Sam Wilson's first scene as Captain America in Brave New World establishes the film's central problem in miniature: Mackie is charismatic, committed, and entirely wasted on material that gives him nothing distinctive to do. Julius Onah's film is not a disaster, but it is a film of almost no personality, a competent assembly of political thriller elements that never coheres into anything with genuine dramatic momentum or thematic weight.
At a Glance
Director: Julius Onah
Runtime: 118 minutes
Starring: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Carl Lumbly
Release: 2025
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, a competent but hollow follow-up that wastes its lead)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, a missed opportunity that never finds its footing)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Sam Wilson, now operating as Captain America, is drawn into a conspiracy involving the new President of the United States, Thaddeus Ross, and a cache of experimental super-soldier technology. The plot is structured as a conspiracy thriller in the mould of The Winter Soldier, but it lacks that film's clarity of purpose and its sense of danger. The conspiracy is convoluted without being complex, and the Red Hulk transformation arrives too late and with too little emotional preparation to generate real impact. The film's 118-minute runtime is its one structural advantage, but brevity is not the same as economy, and the film's pacing problems are qualitative rather than quantitative.
Characters
Anthony Mackie is the film's greatest asset and its most notable victim. Sam Wilson is a character of depth and moral seriousness, but the film does not give him the material to demonstrate it. His Captain America is reactive rather than active, responding to events rather than driving them, and the script gives him almost no scenes of the kind that made Steve Rogers so compelling across three films. Harrison Ford brings his customary authority to Thaddeus Ross, and his transformation into the Red Hulk is handled with more emotional complexity than the character typically receives, but the film does not give him enough screen time to develop the character's contradictions with the care they deserve. Danny Ramirez's Joaquin Torres is a likeable presence whose function is largely to provide Sam with a sounding board rather than to be interesting in his own right.
Tone
Onah pitches the film as a grounded political thriller, and the approach is correct in principle but poorly executed in practice. The film lacks the paranoid energy and physical intensity that made its predecessor so effective, and its action sequences have an undistinguished quality that sets them apart from the franchise's most accomplished work. The film's attempts at political commentary are superficial, gesturing towards ideas about power and accountability without developing any of them with the specificity needed to generate dramatic weight.
Meaning / Themes
The film is ostensibly about the responsibilities of power and the specific challenges facing a Black man who has taken on the mantle of America's most iconic symbol. These are interesting themes that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier explored with directness and specificity. Brave New World retreats from that specificity into more familiar territory, and the result is a film that has things to say but lacks the courage or the craft to say them clearly. The contrast with the television series that preceded it is the film's most damaging context.
Direction
Onah's direction is competent but undistinguished, lacking the visual personality and tonal control that the franchise's most accomplished directors bring to their work. The action sequences are spatially coherent and technically proficient, but they generate little excitement, and the film's visual style is the MCU's most anonymous since the early Phase Two entries. The film shows none of the creative ambition that the Captain America brand, at its best, has come to represent.
Cultural Reception
Brave New World received mixed reviews on its release and performed modestly at the box office by MCU standards. Critics acknowledged Mackie's focused performance and Ford's novelty value as the Red Hulk, while noting the film's undistinguished plotting, its failure to develop its political themes with any depth, and its inability to justify its existence as a follow-up to both The Winter Soldier and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It is now regarded as one of the MCU's weaker entries, a film that demonstrated the franchise's ongoing difficulty in translating the character work of its television productions into theatrically satisfying films. Its commercial underperformance relative to earlier Captain America entries has been noted as part of a broader conversation about the MCU's trajectory since Endgame.
Final Verdict: A competent but deeply underwhelming film that fails to build on Mackie's talents or the franchise's strongest work. The MCU's most anonymous entry in years, and a significant missed opportunity for a character who deserved better than this as his first solo outing.