Captain America: Brave New World Trailer Looks Like the Old One
After taking a year mostly off, Marvel is roaring back to theaters in 2025. Today, they released a trailer for Captain America: Brave New World, the next big superhero movie (certainly in terms of budget) in the MCU after Deadpool & Wolverine. A follow-up to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the second and third Captain America movies, the film finds Sam Wilson navigating the politics of being a superhero while trying to stop a conspiracy that involves an assassination attempt on the new President – General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. Anthony Mackie returns as Sam Wilson, with Harrison Ford stepping in for the late William Hurt as Ross; they’re joined by Giancarlo Esposito, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Shira Haas, Tim Blake Nelson, and Liv Tyler, though with all the reshoots, I’m not sure which of those will be in the final film outside of the ones who show up in the trailer. Directed by Julius Onah, Captain America: Brave New World will arrive in theaters on February 14, 2025 (as of now), and you can see the trailer below:
Well, Red Hulk is officially showing up, which means we know who the bad guy is. (I won’t say it in case anyone doesn’t know.) I also suspect that mysterious guy on the phone is Samuel Stern, who we last saw in The Incredible Hulk as he took his first step to becoming the Leader. On the one hand, I like that Marvel is following up on this at last, but I don’t like that it’s a Sam Wilson movie, not a Hulk movie, or at least an Avengers movie. Same goes for Red Hulk, who is, as you’d expect, a Hulk villain more than anyone else. This is one of the issues with Marvel replacing all its main characters with stand-ins: they can’t follow through on the stories they set up with the old guard. It’s the same thing as the Mandarin being the villain in a Shang-Chi movie instead of facing Iron Man, like everyone wanted. Now, we’ve got two Hulk villains for Sam Wilson to fight, plus an extension of the Civil War plot – Thaddeus Ross trying to get control of the Avengers – only without the key players in that story, Captain America and Iron Man. This isn’t a satisfying payoff for any of those setups, and it feels like Marvel doesn’t know what to do with Sam, probably because he’s better off as a supporting character (as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier proved).
As for the trailer, it certainly makes it look like Brave New World is going for a Winter Soldier vibe, with the conspiracy element and Sam going on the run. That’s smart; I don’t want an exact copy of that movie, but a lower-key story is better for Sam than an alien invasion or something. Based on the footage they show, I have no idea who Giancarlo Esposito is playing, aside from some bad guy or other. They’ve used more real-world functional versions of comic book suits in some of the MCU movies, like Batroc the Leaper’s tactical suit in The Winter Soldier, so it’s possible he is someone from the comics, just in an unrecognizable outfit. Harrison Ford seems to be invested in this role, which is good to see; as he’s gotten older, he’s seemed checked out in some of his movies. It is a little difficult not to see him as Harrison Ford as opposed to General Ross, but that’s just a product of the casting; William Hurt was a great actor, but he wasn’t a star like Ford. In terms of Ross, they seem to be getting around the problem I mentioned earlier – the conflict in Civil War missing its key characters – by relitigating it with Sam opposing Ross instead of Cap. Again, this feels like Marvel making the best of the situation they put themselves in by jettisoning the main heroes, and I guess this is the only thing they can do under the circumstances. The trailer is put together well, but I’m still not overly hopeful for this movie.
Comments (3)
Pretty ballsy to release a Cap Merica trailer and not even show Cap.
Certainly gonna be a different movie or tv show which has the falcon and Harrison ford playing a presidential leader,which some will like. Also Harrison ford hasn’t played a presidential character since the movie “Air Force One”
Gary said it best so far, that the comics didn’t sell that well and that these are supplemental characters at this point. Still, old Marvel has such good writing, that they could make anything good at one time. From the political and propaganda angle, I think Winter Soldier might be my favorite movie just for the algo that identified all potential leaders and also, the Deep State within the government.
If they could get that old Winter Solider writing and production team, I would have preferred a flashback movie of Isaiah Bradley from Red, White and Black. That way, they could at least send the message that they were trying to make superior troops as an excuse for all the injections. I think they could do some amazing propaganda and spin on that.