My spouse and I finally got around to watching this on D+. It's bad, easily the worst MCU film. Quantumania was pointless but at least had some gonzo visuals going for it. CA: BNW is blandly unexciting and instantly forgettable.
The casting is terrible. Anthony Mackie is a good actor in a lot of movies, and made a good Falcon, specifically because he was cast a foil for Chris Evans' ultra-ernest Cap. This film sees him trying to shift Sam Wilson to kind of embody certain aspects of that ernest persona but it is utterly unconvincing. His sidekick, Torres, has weird bro-energy that is mostly expressed in unfunny and kind of offensive wisecracks; when the two have a serious moment together on the end of the film and reflect on representation and what they mean, it is therefore unconvincing and formulaic. There is no chemistry between them, unlike the excellent chemistry between Mackie and Evans.
The Leader is apallingly bad. He looks dumb, with the skull mutations and glossy skin that look like they belong on low budget 90s TV sci-fi. Nelson delivers his lines in a deadpan monotone that just makes him sound completely disinterested. For a supposed mastermind, his plotting is utterly simplistic and banal; he is totally unthreatening.
Shira Haas just comes off as odd and tiny and hard to take seriously as a Widow. The obvious comparison is to the dynamite chemistry that Evans and Johanson had in Winter Soldier, and this is not flattering, as she and Mackie just do not work as a pairing.
Harrison Ford is apallingly awful; the worst part of a bad film. He doesn't have any of the energy that William Hurt brought to the role; he's way past his prime and obviously phoning it in, and his typical mumbled delivery is incredibly awkward. Also, by this point he can barely move.
Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley was the only character I found compelling; frankly, I think they should have made him the new (old) Captain America.
The writing and direction are utterly formulaic and predictable; it's like you fed the script from Winter Soldier into an AI and it spat out a generic result. So much of the dialogue is just not how people actually talk. And the final battle is such a wet fart of an ending. When Hollywood is churning out drivel like this, they are right to fear AI screenwriters. Although I do give it a bonus point for finally addressing the problem of the Celestial sticking out of the Indian Ocean, even if it did so in a completely nonsensical way (USA and Japan almost go to war in a scene strongly reminscent of Top Gun, except that had the US confronting the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War rather than a Japan that, these days, is not exactly a believable threat).
And it doesn't look good, despite the budget! I can't recall a single memorable shot, and the effects don't stand out as better than what I would expect on a current TV show.
It's completely uninteresting, has nothing meaningful to say, and had no character development to speak of. I actually love the idea that they were kind of doing a sequel to 2008's Incredible Hulk, but all it really amounted to was a dumb villain and a token cameo. I would rather have watched a bad film that at least took some swings rather than this piece of cardboard. No wonder everyone stayed home for Thunderbolts, despite it being by all measures a far superior film - the MCU did real damage to their brand with this stinker.