Why is Cap in a Hulk Movie?

We’re reaching the end of Phase V of the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (just one more movie and three more shows this year which… ugh, still feels like so much) and we finally have reached a film for a character we actually know. Captain America: Brave New World is technically the fourth Captain AmericaCreated by Simon and Kirby in 1941, Captain America was a super soldier created to fight Germany and the evil HYDRA. Then he was lost in the ice, only to be found and reborn decades later as the great symbol of the USA. film, although it’s also the first starring Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in the Cap role. It’s a strange movie coming out at a strange time for Marvel, and have no doubt, I have a lot of thoughts that we’re going to discuss, some in this base review and some in spoiler discussion to come. But suffice it to say that Marvel needs this film to be a win. They’ve been floundering, audiences have been bored, and the MCU doesn’t have the cultural cache it once possessed.

In short, this film has a lot of weight put on it, some fair and some not, and that means it’s kind of make or break for the universe as a whole. Can Captain America, any Captain America, still lead the Marvel universe going forward. The short answer from this film is sort of yes, sort of no, but it’s not really the fault of Mackie or Sam Wilson. Marvel still feels like they’re clueless, floundering around to find some story that will stick. This isn’t really the movie that’s going to make people say, “yes! The MCU is back!” But it’s also not a bad film on its own merits. It’s an average Marvel film, but I’m just not certain that’s good enough at this point.

The film puts Sam’s Captain America (Mackie) in the middle of an espionage, can’t trust anyone thriller (clearly trying to hearken back to the glory days of the MCU with Captain America: The Winter Soldier). After flying into Mexico to run an open and steal back a mystery package from some bad guys, led by Seth Voelker / Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), Sam and his new sidekick – the wannabe Falcon II, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) – Sam and Joauquin get invitations by the newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over the role from the late William Hurt) to visit the White House for an important event. Sam agrees to go, but only if Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a Korean War Super Soldier often considered the “forgotten Captain America”, gets an invite, too.

The three arrive for an international event, with the presidents of Japan, France, and India in attendance. There, President Ross reveals that the four countries have been jointly exploring the “Celestial Island”, the stone formation that emerged from the earth when the Celestial growing at its core attempted to burst forth (see: The Eternals). Within that body the teams discovered a new element that could rival the strength and indestructible power of Vibranium: Adamantium. The first sample of it was stolen by Sidewinder from the Japanese, and the Americans have gotten it back. Ross talks about an age of international cooperation, spreading Adamantium for all (unlike Wakanda having a lock on Vibranium). But then five assassins try to kill President Ross, Bradley included, and Sam has to prevent the assassination. With Bradley taken into custody, and no sign of why he would do this or what’s going on, Sam goes off book to dig into the mystery and clear his friend’s name, no matter where it leads him.

Captain America: Brave New World, to be honest, is a film that should have come out during Phase IV. Much of my bitching and complaining over the last (checks notes) four years has been that the MCU has felt disjointed and unconnected. Characters show up for one film, and then vanish for years at a time, with Marvel barely developing them further. It’s like the studio has a bunch of action figures that they’re trying to keep mint on their shelves, only allowing us to see them once every half decade when they barely play with them a little. The previous phases, all part of “The Infinity Saga”, featured the characters crossing over, hanging out together, having regular adventures (and AvengersMarvel's answer to DC's Justice League, this team features many of Marvel's biggest superheroes working together to protect the world and avenge its evils. missions) all to create a living, breathing world. We haven’t had that kind of crossover in some time, with the closest being The Marvels, tying together Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and WandaVision. And that film tanked because no one liked Captain Marvel anymore and didn’t bother watching the other shows. Captain America: Brave New World pulls off the same feat, but this time with a lead character people still like, and in a way that feels less like homework.

The key is that this forth Captain America film functionally acts as a continuation of two stories from Phase IV: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and The Eternals. We’re seeing real world building here, continuation of characters, a pushing forward of arcs, and world building. And it all ties parts of Phase IV together in a way that feels solid and interesting. I like it, and I feel like this is what more Marvel films should be doing instead of dropping in single characters we don’t know that we won’t see again for who knows how many years. My only qualm is that this film should have come at the end of Phase IV instead of near the end of Phase V, over two years later.

Captain America films have always been the guide through the Marvel universe. They’ve shown us how the world is growing, how things are shifting and changing. They’ve acted as the “plot” for the MCU in ways that other films, except maybe the Avengers movies, haven’t. And this movie does the same. It picks up threads, gives us scope on the world with Sam’s Cap in charge, and it starts asking questions about what’s next for the MCU. This is all great stuff, and everything about this in the new movie is excellent. I could eat this up.

Along with that, it does give us a great performance for Mackie as Sam Wilson. While I don’t agree with everything they do with his character in this film, most specifically having him continue to question if he’s “good enough to follow in Steve’s shadow” (a question that we already answered back in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I thought), I do really enjoy this character. Mackie plays Sam Wilson as a different kind of Captain America, strong and fair, still standing for justice but not seeing the world in quite the same idealistic way that Steve always did. He’s a soldier not a dreamer, but he can inspire people in ways that Steve couldn’t. The film understands this, and it lets Sam become his own kind of hero. I really enjoyed this a lot.

But that does lead me to a big issue I have with this film: it’s not really a Captain America film. We’ll have a separate article spoiling many of the details that bothered me, but suffice it to say that much of the plot of this film is taking up resolving plot threads from, of all films, The Incredible Hulk. This movie is practically a Hulk sequel in all but name, and the fact that Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner isn’t in this movie, in any form, is really weird. It’s like the studio had two different scripts they were working on, one a Captain America sequel and one an old Hulk sequel that had been bouncing around the studio for seventeen years, and they just slapped the two together.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think that there’s merit in doing some kind of Hulk film. I understand the rights are still somehow tied up with Universal (who produced The Incredible Hulk), and they can’t just make a Hulk movie in name without having to deal with Universal. Any kind of Hulk sequel would have to be done in some other film, like putting Bruce in Thor: Ragnarok, and that’s fair. But it needs to feel more natural than this. Time and again Hulk plotlines or characters would come up (again, without trying to spoil anything more than what you might have glimpsed in the trailers for this film) and I kept asking myself, while watching it, “where’s Bruce during all of this?”

Probably off stuck with his cousin, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, who isn’t allowed to be in the franchise anymore. Because Marvel doesn’t know what they’re doing and they failed to properly support a great character. Hell, both of them. Bring back She-Hulk.

Regardless, this film feels weird and disjointed in ways it really shouldn’t. When Steve Rogers went off on a mission, digging to uncover a government conspiracy in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it related back to his past. His villains, his war, who he is as a character. He even has to battle a ghost from his past, Bucky Barnes, which shakes him to his core. Sam doesn’t have that kind of development. We don’t know as much about his past, and he hasn’t had time to develop those kinds of villains to battle against. This film should have started us on that path. Instead, because we don’t have villains or a conspiracy tied to his past we can play off of, Sam ends up in someone else’s conspiracy film, specifically Bruce Banner’s, and it leaves him feeling emotionally disconnected from the material. All of this is to say that because Sam can’t engage with the material like he should, it keeps the film from being truly great.

There are, of course, other flaws with the film as well. The filming isn’t as great as it could have been, with much of the action feeling choppy and over-edited. The film’s lighting and color palette feels drab and flat, a curse of the Marvel house style and digital filming for CGI. And the film absolutely tries to avoid having any kind of political stance at all (something, again, we’ll discuss more in the spoiler chat) despite this supposedly being a conspiracy film. At the very least, Captain America: The Winter Soldier could say “hey, Nazi’s are bad, yo.” This film doesn’t even have such a basic take as that to rely on.

I want to be clear: I did enjoy Captain America: Brave New World, but I can’t say that without all the above caveats. The film lives on the power of Anthony Mackie’s performance, and with it’s all about his Cap, it’s great. It stumbles often, and stumbles hard, though, because it can never commit to being just about Sam Wilson, just about his story, just about him being the hero. It desperately wants to do other things, anything other than engage with the hero and tell his story. The movie wouldn’t be a bad Hulk adventure if, you know, Bruce Banner were here. It’s not even that bad of a Captain America film, if we just take it as a surface level adventure for the hero. At this point, though, Marvel has been making films long enough they should be able to get us to engage with the character on more than the surface, and Captain America: Brave New World fails to do that. It’s all flash and no substance, not for Sam’s Cap, and I really wished it treated him better.