chuckdee
Adventurer
That's not even world building. World building expands the lore of the world. This gave no real insights into it, other than Woody Harrelson tossing him a blaster.
Captain America: Brave New World - Official Trailer (2025)
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Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Small worldbuilding is worldbuilding, and small lore is lore.
IIRC the blaster is also part of a set that can be modified for carbine or rifle configuration, but Han didn’t get those parts. Would have been handy sometimes but really not part of the gunslinger vibe he was going for.
I really liked Solo and wish we’d seen more of Ehrenreich as Han (not to mention Clarke as Qi’ra and Glover as Lando). PWB as L3 was fantastic and I’d like to see her as the Falcon in future too.
Favourite lines:
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
Honestly I’d be totally on board with a reboot of Star Wars with McGregor, Ehrenreich, Glover, Clarke, and a couple of fresh-faced kids as the twins. I’d be very happy to see Ingram back as Reva from Kenobi too. Take the plot in different directions, have Kenobi survive, whatever.
(I’ll stop now since this is a MCU thread, not a SW thread.)
Paul Farquhar
Legend
The blaster did not cause the problems with the film. If it had been a different blaster it wouldn’t have made it a better movie.
As I said, the movie’s problem was trying to cram in shedloads of backstory (and more was cut). The actual story started with the failed train heist. It would have been better to start with that as a pre-credits sequence, then have the occasional flashback to fill in only the parts of the backstory that are relevant to the plot.
chuckdee
Adventurer
I mean, that's just my point. It was needless, and while it didn't cause problems with the film, it didn't really add anything either. That was just an example, but your statement sort of speaks to what I was talking about.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Not at all. The blaster scene was needed. It spoke to the relationship between the characters. It did not harm whatsoever to add a little fan service there.
Stuff that wasn’t needed where speeder chases on Corellia.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I think it added more detail about a setting I am interested in, and that's almost always a positive for me, albeit a minor one in this case.
Yeah I think this was one of the biggest misses of the movie. Now lets be honest, Marvel has become notorious for cookie cutter villains, but at least the villains are normally powerful...they are just bland and one note.
But when your super power is hyper intelligence....and your plot is something a 3rd grader could have come up with....than it feels like there are was no supervillain at all.
Clint_L
Legend
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.
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.
In general I agree with the majority of your review.
My one nitpick here. Considering that this is a US and Japan that have through a 5 year complete upheaveal in the world order (basically a mini apocolypse), and in which alien and advanced technology has been bought, sold, and traded....there is no telling what the world political landscape looks like. It is absolutely possible that Japan came out of the blip stronger than many countries for XYZ reason, and is now a major world powerhouse that the US could legitimately consider a dangerous adversary.
Now that said....did the movie (or any of its predecessor's) establish that? Of course not, that kind of world development seems a bit beyond Marvel these days...but it is plausible.
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