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Captain America: Brave New World sees new US President, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford – Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny) estranged from daughter Betty (Liv Tyler – Ad Astra), and despite the script trying not to mention it, he’s clearly a Democrat President, because this is the mainstream media who start crying every time Donald Trump wins, and his backdrop is mostly blue, as he takes to the stage for the first time, after his win.
Off-stage, he says, “Betty doesn’t know I’ve changed.. REALLY Changed“… yeah, from William Hurt to Harrison Ford!
For want of a plot, in Oaxaca, Mexico, a chap called Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) leads a team, The Rock-style, to steal certain items, but despite bringing in Mr Esposito, who’s been in a ton of films as well as Far Cry 6, his character is quickly sidelined in favour of Dr Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson – The Bricklayer), a shut-in who looks like he’s turned into a stick of broccoli.
It’s up to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie – Twisted Metal) to stop him – while constantly moaning that he never took the same serum as Steve Rogers, hence doesn’t have super-strength, while Ross chairs the Celestial Island World Summit – for some reason, inside the White House – to announce that Adamantium has been discovered. It’s far more powerful than the Vibranium of which Sam’s shield is built, but we’ve still come across it before, as Wolverine’s claws are made out of Adamantium, not that that gets a mention, here. Maybe it’s the timey-wimey stuff happening again.
He also wants Sam to rebuild the Avengers, so they can set off on adventures again, given that Marvel’s planned storylines around The Kang Dynasty came to nought, after Jonathan Majors was convicted for beating up his girlfriend. As such, May 2026 and 2027 sees Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars appear on the big screen, which isn’t much of a secret.
As such, our hero has obviously not heard of Donald Trump cancelling certain quotas for employment, as he brings in trainee Falcon DEI hire Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez – Mazey Day: Black Mirror), which no doubt will expand to a cast for a lot of the audience to complain about and state they’ll wait for the movies to appear on Disney+
I saw Captain America: Brave New World in IMAX 3D, as in IMAX, it opens up to 1.90:1 for approximately 30 minutes, which is used during the action scenes and is worth a watch in that format. When it comes to the 3D aspect, that was very poorly used, and barely made any difference. They shouldn’t use it if they have a director who doesn’t know what he’s doing with it. That said, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never filmed anything in 3D ever. They shoot in 2D, then make a 3D post-conversion, with hit-and-miss results.
For Odeon, as I’m on Limitless, the uplift for IMAX in 2D or 3D is £5, although bear in mind that initially, their website was showing an uplift cost for IMAX 3D of £8! Now I had seen £6 used for Joker 2, and previously, £7 used for The Marvels in IMAX 3D (although at the time of booking, the uplift cost hadn’t yet been implemented into the system, so it didn’t cost me any extra), but when I challenged this on Twitter with Odeon, they claimed it was a mistake! And then fixed it.
As a film, it’s worth a look, but very by-the-numbers. I wasn’t excited about it before, during or afterwards. I just ticked a box in watching it, same as Marvel are ticking diversity boxes.
And some random thoughts about Captain America: Brave New World…
“What if I still wanted to keep it there?”, Isaiah retorts, which is partly a situation of having your space invaded, as well as someone jumping in and touching your stuff without permission… and I FUCKING HATE THAT! I don’t like people touching my stuff at the best of times.
And some more random thoughts about Captain America: Brave New World…
In the film, it’s just “You’re not Steve Rogers”, which completely undermined that exchange. That was main punchline in the scene!
The film features a post-credits scene and some cameos, as detailed in my video below, but before we get to that, we are shown the most uninspired main credits section ever… just a series of random, coloured blocks as the various cast names appear. Even after that, the words “Captain America: Brave New World” linger so long, that it looked like it was leading into a MID-credits scene… but then the ‘crawl’ credits just appear afterwards.
NOTE: There are no mid- or post-credit scenes.
Captain America: Brave New World is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 118 minutes
Release date: February 14th 2025
Studio: Marvel
Aspect Ratio: 1.90:1 (IMAX version: some scenes), 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.5K), Anamorphic Panavision)
Rating: 5.5/10
Director: Julius Onah
Producers: Kevin Feige, Nate Moore
Screenplay: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz
Music: Laura Karpman
Cast:
Sam Wilson / Captain America: Anthony Mackie
President Thaddeus Ross: Harrison Ford
Joaquin Torres: Danny Ramirez
Ruth Bat-Seraph: Shira Haas
Isaiah Bradley: Carl Lumbly
Dr Samuel Sterns: Tim Blake Nelson
Sidewinder: Giancarlo Esposito
Leila Taylor: Xosha Roquemore
Copperhead: Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson
Commander Dennis Dunphy: William Mark McCullough
Prime Minister Ozaki: Takehiro Hira
Prime Minister Kapur: Harsh Nayyar
French President: Rick Espaillat
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.