We’re Hulking Out

So we’ve discussed the basics of Captain America: Brave New World over in the largely spoiler free review of the film (only spoiling those things that were spoiled by Marvel in the trailers and the press tour leading up to the release of the film). Essentially if you haven’t watched the film yet and you want to know if it’s any good, go read that article, watch it, and then come back because we’re going to go deep into the film and all its spoilers so we can really discuss, even more so, what worked and what didn’t about this new 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. And we have to because, damn, there’s a lot that didn’t work.

Seriously, Why is Captain America In this Film?

As I pointed out in my review of Captain America: Brave New World, this film is essentially a back door The Incredible Hulk sequel. The villain introduced in that 2008 film, Samuel Sterns / The Leader as played by Tim Blake Nelson, is back for this film. President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) turns into the Red Hulk, a sort of villain that Bruce Banner battles in the comics. Betty Ross returns in this film, with Liv Tyler reprising the role from The Incredible Hulk. If you wanted to put together a The HulkOnce the brilliant Dr. Bruce Banner had dreams of making the world a better place by building super soldiers to act as a shield for all mankind. Then an accident at his lab bathed him in gamma radiation. Now he has a living nightmare, as a big green guy lives within, just waiting for the rage to take over so he can be free. sequel you couldn’t have done a better job assembling all the elements to pull that off.

Well, except for one: Bruce Banner isn’t in this film. For some reason, despite putting all these elements into this film, setting up a film that carries on all these plotlines and works to tie up loose ends from The Incredible Hulk, the main character that should be at the center of all of this doesn’t make an appearance in this film at all. Marvel, despite dropping $180 Mil on the development of this film (and that doesn’t even take into account marketing and other expenditures related to the release) couldn’t send someone over to Mark Ruffalo’s house and say, “here’s a butt load of money, come be in your character’s sequel.” It’s such a baffling decision.

As I noted in my review, there’s every possibility that Marvel is still somehow barred from producing an outright Hulk sequel without having to pay some money to Universal. That company made two previous films, Hulk and 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. The Incredible Hulk, and they had the rights to the character licensed for some time. Marvel could use the characters but they couldn’t make a true The Incredible Hulk sequel without Universal’s authorization, and whether or not that agreement still holds is something only the studios really understand. If that’s why this plotline and these characters had to happen in someone else’s film, so be it. But there had to be a better character to use for that story than Captain America. Isn’t there a character that would tie better into the story, who has some connection to Bruce Banner, that could have worked better here, especially if we also, you know, brought Bruce back for this film?

Let’s say instead of Sam Willson’s Cap we substitute in a Black Widow. Hell, the film already has one in the form of Presidential security advisor Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas). I would suggest that this character should have been swapped out for Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff if this film had taken place in Phase III since she was friends with Bruce and, at times, his lover. Or, keeping this film in “The Multiverse Saga”, we can substitute in Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova. If we have Yelena working for the administration as a special security advisor, maybe at the request of CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), it gets the character into the story organically and it means that someone with a more direct connection to what’s going on here could actually be involved.

Yelena could see the assassination attempt on President Hulk happen in real time. She could do some investigating and clues could point her to something related to the Hulk. Hints of Hulk tech, or Gamma radiation signals, or something. Whatever is the case, she could contact Bruce, who might already have been paying attention to world events because President Ross was involved. Suddenly the two are working together on the case, doing essentially the job that Sam and Joaquin perform in the actual film we got, and it all works much better. Yelena handles the covert, Bruce goes all Hulk to battle Red Hulk, and everyone gets the satisfying Hulk sequel they wanted without having to shoehorn it into a film where it doesn’t belong. Whether this is a Yelena film in name or not – maybe Black Widow: United States of Rage since we can’t put the Hulk name in the title directly – doesn’t matter so much, we just need it to work better as a unified story.

Cap Really Needed His Own Film

Of course, this also gets to the other problem with the film: it’s really two movies awkwardly grafted together. Sam Wilson is his own person, presumably with his own backstory and his own characters that he dealt with before he became a superhero. You’d be hard pressed to know that, though, as the only characters he actually deals with from his past are Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), making a cameo appearance in this film for one scene, and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And don’t get me wrong, having these two characters in this film helps to ground Sam in some stakes for the film, especially on the Captain America side of the plotline.

The issue is that the villains of the film aren’t Cap’s villains, and right now, in Sam Wilson’s journey, he doesn’t yet have his own villains. Despite this being the fourth Captain America film, it’s Sam Wilson’s first true solo adventure and we really needed to get more about him, to develop him as a character in his own right outside of Bucky or Steve Rogers or anyone else. We should get a villain for him that’s all his own, one related to his time as a soldier or someone that is specifically targeting him because he’s Captain America. The story should revolve around these two, working at odds to each other, so that the story feels personal to Sam.

The best we get is Sidewinder, played by the usually fabulous Giancarlo Esposito who seems absolutely bored in this role. Sidewinder was added to the film late, in reshoots and post-production, likely because Marvel realized, “wait, nothing about this Captain America film is actually about Captain America,” so he was their way to try and backdoor shove in a villain for Sam. But Sidewinder is underdeveloped, only showing up in three scenes and barely making an impact at all. He’s a villain who promises to be trouble for Sam later. Not in this film. Later. And if he never shows up again no one is going to care. Perhaps if this film had been developed as a true Sam Wilson solo adventure and not a Hulk sequel in disguise, we could have gotten enough development of Sidewinder for the character to actually matter to Sam’s story. That wasn’t meant to be.

The Politics in this Film are Nonexistent

Putting Cap in a political thriller makes sense. Hell, it worked pretty well for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (even if we want to debate just how much of a political thriller that film really was). Captain America is the character most tied to the politics of the United States. Many of his stories in the comics were about the hero battling his doubts about using the name “Captain America” even while the character disagreed with the politics of the nation. A film like that, where Sam stands at odds with the President and openly disagrees with the President’s agenda, would have actually worked. It could have worked here, in a film that was just Thaddius Ross (the man, not the Hulk) making moves Sam didn’t agree with.

In our current political climate, where major corporations and new outlets are rolling over and showing their bellies to the Trump administration, how great would it have been to have a film that, without saying anything about Trump at all, showed a hero standing up to the President of the United States? That could have sent a message, it would have thrilled many in the audience (especially those that were there to see a Black man as Captain America). It could have said something. Anything. This film doesn’t say anything at all.

Despite the fact that it has a corrupt president making backroom deals and keeping prisoners (namely The Leader) permanently incarcerated, the film never actually has anything to say about Presidential power or politics. At a moment where Ross’s machinations are revealed and everything, politically, should come crumbling down around him, Ross then turns into the Red Hulk and distracts everyone from what really was going on. Suddenly it’s not about what he did but the monster he became, and any feint towards actually holding a President properly accountable is tossed aside. He’s a monster, we have to stop him. That’s the only message we get.

Hell, if they had just colored him orange instead of red that would have said more than the political stance this film takes. This film takes no stance towards American politics, at all. It leaves the film weaker and emptier than it should have been. Even the first Captain America films had more of a political stance, and their whole message was “Nazis are bad,” which is a message we all agree with. Or at least we did, although now for half of America maybe not so much. Hell, would they even have the Nazis as villains in a classic Captain America film if one were released during this administration? I actually think maybe not.

It Also Doesn’t Understand International Politics

The four nations featured in this film are the U.S., Japan, France, and India. India makes sense since the Celestial Island (see: The Eternals) is in the Indian Ocean and, at least to a certain extent, you’d expect India to have some sovereignty over a giant space alien island appearing off their coast. You can squint and also understand why France is there if you think of them as an extension not only of the E.U., the European superpower, but also as a representative of the U.N. Bear in mind the film never points this out, it just has India and France be two of the four nations vying for control of the Celestial Island, but I didn’t really question it, just like I didn’t question to the U.S. being involved because, hell, the U.S. sticks its nose into everything regardless of if they’re invited or not.

The nation I questioned, repeatedly, was Japan. Why is Japan a superpower vying for control of the Celestial Island? Japan is the U.S.’s ally, they have some strength in the region, but you wouldn’t call them a military superpower. They’re actually barred from being a military superpower due to, you know, World War II and their actions as part of the Axis during that war. Japan would never have the strength to take on the U.S., at least not in 2025. It’s clear that Japan is here because the movie couldn’t use someone else: China.

The film was clearly written with an Asian superpower trying to get the Celestial Island (and, by extension, its seemingly limitless supply of Adamantium) under their control. They have an agreement to share the island with the U.S. and other countries of the world, but when that goes tits up (due to the machinations of The Leader) France and India act like the loss of Japan in the negotiations is a huge deal. “We can’t have an agreement without Japan,” they say and why, specifically, is that the case? Because when the writers say “Japan”, what they actually mean is “China.” But you can’t have China be the villain in one of these films, or make them look weak or stupid or anything like that, because then your film won’t get released in China, and Marvel desperately needs Chinese money to make their films viable releases.

So the edges are sanded off, Japan is used in place of China, and the international politics of the film become really silly and half-baked. I honestly couldn’t take this plotline seriously at all because it just doesn’t make sure. It’s dumb. It’s just dumb.

This Should Have Been Two Movies

Some of these flaws you can fix with some simple rewrites. Some would require Disney to grow a spine and actually be willing to make a political thriller that engaged with the politics of the real world. But the biggest flaws with the movie come down to the simple fact that Sam Wilson’s Captain America doesn’t have much connection to the Hulk or Bruce Banner’s storylines. There are plenty of characters that do in the MCU, but frankly it’s hard to think of a single scene, in any movie, where Sam Wilson and Bruce Banner even talk to each other. Does that occur, ever, in any movie? I don’t think it does (outside of one episode of What If...? which doesn’t even take place in the main continuity), and it makes for a very weird and awkward film to have Sam stand-in for Bruce in what is, essentially, Bruce’s film.

This movie should have been split in two. The first movie should have focused on Sam’s Captain America taking on the mantle fully while butting heads with the new Presidential administration as President Ross tries to run roughshod over the country. President Ross tells Sam he wants Captain America to put together, and lead, a new Avengers team. Sam has concerns about what Ross is up to, and Ross’s administration ends up pissing off some (perhaps super-powered) foreign adversary.

Sam tries to go it alone, but he does realize he needs help. So he contacts someone he knows, maybe Spider-man, and they contact someone they know, Wong the Sorcerer Supreme, and he puts them all in contact with other potential Avengers for a little mini-team up film. This could have included Shang-Chi, Ms. Marvel, maybe She-Hulk, and even Black Panther II, all of whom had movies or shows in Phase IV. Make this film the backdoor Avengers film Phase IV needed, and in the end whether a proper team is forged from this film or not, at least we get a crossover that makes all these heroes feel like they exist in the same world, at the same time, and the Phase feels far more complete here than it does in the current MCU.

Then we get the other half of this story, the Hulk film in disguise. Set it near the start of Phase V, and have it pick up all the elements we discussed that are leftover. If we go with it as a Black Widow film, that serves two purposes. One, it gives us Yelena again, who we only saw in Black Widow (which most people hated) and Hawkeye (which not many people watched). Two, it confirms her as a character working for CIA Director Fontaine (which also continues to build Fontaine up as a power player and possible bad guy in later works) and allows us a quick and easy “in” for Phase V where, at the end of it, Yelena shows up again in Thunderbolts*. Then she can work with Bruce on his backdoor Hulk film and it all feels much more organic.

Of course, this all means that Captain America: Brave New World wouldn’t have sat in development hell for four years, bouncing between five credited writers (and who know how many other uncredited ones that were assigned the task as well), all while the studio tried to figure out what they wanted to do with this film. Sam Wilson could, and should, lead a team of superheroes. He should be the beacon of hope the MCU needs. He could be the “First Avenger” on a new team set to protect the world. That’s all great stuff and I wish we’d gotten that movie back in Phase IV.

Instead we have this film that doesn’t seem to know what to do with Sam so, instead, it decides to go focus on the Hulk… just without the Hulk. The film seems ashamed to have to be a Captain America film, worried that it might piss off any part of the audience by actually having Captain America engaging with world politics and racial politics and anything else Sam actually has to deal with as Cap. It’s safe, it’s staid, it’s even a little boring. It lets down Sam, and that’s a real tragedy.