I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater lately. My health has been shit and in America that means money has been tight. Very tight. (Please buy my books and post reviews of them, and if you back me on Patreon, thank you thank you thank you)
However, there’s a new MCU entry with a black Captain America, and in defiance of the Worst People on YouTube, I was willing to throw an afternoon-matinee worth of my income into that big pool of box office returns.
My spoiler-free take on the film:
- Anthony Mackie should be a movie star (meaning, people see movies mainly because he’s in them
- Brave New World is as good (and as flawed) as any of the ordinary MCU entries when the series was at peak popularity
- It ditches the ironic snark of the last few films and thank God for that.
- When is Sam Wilson going to get a love interest?
- Feige really needs to change the way he makes these movies.
The story is fairly straightforward: Thunderbolt Ross has gotten himself elected president, and he’s been trying to make amends for past mistakes both for his legacy as CiC and to make amends with his estranged daughter. He’s pushing hard for an international treaty on the exploitation of a newly discovered mineral, adamantium, inside the body of that dead Celestial from a few movies back.
What he won’t do is go public about his mistakes, even when they’re getting people killed by the dozens and eventually pushing the world to the brink of war.
It’s up to Sam Wilson to figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it, and that’s a job that’s going to require a lot of action scenes.
If that sounds like the story is weirdly focused on the antagonist’s personal journey, it is. Wilson does have a personal journey of his own. Sort of. In the non-action scenes of the movie, he talks about feeling like he isn’t up to the challenge of being Captain America, and he even expresses his regret at not taking the super soldier serum.
But because this is a Marvel movie, with different parts shot by different people, and in which a rough compilation of scenes were brought to Kevin Feige so he could whip up a storyline to glue them together in reshoots.
Which is why, no matter how much Wilson talks about his fear that he could never live up to the standards set by Steve Rogers, that never once plays out in the action sequences (which are pretty terrific, honestly). Wilson talks about the possibility that he might come up short, but it never even comes close to happening.
It’s the biggest flaw this movie has. The second biggest is the on-the-nose dialog, but that’s par for the course with political thrillers.
Is this the place to talk about President Hulk? Or President Red Hulk, I guess? The Hulk has always been a sort of werewolf for the atomic age, where instead of a fear of the beasts of the wild, it represented a fear of the destructive power of radioactive weapons unleashed by baby-men throwing tantrums.
If I thought Feige could see the future, I would suspect this was a comment on our current political situation. It isn’t. It can’t be. Ross is a bad person, yeah, but he isn’t “You should drink bleach/ Isn’t my daughter fuckable/ Let’s take over that sovereign nation” level bad. Ross wants a treaty to allow international cooperation. A Trumpian figure would be trying to turn Celestial Island into the 51st state.
Anyway, good movie. Fun action scenes. Great performances. It would have been a fantastic movie if they’d taken the time to make it a cohesive story.
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In other news, after a long reading drought, I’m finally reading something that I’m enjoying. There’s about 50 pages left, but as long as it doesn’t shit the bed during the ending, I’ll happily recommend it here. Details to come, maybe.
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Work on the final Twenty Palaces book continues in my every spare moment. I’m not as far along as I’d like to be, but I feel like I’m genuinely getting it right. I even have the ending–mostly–worked out.
As always, revisions will be extensive and intense but progress is happening. I only wish it could happen faster.
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I had more to say but I think I’m going to stop there so I can get back to the things that really matter.