The Marvel folks were looking to right their ship with Captain America: Brave New World. They were so determined that they signed on Mr. Franchise, Harrison Ford, to play a key role. Hey, if he can take seemingly every other movie franchise to the next level with his presence, he can do the same for Marvel, right?
Nope. This will not be the movie that gets things rolling again. It’s a flatliner of a movie—dull, unattractive and sluggish. Alas, the presence of Ford did as much for this movie as it did for The Expendables 3 and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
In Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) did some time-traveling and wound up an old dude who handed his shield off to Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie). That was followed by a Disney+ TV show (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), and now, Mackie is officially taking over the mantle of Captain America on the big screen.
Mackie deserves so much more than this.
Director Julius Onah and his writers came up with the idea of basically making this a sequel to The Incredible Hulk, the 2008 movie that starred Edward Norton in the starring role and the late William Hurt as Gen. Thaddeus Ross, aka Thunderbolt. The Incredible Hulk was an OK movie, but that was 17 years ago, and a lot has happened since then in the land of Marvel. It seems like a strange place to start.
Stepping in for Hurt to play Ross is Ford; he’s now the president of the United States, redeemed and elected to the top post in the land after some egregious, seemingly unforgivable and treasonous missteps. (Sound familiar?) He survives an assassination attempt (Sound familiar?) and eventually winds up becoming a big, raging, RED Republican version of the Hulk.
Don’t get too excited about the Hulk part. While it is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this film, it’s tacked on at the end, feels rushed, and is the very definition of anticlimactic. Ford doesn’t really like to play bad guys, and this one is rumored to have had reshoots. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those involved making him less evil. The ending feels way out of place and cloying.
The political intrigue in this film is hampered in that, well, it lacks intrigue. The movie seems scared of itself, and so, in the end, it really doesn’t say anything. It almost sets up something dark and interesting, but then hides under a rock and looks for a feel-good ending with blue skies and cherry blossoms.
While the Hulk effects are OK, much of this film looks like total shit, with shitty, shitty CGI. Also—and I guess this makes me old school—but I prefer Captain America grounded and running around with occasional long jumps rather than having a uniform equipped to fly. Captain America is just a blue-suited version of Falcon in this incarnation. The flying and action sequences are poorly rendered and badly edited. It’s a mess.
Man, it’s a bummer to see Tim Blake Nelson, a terrific character actor, buried in goofy makeup and delivering hammy bad-guy dialogue. He reprises the role of Samuel Sterns from, yes, The Incredible Hulk, and his brain has swelled up like the Martians in Mars Attacks! If you care at all about what’s happening in this movie before you see it (and you probably will, despite my warnings), watch The Incredible Hulk first.
Ford is OK here, doing his normal grumbly guy routine. Mackie does his best to bring a leaden script to life. The failures of this movie do not reside in the performances.
I suppose this is all building up to something. The film speaks of reforming the Avengers, and Avengers movies are indeed slated for the future, so the Marvel beat will go on—but, damn, it needs to have a better beat than this dreck.
