Captain America: Brave New World

[diffrentcolours]

I saw it. It was OK. Not terrible, not great. It was trying to do too many things at once - rehash the "what does it mean for a Black man to be the symbol of a racist nation?" arc from "Falcon and the Winter Soldier", be a political thriller where the infrastructure of the US Government is being manipulated by a terrorist mastermind, and be a sequel to "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), a 17 year old film, without that film's lead character.

It had too many characters and relied a little too much on coincidence - the baddie is supposed to be some kind of genius who can "follow the probabilities" but it takes it too far even with that. It also assumes that nobody is doing any kind of follow-up - at one point the heroes discover the baddie's secret lair, with files on everyone he's been manipulating, and they leave this location in the hands of the Secret Service who don't immediately detain all of those people and strip them of security clearances.

The final fight between Captain America and Red Hulk could have been a great surprise, but I suspect Marvel got frightened of the bad previews and spoiled it in the trailers. For how much they hyped it up, it was too short and had a disappointing ending. And again, are we supposed to believe that the US Government doesn't have any contingency plans against The Hulk, particularly with Tony Stark dead? Does War Machine not have access to Hulkbuster armour? Even some mechanism to yeet a Hulk into space would be sensible.

On the plus side, we got a traditional Marvel corridor fight. A lot of the fight choreography and cuts were good - it remained clear who was fighting whom throughout, and where they were relative to each other. Anthonie Mackie is a good actor, and doing a good job with the material. Harrison Ford is... Harrison Ford. He does a tolerable job but I don't feel he's a great replacement for the late William Hurt. It was interesting to see Shira Haas, having recently been impressed by her in the TV show "Bodies", but cutting her character would have made the film flow a little more cleanly - possibly replacing her with War Machine who had the ear and trust of the previous President.

I wanted to see this film because of the hostility it got online for being too "woke" - I wanted to put a bit of my cash towards its box office. I hate that seeing or not seeing films has been made into a political stance by the fascists and the racists and the incels. But I was reasonably entertained by the movie.

Comments

[apiphile]

and they leave this location in the hands of the Secret Service who don't immediately detain all of those people and strip them of security clearances.

Unfortunately that does feel, after the endless failures of the last US administration in following up threats against their country, somewhat more plausible.