Early reviews of “Captain America: Brave New World” were mixed, skewing toward negative. That didn’t stop it from earning $100 million domestically.
Unlike me, Marvel fans are apparently not losing interest in superhero movies.
It’s not that I dislike superhero movies or that don’t like the Captain America franchise. Truth be told, I was a big fan of the original movie, “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011) starring Chris Evans in the title role as Steve Rogers. It was a fun, sweet, nostalgic, throwback movie set during WWII, about a 98-pound weakling army recruit who undergoes some medical experiments that turn him into a super soldier.
It had romance. It had Nazis. It had a lot of special effects comic book action. It also had a very likeable, fan favorite hero who would return in multiple Marvel sequels.
In “Avengers: Endgame,” he finally travels back in time to live out his life with the love of his life, passing his iconic shield to his partner, Sam Wilson (“Falcon”).
In “Captain America: Brave New World,” Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) reprises and carries on the role as the new Captain America. Danny Ramirez plays the role of Joaquin Torres (the new Falcon).
Harrison Ford joins the cast as President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, a former military general, now the Commander in Chief, in the first hundred days of his already tumultuous presidency. He is not well liked.
Superheroes like Captain America want nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, our hero reluctantly agrees to return to duty on a dangerous mission to retrieve a mysterious container.
It’s a "Mission Impossible" scenario that opens the movie on a note of adrenaline-charged action. The movie is clearly designed as a big, splashy, action flick meant to be seen on large screens in 3-D format. It gets off to a great start.
But then comes the plot about an evil mastermind bent on ruling the world and the scramble to control a new super element that can change the future mankind. It’s here that “Brave New World” is less than new, in terms of the Marvel Universe or any of the superhero universes or multi-verses.
The weakness of all these movies is the reliance on a very familiar storyline that has been beaten to death. Like many successful movie franchises, they adhere to a rigid formula. I wrote about this many years ago in a published paper about the James Bond Series (“James Bond and America in the Sixties: An Investigation of the Formula Film in Popular Culture,” in the Journal of the University Film Association, Summer 1976).
That’s not to say that movies in this genre can’t be entertaining. What’s required is a unique perspective or vision that sets them apart. “Ant-Man” (2015) and “Deadpool” (2016) are great examples, defiantly breaking the superhero mold.
“Captain America: Brave New World” offers the fight scenes, battles and spectacular flying sequences that audiences pay to see. In between are long scenes of dragged-out dialog and exposition that weigh the movie down. There are some twists and turns in the plot, but perhaps the biggest one is given away in the movie’s trailers that have run for months—the transformation of Harrison Ford’s character into Red Hulk. It’s a major spoiler.
The Hulk character, in my estimation has always been a recurring problem in the Marvel movies. Plainly and simply, he never appears to be convincingly real. Despite the efforts and ever-evolving technical advances in digital effects, he’s a character that always sticks out like a sore, cartoonish thumb.
It may be fun to see Harrison Ford as a crimson-colored Hulk, but on some level, it’s just ridiculous.
One wonders what prompted Ford to sign up to play a character like this in a movie like this. He’s one of the most beloved actors of our time who is still doing very respectable work in streaming series like “1923” and “Shrinking.”
Cumbersome motion capture performances in front of a blue screen can’t be that challenging or fun. At this stage of a long, successful career, could it really just be about the money?
In the end, “Captain America: Brave New World” isn’t a horrible movie. It’s not a great movie.
It’s entertaining enough to pacify fans and set the stage for a sequel (which predictably happens in the post-credit sequence). Next time around they can hopefully edit out the boring parts and trim down the running time. Less is sometimes more.
Commentaires