THE CAPTAIN AMERICAseries has always been a bright spot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sure, they’re big blockbuster fun, but they’ve also been willing to do what political thrillers do best: Consider the questions of power. Previous entries have interrogated the perils of the surveillance state and the historic experimentation done on Black soldiers, political waters that few MCU projects have ventured into.
Which is why it’s such a shame that Captain America: Brave New World — hampered by reshoots, strikes, protests, and a tepid rollout amid Donald J. Trump’s reascendance to the presidency — offers only the veneer of substance.
When President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) asks newly christened Captain America Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) to restart The Avengers, Wilson is apprehensive. Ross, a former military general, helped dismantle the team in Captain America: Civil War, imprisoning Wilson and other heroes. But when U.S. operatives attempt to assassinate Ross, Wilson must work with the increasingly untethered president to uncover who’s behind the plot.
A film about the tension between serving your country and serving your president, particularly in our current moment where paranoia and disunity reign, is rich with possibility. But instead of engaging these pertinent issues, the film seems to wave away concerns about the danger of political power, filling its runtime with clunky dialogue that alludes to complex ideas without engaging them, lest they reduce the film’s marketability.
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