Our year of new Marvel content has begun, with Captain America: Brave New World kicking off an entire 2025 of new movies and shows. I’m super excited! I remain a diehard Marvel fan, and there’s very little that’s going to knock me from my perch. Judge me if you will, but I really enjoyed this fourth Captain America film.

Movie Rating: 6/10 – Pretty Good

Falcon and the Winter Soldier is probably my second favorite of the Marvel Studios TV shows. I thought it was an awesome show, with great themes, characters and more. Exploring African American history through the lens of Captain America was a great idea, and I think that show pulled it off nicely. So I was very much looking forward to Sam Wilson getting his own Cap movie. And while I know a lot of people are sour on this movie for some reason, I had a blast.

Join me after the jump for my full thoughts and review! Expect FULL SPOILERS for the movie. And feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

6. A fun, zippy action film

More than anything else, Brave New World is just a fun, zippy action film in which a superhero encounters a bunch of obstacles and wins the day to save the world. Honestly, this feels like season three of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, after all the original ideas for the show have been used up and the writers are just winging it (pun intended). And that’s not a slight against the movie. I’m sure it would have been a really cool season of television, instead of a movie. But like I said, I thought it made for a fine movie, too.

Anthony Mackie has no problem in a leading role, and he’s got a very good cast around him, from his new Falcon sidekick to his rocky relationship with President Ross, to the couple of other friends he has along the way. They all worked for me as they came together to fight off an actual super-villain and his evil plot to destabilize the world. I enjoyed tying together loose threads from The Incredible Hulk and Eternals. I liked the action. The fights weren’t very new or novel, but Captain America and Falcon in the sky against fighter jets was pretty awesome.

There’s a moment where Sam surfs a missile for a hot second and I burst out laughing from the sheer silly joy of the action.

And to that end, I enjoyed the movie. Captain America worked the problem, solved the mystery and saved the day, all while having to contend with the growing threat of President Ross. And in the end, Sam used his powers as a therapist to help talk down the rampaging monster. It was true to his character, it was true to Captain America, and it was a fine, enjoyable movie.

5. Could have been deeper and tighter (that’s what she said)

All that praise being said, I definitely feel like the movie could have done a lot more. They could have explored some deeper, more interesting themes than just a zippy action film. Like I said, I thought the TV show did a great job exploring race. Isaiah Bradley’s line — “They will never let a Black man be Captain America” — is an awesome line and deserves more exploration. Granted, they explored it very well in the show, but the movie could have found some of its own deeper themes to explore. It could have found a way to better incorporate Sam as a person into the greater geo-political storylines. It could have given Sam a deeper character arc.

Likewise, the script could have been a lot tighter. A lot has been said and reported about script rewrites and movie reshoots, whole characters and plots were removed or added. It’s weird. Was it really that had to make an awesome Captain America film? Anyway, the final product definitely could have used a few more passes on the final script. Like, they kept having The Leader talk about probabilities, but it never felt like a fully fleshed-out part of him, more like a quirk he randomly brought up a couple of times. And like I said, Sam could have used a stronger character arc over the course of the film. The script could have been a lot tighter.

4. The cast was great all around

I really like Sam Wilson as Captain America. I think Anthony Mackie does a great job, filling the role seamlessly. He’s charming, fun, action-oriented, and he’s got that extra character trait of being a therapist. I like when he talks a villain down in order to save the day. And the wing suit definitely works for Captain America. He’s a great package. Even if, again, I felt he could have used more depth and a stronger character arc. Harrison Ford was great as the antagonist president, though obviously it would have been nice to have William Hurt. It was very fun to get Tim Blake Nelson back as Samuel Sterns, but I didn’t care for his Leader design. The leaked first version of the Leader looks much, much better, in my opinion.

Danny Ramirez was great as the new Falcon, worked perfectly as a sidekick. Shira Haas had too little of an impact as Ruth Bat-Seraph. I understanding having to strip comic book Sabra of all her uniqueness due to the conflict in Israel right now, but it was also kind of silly to use Sabra at all in this movie. That was not needed. And then everybody else was excellent, from Giancarlo Esposito to Xosha Roquemore to Liv Tyler making a come back.

3. I wish they hadn’t killed D-Man

So apparently, the soldier that Sam was friends with was Dennis Dunphy. It’s not “revealed” until later in the movie, and it’s not even a reveal, since that name doesn’t mean anything to many people. But I recognized it immediately as the real name of D-Man, a rather unique and interesting Marvel superhero. I think it would have just been super fun to have him in the MCU as a soldier friend of Sam Wilson’s. So why kill him so unnecessarily? Leader just shows up at the exact time this guy is making a phone call, at his exact location, to kill him? Waste of a comic book character.

Though apparently Amadeus Cho was originally in his role? That would have been wild.

2. Hopefully now people shut up about the Celestial in the ocean

One of my biggest MCU pet peeves over the past few years is people posting online or making memes about Marvel never following up with the Celestial sticking out of the ocean, leftover from The Eternals. That really ground my gears, let me tell you. Because you cares?! Not every single Marvel product needs to reference every other Marvel product. You can’t start every new Marvel movie with a half-hour long recap of everything else going on and having characters remark on it. Was it really so hard for people to understand that the proper authorities responded to the Celestial and dealt with it off-screen?! Why would we take time out of Black Panther 2 so that Shuri can read an internet article about the Celestial and talk about it with Winston Duke? Man, oh man, that really bugged me. So hopefully now nobody will bother with those memes anymore since the Celestial has been fully addressed, and the off-screen activities have been thoroughly explained.

Though now the question should be: Did they find Adamantium inside the Celestial, like the aliens mining Nowhere? Or was Adamantium the substance that Sersi transformed the Celestial into?

1 Bring on Sam’s Avengers!

A few lines of dialogue in the movie pointed to the idea that Sam Wilson should reform the Avengers. So that answers the question that there hasn’t been an Avengers team since Endgame. Works for me. But yeah, definitely have Sam reform the Avengers. We might get to see them a little bit in Thunderbolts*…but probably not Fantastic Four: First Steps. Still, having Sam put together an Avengers team ahead of Doomsday sounds good to me! Bring it on! Let’s finally put that together!

They should have been the post-credits scene.

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