Movie Review: Captain America - Brave New World

 Movie Number 11 of 2025

The Movie: Captain America: Brave New World

The Cinema: Hoyts Melbourne Central

Stars: 3.5

Keeping up with the Marvel Universe is like keeping up with your single Aunt Trisha's love life after Valentine's Day. If you haven't been paying attention, you're going to be asking a lot of questions, even if you don't know if you should or not. 

And part of me feels like this about Captain American: Brave New World. Do I need to care about this? Maybe. It's good for entertainment value. And I went with my Punjabi kid brother, with whom I bonded with over a mutual love of Marvel Movies. 

So, what is this about? The new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is having a hard time breaking into the mainstream, made worse by the new President, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) who doesn't think the world should have anything to do with superheroes. Very quickly, he works out he does need them, and Captain America soon becomes a pawn in some geopolitical games. With his trusty sidekick, Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) they try their best to get to the bottom of what is going on. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) is the quintessential baddie who is keeps putting a multitude of spanners in the works. 

I'm not going into too much detail here with the plot. If you're not into Marvel Movies, it's going to go through to the keeper anyway. 

There's good and not so good with this film. Raj and I agreed on this. 

On the good side of things: 

• Anthony Mackie is great as the new Captain America. He's got the right amount of comic timing and seriousness. 
• His sidekick Joaquin is great too - and he plays things for laughs a lot, which is good. 
• You know that all is not well in the America when you have a President popping pills. Harrison Ford brings the right amount of gravitas and paranoia to the role. You find out near the end exactly what it is he's hiding. 
• And the action, as always in great. 
• And the CGI and special effects were well cool. 

Julius Onah, in his first job as a Director of a Marvel film does a more than adequate job on the film. 

My reservations come with the knowledge that in this the first of the fourth iteration of Marvel films, this is setting things up for the next round of movies. They're already saying the following movies and series will be coming out this year. 

Another thing about this film was that there were so many Easter Eggs in there. Raj pointed out the island they went to near the end of the film what the place where The Eternals. There were other things involved that if you're not a Marvel fan, you're going to miss. It's the Easter Eggs which make these movies even better. 

Is this as good as some as its predecessors? No, but it's not as bad as say Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania or XMen: Dark Phoenix. 

It was enough to keep me interested but not enthralled. I don't know how you'd go if you'd never seen a Marvel movie before this. (If you haven't, get a Disney subscription and work your way through them.) I know it's also setting things up for more of the movies to come. 

If you want to win over a teenage boy, you could take them along and they won't hate you. 

For me, I want to go back and start the Marvel journey again, back when I didn't know about Infinity Stones and Wakanda and The Hulk was green. 

One last thing, in this film, there are scenes where Washington D.C. and The White House were badly damaged through the actions of the President. Life imitating art, much? 

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