3 min to read
Captain America Brave New World
How was Anthony Mackie's first movie as Captain America
The Good: My favorite part of the movie was the respect the writers had for the characters. They gave each of the characters (Sam Wilson, Joaquin Torres, Thunderbolt Ross, and Isaiah Bradley) time for them to grow on us and have us appreciate them more and more. The characters were well written so you cared about them and made you want to engage with them.
What made me appreciate the characters even more was the way each of them were portrayed by their respective actors. Anthony Mackie does an incredible job embodying the hopeful, courageous, optimistic, and willing Captain America you expect from him. Carl Lumbly adds to his portrayal of Isaiah Bradley from the Falcon and the Winter soldier and shows an even more vulnerable side to him but also a happier, more jovial side to the character. On top of it all, Harrison Ford is a terrific Thaddeus Ross. He is able to show the rage, the frustration, and the impatience Thaddeus has built up that is able to fuel the movie with more chaos, more commotion, and more intrigue.
On top of everything else, the action of the film was stellar. The hand-to-hand combat at the beginning was extremely well choreographed for a Captain America fight, and now that Captain America has wings the aerial aspects of the fights were also so much fun to watch.
The Meh: It’s hard to make a 4th movie in a series that tries to be as good as the predecessors, one of which is the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is such an incredible political thriller that this film tries to imitate. There are times in the first half of the film where this film matches the excellence of the Winter Soldier, but by the end it lost its focus a bit. What makes the story fumble is the attempts to tell a story that was wanted to be told rather than the story that should have been told, the worst example is having Tiamut (the celestial from the Eternals) be the focal point of the story and action at times when it shouldn’t have been.
The same fate also falls on the main villain of the film. He is so cunning, manipulative, and seems impossible to stop a the beginning, being very well written, but by the end, because of the distractions and fumblings of the story, the eventual ramifications of the villain’s actions seem inconsequential and make the setups and the great writing at the beginning feel quite wasted and lackluster.
The Bad: The CGI at times was the only bad part of the movie to me. Most of the visuals were quite fine, but at the end of the movie it became apparent that there were a ton of shots that were just in front of a green screen. It was quite distracting at times, but it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before in a superhero movie.
Overall: This feels like a Marvel movie from Phase 1, and I was very entertained while watching this. It had a flying Captain America, and the action is everything I wished it could have been. While I really wish the plot could have been better executed and the Villain been more adequately used. this movie exceeded my expectations on how it turned out. Every time I think about it I think about the fun I had while watching it rather than the issues I had with it. If you’ve liked Anthony Mackie as the Falcon, you’ll love him as Captain America.
Rating: 4/5
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