Latest 'Captain America' installment neither 'Brave' nor 'New'

“If we can’t see the good in each other, we’ve already lost,” says Sam Wilson in the penultimate scene of “Captain America: Brave New World.”

This lukewarm call to unity might well be Marvel talking to its disappointed fans. The studio remains in a precarious position, at its lowest point critically and commercially since "Iron Man" officially launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, revitalizing the brand with an unbroken, interconnected string of blockbusters that dominated the box office through 2019's "Avengers: Endgame."

One watches 'Captain America: Brave New World' with the suspicion that it started out as something much darker — and more compelling.

That film was the triumphant culmination of the MCU's first three "phases." Since then, the transition into what Marvel has dubbed phases four and five has been rocky.

Majors setback

Critics and audiences have found the overarching story unfocused and directionless. These tendencies were exacerbated when the studio fired actor Jonathan Majors, whose character Kang was meant to play a crucial role in the new saga, in the wake of domestic abuse allegations.

On top of all this, 2023's "The Marvels" gave the studio its first genuine bomb.

Marvel may have hoped that "Captain America: Brave New World" would recapture some of that old MCU magic. But while the $342 million it has earned since its Valentine's Day release hardly makes it a flop, that tally is a far cry from the $357 million “Avengers: Endgame” grossed in its first three days.

Moreover, audience response has been tepid, earning it a negative 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Mainstream critics hate it, finding it to be a hobbled mess destroyed in reshoots and delays, and negative word of mouth has contributed to one of the largest multi-week dropoffs in Marvel’s box office history.

New-job jitters

Of course, "Brave New World" is only nominally a Captain America movie. Gone is Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as the original Cap, having retired at the end of "Endgame" and handed his shield to his partner Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), formerly known as Falcon.

This succession was given perfunctory treatment in Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” As a black man, Wilson is conflicted about representing a patriotism that once excluded him and rejects the title. In doing so, he unwittingly cedes it to a jingoistic soldier named John Walker.

It is only after a post-national terrorist group emerges as a major threat to the world that Wilson finally accepts his new role, donning the red, white, and blue uniform and ending the series with a now-infamous lecture on the need to “do better” toward refugees and the oppressed.

“Brave New World” picks up shortly after these events, with Wilson having settled comfortably into the role of Captain America.

When his close friend Isaiah Bradley — a black super soldier from the Korean War imprisoned by the federal government and experimented upon — is wrongly arrested for an attempted presidential assassination, Wilson realizes that newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) is being targeted by forces within the federal government trying to expose a dark secret.

Deep-state danger

The Captain America franchise has always treated the U.S. government with suspicion — it's an institution susceptible to Nazi infiltration and prone to turning on American citizens. The fact that the insane general from “The Incredible Hulk” could become president on a unity and peace platform just maximizes the irony of the dark realities of the country — and that’s before Wilson starts discovering hidden CIA black sites on American soil.

In the face of this threat from within, Wilson's ambivalence about being a black Captain America lingers; at the same time, he feels inadequate to live up to the legacy of his superpowered predecessor. That issue is largely resolved by Wilson's new Wakandan battle suit, while his ambivalence mostly comes out in dialogue.

Seeing red

The film’s most curious creative decision is to give Ross a redemption story. Despite his background attempting to hunt down the Hulk, killing civilians in the process, and committing numerous other crimes and abuses, Ross ends up the film’s most developed and sympathetic character. This is thanks especially to Ford's nuanced portrayal, which lets us see the similarities between Ross and Wilson, both of whom struggle to live up to what's expected of them.

Ross slowly reveals the man beneath the cynical, power-seeking military man we know from previous films. This Ross wants to be president because he wants to prove to his daughter that he has changed.

This adds depth to the much-publicized Red Hulk scenes. In this climactic battle, we see Ross’ secrets and anxieties slowly bubble up from within him and threaten to destroy more than his legacy.

The film’s dramatic core hangs on the question of whether Ross’ character change is sincere or not, weighing the fate of numerous characters against his willingness to tell the truth at the cost of his legacy.

And given that he’s the stand-in for American political and military power, it's clear that "Captain America: Brave New World" is asking this of the country he represents at large. Is America willing to speak the truth of its sins, or is it willing to let innocent black men take the fall for the sake of a greater legacy?

Missed opportunity

This is certainly more subtle than the heavy-handed anti-Trump (an outnumbered black man up against an orange — okay, red — president) commentary than many feared. Regardless, one watches “Captain America: Brave New World" with the suspicion that it started out as something much darker — and more compelling.

Years of rewrites and reshoots imposed on director Julius Onah (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) have sanded off the edges of the movie in awkward ways, with whole character arcs discarded and major scenes reshot on green screens.

"Brave New World" was originally called “Captain America: New World Order," a title that seems to promise a more direct confrontation with the secretive, hidden elements of the government behind our elected officials — the so-called "deep state."

What the new version gains in highbrow cred — it's both a reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel of the same name and the line from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that inspired its title — it loses in directness.

The resulting movie , neither politically relevant nor entertaining, strands our new Captain America in no man's land.