seeing Esposito so underused is the film’s biggest disappointment, as his dynamic with Mackie has the most potential to tip us into new territory. But this story is too content to repeat the past: half of Brave New World is one half-assed reference to better Captain America movies, namely The Winter Soldier. The other feels like a cruel reminder that we haven’t gotten a Hulk movie in the past two decades, and Marvel has no interest in picking up the slack.

There’s a world in which the parallels between Captain America and the Hulk would make perfect sense: after all, the latter was born in an attempt to recreate the original Steve Rogers serum. And ideally, Sam would be the perfect Cap to explore the connections between the two heroes. He notably refused the super soldier serum in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a choice that comes back to haunt him somewhat in Brave New World. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him in the role that Bruce Banner once occupied in Hulk or even The Avengers, just tailored to a world that views any Black man — superpowered or otherwise — as a threat.

Sam has always been at least marginally aware of his place in the universe: it’s why his Captain America is so different from Steve’s. He can’t punch his way out of every situation, nor can he take on the powers that other super soldiers have openly embraced. Consciously or not, his arc has been defined by respectability politics, and his early scenes with Ross show glimmers of brilliance for this very reason. Ross treats Sam like a tool to control, a mascot he can trot out for photo ops and public engagements. He’s cordial and sympathetic until Sam asserts his own will; until he expresses anger. Things turn hostile thereafter, but Brave New World doesn’t actually seem interested in exploring the nuances (or the microaggressions) behind Ross’ heel turn. Instead, it chalks his mounting rage to good ol’ gamma radiation, settling for a clunky metaphor about a monstrous president teetering on the edge of tyranny. It makes for great action (despite some shoddy visual effects), but it totally obliviates any hope of development for Sam.

Brave New World is at once too much story and not enough, especially where its supposed lead is concerned. Ironically, Sam even expresses feelings of inadequacy to his new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). He feels choked by his responsibility, by the legacy of the Captain America mantle — but we’re rarely shown how this actually affects him or his decisions. Brave New World is more content to tell us how he feels, and what he has planned — and the same goes for the characters in his orbit. With so many other compelling threads in play, Sam becomes a hapless passenger, a vessel through which the MCU can recover lost story threads. His latest adventure embodies Marvel’s identity crisis more than any project before it, setting up another shaky stepping stone for what should be the franchise’s major comeback.

Captain America: Brave New World hits theaters on February 14.