Director: Julius Onah
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly, Xosha Roquemore, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson, Harrison Ford
Rating: (M)
★ ½
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
After the billion-dollar success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Captain America: Brave New World (Rialto, Reading) would conclude the fifth phase of the "MCU" (Marvel Cinematic Universe) saga. The fourth instalment in one of the least critically successful Marvel sagas, Brave New World, or Captain America 4, unsurprisingly replicates the insipid trappings of the incredibly lacklustre saga it is bringing to a close.
If Brave New World is supposed to introduce us to the next stage in Marvel’s "New World" then the team behind the film did a poor job being "brave". It reassures audiences that Marvel is going to continue to live in a nostalgia-blinded past, dooming the franchise to forever replicate its old mistakes. Say what you will about some of the choices made in "Phase 4" — at least they were bold.
Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie; formerly Falcon, now Captain America) must uncover a mysterious figure who is mind controlling people in a plot to take down newly-elected, former military general, United States president Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford). The president is in the midst of brokering a treaty with leading world powers to equitably share (good job, America) the remains of a Celestial (I’m just as lost as you are) which contains adamantium, an all-powerful metal. Thaddeus Ross is also a gamma radiation-poisoned Hulk, but red. Sounds like a lot.
While this is in the bones of the script, none of the motivations can begin to be pieced together without having seen 2008’s The Incredible Hulk (of which, the star actor was recast), The Eternals (a lesser seen, much-maligned "Phase 4" flop), and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (an even lesser seen television show).
With no apparent themes, we can at least give Brave New World its plaudits for managing to smuggle an obscene amount of present-day nationalist, militaristic ideology into the film; it is possibly the only consistent theme throughout.
Consider Spider Man, one of the most popular comic book characters in all fiction, who represents the everyman — rescuing cats from trees and stopping the handbag-stealing robber on the street.
Now we worship presidents, tech-genius superhumans, and the military-industrial complex. National security is the most crucial thing a superhero can provide, which they ensure through expensive weaponry and PPPs.
The political prescience of a newly-elected president, whose skin provocatively turns red, and whose head of personal security is helmed by the extraneous character, "Mossad agent Ruth Bat-Seraph" (the title was scrubbed from explicit mention in film) who alarmingly sports a blue and white super-suit in one action scene, is undeniable.
However, the conflated signifiers of his Democratic party origins and selfless motivations to share science-shattering resources in global peace deals at once allows viewers to recognise the prescience of the figure, but dismiss any kind of critique for the film’s casualness of dealing with the matter.
It seems being a fan of Phase 5 Marvel and a film critic are mutually exclusive.
