Captain America: Brave New World (2025) is the latest movie added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This fourth installment of the Captain America films dealt more grounded conflicts instead of the vast multiverse. After Steve Rogers retired as Captain America, Sam Wilson is trying to embody the role of Captain America. However, problems quickly arise when the movie’s antagonist Samuel Sterns aka The Leader is plotting to destroy the world by putting global superpowers against each other.
This movie, which is directed by Julius Onah, features big Hollywood actors such Anothony Mackie who plays the main character Sam Wilson, Harrison Ford as Thaddeus Ross, and Giancarlo Esposito as Seth Voelker. The average cost to produce a blockbuster film is $100 million but $180 million was spent to produce this film. Yet, audiences, critics, and moviegoers have mixed feelings about this film.
“It wasn’t that great, even” Convent High School junior Aoibhinn Reidy recalls, “ my friend Mallory fell asleep during it!”
Even if the plot may not be as interesting as one may want, this movie is very grounded and allows for casual moviegoers who do not know all the details of the MCU to follow the plot and have an enjoyable time watching with friends.
“It’s nice to see a classic superhero action film and it was also fun to watch with friends even if you haven’t seen a marvel movie before,” says Stuart Hall High School junior Luke Spalding.
While some casual Marvel fans may enjoy watching this film, the lack of a significant plot parallels previous Marvel movie failures such as The Marvels (2023), Eternals (2021), and Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023). All these movies flopped at box offices due one or more of these qualities: lack of creative vision, plots with little substance, and poor storytelling.
For Captain America: Brave New World, although there were high points, the movie’s plot had little substance and the storytelling was questionable at times. This resulted in many viewers having an ambivalent opinion about the success of this movie.
“The movie was lackluster in its storytelling and mirrors the errors that many recent marvel projects have been prone to.” says Stuart Hall High School Junior Cabot Dick. “However, the action scenes were pretty good and the acting from most of the cast (in particular Anthony Mackie) was good, even with the bad script so it ended up being a flawed, but fun movie overall.”
While this movie might not have hit the expectations of many Marvel fans, the next blockbuster Marvel movie is titled Thunderbolts* which will be released in the United States on May 2, 2025. This highly anticipated movie will be another grounded Marvel movie and fans can expect to see many beloved characters such as Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier, Ghost, Yelena Belova, the Red Guardian, Taskmaster, and John Walker team up to form the superhero team called the Thunderbolts.