I Heard Captain America: Brave New World Was Bad. I Finally Watched It, And It Became One Of My Favorite Recent MCU Movies
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For a variety of different reasons, I was not able to catch Captain America: Brave New World in theaters, which is rare for me with Marvel movies. Though I didn't skip out on the 2025 movie because of the unfavorable critical response (CinemaBlend gave it two out of five stars in our official review), I admit there weren't a lot of people singing the film's praises. I was led to believe that this wasn't one of the best Marvel movies, but instead something bad, messy, and unfortunate. While one of those things may be true, I have to say that this wasn't a bad or unfortunate movie. Quite the contrary…
I finally got around to watching Captain America: Brave New World, and it quickly became one of my favorite recent MCU movies. Sure, it didn't have a top-tier Marvel story, it was messy at times, and it felt like a continuation of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but it was a whole lot of fun and was much better than I expected. Let me explain…
I will admit that Brave New World is messy at times – one of my colleagues previously pointed out issues with the Serpent Society, but unlike a lot of other Marvel movies from the past five or so years, the movie never dragged or wore out its welcome. One of the shorter MCU titles (two minutes shy of two hours, including the post-credits stuff), I was along with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and President Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross (Harrison Ford) from start to finish, and the story never lost my attention.
Whether it was digging deep into conspiracies involving unsuspecting people (like Carl Lumbly's super soldier Isaiah Bradley) being controlled like winter soldiers to pull of some crazy stuff, or focusing on Cap kicking all kinds of butt, I was vibing with the movie the whole way through.
I came into this film expecting some great action set pieces, and the movie more than delivered in this category. With multiple scenes where the new Cap takes on small groups of armed henchmen or soldiers, an explosive run-in between the United States and Japan over the celestial remains from The Eternals that sees Sam Wilson save the day just before a World War III destroys the planet, or the assassination attempt at the White House, there was so much to love here.
But, the sequence that I dug the most, one that was featured heavily in all the trailers, was the fight between Captain America and Red Hulk in Washington, D.C. Without giving anything away to those who are even later than me getting to this movie, this massive and highly destructive battle is one of the coolest one-on-one fights I've seen in the MCU since Iron Man and Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron. We've got Cap flying, Red Hulk destroying everything in his path, and cherry blossoms all over the nation's capital. I'm here for all of it…
Again, I'm not going to give anything away, but I have to point out that things aren't as they seem in Brave New World. As teased shortly before the film's February 2025 release, there's more to the villain side of things than was let on, resulting in a vast conspiracy that entangles pretty much everyone introduced. This aspect of the movie makes it feel right at home with the previous Captain America titles, as each of those featured some kind of conspiracy in one form or another.
I'm not saying this gets on the level of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (a top-tier MCU movie), but the balance between superhero movie and gritty conspiracy/revenge thriller makes for a fun and engaging experience. Add in all the tensions between world leaders, and I was a happy camper with this one.
I have come to terms with the fact that we'll probably never get a proper sequel to 2008's The Incredible Hulk for a variety of reasons, but Brave New World pretty much scratched that itch. I would even go so far as to say that this is essentially the sequel we never got.
With pretty much every character not named Bruce Banner showing up, the movie picked up a lot of the themes of the MCU's second feature film and expanded upon them, especially when it came to the strained relationship between President Ross and his daughter, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). Hell, even the villain's motivation stems from stuff that happened way back on the MCU timeline.
Truth be told, I would love to get a proper movie with Bruce Banner one of these days, but I'm not mad in the slightest that the latest Cap movie is also a Hulk movie (just without Mark Ruffalo's character).
Considering the late William Hurt, who played Thunderbolt Ross in every MCU movie up to this point, died in March 2022, the character had to be recast here. Although Harrison Ford is one of my favorite actors and someone I never get tired of watching, I was initially worried about him stepping in a decade and a half after Ross was first introduced.
While it did take me a few scenes to adjust to Ford's take on the character, not to mention a lack of signature mustache, I eventually came around and thoroughly enjoyed watching the Star Wars and Indiana Jones lead cause all kinds of mayhem. I have to admit that seeing Ford play a president again and be on Air Force One (albeit briefly) after all these years was also quite amusing.
So, do I think Captain America: Brave New World is the best MCU movie of the past five years? No, not really. Is it the worst? Absolutely not. The moral of the story should be: don't always write off a movie because the critics hate it, because you might be pleasantly surprised.
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