Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Directed by Julius Onah
After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
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54 films that influenced Captain America: Brave New World
What critics say influenced Captain America: Brave New World
…the covert ops mission Cap runs in Mexico feels lifted straight from the opening of Winter Soldier.
…even as a director, Onah wants to evoke the visceral paranoia-infused thriller of “Captain America: Winter Soldier” (2014); his action set pieces lack that energetic flair or urgency…
…much like Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). But, unlike that tight-as-a-drum masterpiece, here the frankly inferior screenplay purposefully ties plot elements together from The Incredible Hulk (2008)…
It’s a far cry from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a top-notch political thriller and one of the greatest superhero movies of all time.
…it’s not quite up to the standard of previous efforts like The Winter Soldier or Civil War…
Captain America: The Winter Soldier showed why a spy agency like SHIELD would be the perfect place for Nazis to fester with official positions within the government.
Two of the Steve Rogers solo adventures (Winter Soldier and Civil War) were heavily influenced by classic Cold War spy dramas.
Despite the various script touch-ups, there’s sensible connections from films from as far back as The Incredible Hulk, Civil War and more recent fare like The Eternals in a way that proves rewarding once again to be invested in the entirety of the MCU.
Conceptually, Brave New World positions itself somewhere between the dueling political intrigue of The Winter Soldier and Civil War…
…it’s not quite up to the standard of previous efforts like The Winter Soldier or Civil War…
And the three previous Captain America films have been among my very favorite movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
…the colossal spectacle of Civil War…
It’s undeniable that, since Avengers: Endgame, the MCU has been spinning its wheels.
…this is probably the best of the post-ENDGAME pre-D&W (aside from the Sony Spideys) MCU offering…
The Red Hulk vs. Cap fight sequence is the best battle in any MCU film since Endgame.
Sam Wilson has inherited the mantle (and the shield) from Chris Evans’s Rogers after he bowed out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Endgame.
…the slowing momentum and general lack of necessity that has dogged this extended universe since Avengers: Endgame back in 2019…
…once impenetrable MCU has shown concerning signs of wear and tear in the post-“Avengers: Endgame” era…
…the very same connected series of alternate universes we’ve been watching onscreen for four whole years, in shows like Loki and movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Deadpool & Wolverine…
…box-office busting crowdpleasers (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine)…
After essentially taking 2024 off for Deadpool & Wolverine…
…since that monumental match-up of DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, which was the only MCU flick of 2024…
Marvel Studios returns to the big screen after a year that saw their lowest output aside from the 2020, only offering up the R-rated record-smashing blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine to the masses.
With familiar drama driving Brave New World forward – and fewer comedic aspirations than your Guardians or your Deadpool and Wolverines…
An aerial battle that pits Cap and Falcon against a bevy of fighter jets feels new to the MCU, especially because it veers closer to the original Top Gun than Top Gun: Maverick.
Later Onah expands his scope as the conflict heads to the very open high seas with Sam and Joaquin in full TOP GUN mode…
Despite the various script touch-ups, there’s sensible connections from films from as far back as The Incredible Hulk, Civil War and more recent fare like The Eternals in a way that proves rewarding once again to be invested in the entirety of the MCU.
…leaning more on Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk and Chloé Zhao’sEternals than it does the preceding Captain America films.
…how much the film actively serves as a closure and a quasi-sequel to “The Incredible Hulk” (2008)…
…having an obvious restructure that has more parts The Incredible Hulk (Marvel can’t make another solo Hulk film due to rights) than the titular hero.
Those who have long been watching MCU films will appreciate the incorporation of previously-seen characters from The Incredible Hulk and Eternals…
…dangling plot threads from other MCU efforts (notably 2008’s The Incredible Hulk and 2021’s Eternals)…
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…watered-down Manchurian Candidate riffs…
Clearly, shenanigans of the Manchurian Candidate sort are afoot…
Now Brave New World makes direct reference to a classic of the genre, The Manchurian Candidate, when Isaiah Bradley (Lumbly), a forgotten victim of the super soldier program, tries to assassinate former general, now president Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Ford, stepping in for the late William Hurt), but claims to have no memory of the crime.
…harking back to the Post-9/11 era that had the screenplays of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 in an iron grip.
It is essentially a “work”—movies that are solely responsible for setting up the universe and pushing the larger plot of the universe forward—similar to films like “Iron Man 2” (2010) and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015)…
…in an eerily Iron Man 2 kind of way…
…harking back to the Post-9/11 era that had the screenplays of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 in an iron grip.
His dialogue echoes that of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in Marvel’s first-ever credit stinger post–Iron Man, in which he tells Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), “You think you’re the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.”
Iron Man (2008) was once a bright new superhero on the block, becoming the first of many glossy, big-budget action movies from producer Kevin Feige.
…the very same connected series of alternate universes we’ve been watching onscreen for four whole years, in shows like Loki and movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Deadpool & Wolverine…
…box-office busting crowdpleasers (Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine)…
…the very same connected series of alternate universes we’ve been watching onscreen for four whole years, in shows like Loki and movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Deadpool & Wolverine…
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” also saw similar declines of 67% in their respective sophomore outings…
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…or the third act of The Marvels…
Even if the film suffers a significant second weekend drop like The Marvels (79% after a $46.1 million opening)…
…the criminally underrated The Marvels…
…danger music score of Laura Karpman (The Marvels)…
Also having Ford play POTUS is a brilliant shout out to “Air Force One” (1997)…
…one can’t help wishing they were watching Air Force One rather than another Marvel chapter…
…beyond a few Air Force One jokes…
It’s been 18 years since Harrison Ford last played a US President in Air Force One.