- UK release: February 2025
- Director: Julius Onah · Writers: Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, Peter Glanz
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Superhero political action thriller · Runtime: 118 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Sam Wilson / Captain America; Harrison Ford (Blade Runner, Indiana Jones) as President Thaddeus Ross; Danny Ramirez (Top Gun: Maverick) as Joaquin Torres; Shira Haas (Unorthodox) as Ruth Bat-Seraph; Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian) as Sidewinder
- IMDb: 5.7 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 50% critics / 80% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
The Captain America films have always been the spine of the Marvel project rather than its loudest noise. The Winter Soldier in particular remains the best thing the studio has made, a 1970s paranoia thriller in a superhero costume, and Civil War came close. So a fourth entry arrives carrying two burdens at once: the franchise’s strongest reputation, and the awkward fact that the man inside the suit has changed. Steve Rogers handed Sam Wilson the shield at the end of Endgame, and Brave New World is the film that has to make a Captain America with no super-soldier serum, no enhanced strength, and a pair of wings stand on his own. That it largely succeeds, against a notably hostile reception, is the surprise here.
The setup
Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is the new Captain America, and the United States has a new president in Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), the career hardliner who spent the early MCU hunting the Hulk and is now trying to govern. An international incident at a state function pulls Sam into something larger: a conspiracy turning on mind control, a contested global resource, and a hand reaching back into Ross’s own past. Sam has the shield, his new field partner Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), and very little of the raw power his predecessor took for granted, which is rather the point. He has to out-think the threat rather than out-punch it.
The film keeps its biggest cards face down, and I will leave them there. What matters at the outset is that this is built as a political thriller first and a punch-up second, closer in ambition to The Winter Soldier than to the cosmic Marvel of recent years.
The cast
Mackie is the reason the film holds. He has played Sam Wilson since 2014, and he understands that this Captain America is defined by responsibility he did not ask for and cannot meet with strength alone. He plays it with sincerity rather than swagger, a man constantly aware that he is filling a space shaped for someone else. It is a warmer, more uncertain lead than Chris Evans gave, and it suits a film about whether the symbol can outlive the original.
Harrison Ford is the other anchor. Stepping into the late William Hurt’s role, he brings the weariness of a man who has spent decades being the obstacle and now has to be the authority, and he commits to the part’s later demands with more conviction than the material strictly earns. Danny Ramirez gives Torres an easy, likeable energy as the partner, while Giancarlo Esposito, dropped in as the mercenary Sidewinder, does his usual trick of making a thin role feel as if it knows a secret. Shira Haas is underused as security operative Ruth Bat-Seraph, a casualty of a plot with too many moving parts.
The craft
Julius Onah, whose Luce was a sharp chamber piece, directs cleanly when the film stays on the ground. The hand-to-hand work and the conspiracy mechanics are where it lives, and Sam’s wing-and-shield fighting style is shot with enough clarity to follow, which is not something every Marvel film can claim. Laura Karpman’s score does steady, unshowy work under it.
The seams show in the larger set pieces. This is a film that was reworked heavily before release, and you can feel it: some of the digital effects in the big third-act spectacle are noticeably unfinished, and the plotting carries the strain of a story rebuilt more than once, with subplots that arrive and leave without quite landing. At 118 minutes it is tight by modern blockbuster standards, and that discipline helps, but you can sense the longer, messier film underneath the cut that reached cinemas.
How it stacks up
The comparison everyone reaches for is The Winter Soldier, and that is the wrong yardstick to beat it with, because almost nothing the studio has made survives it. Brave New World is plainly the lesser film: less surprising, less clean, less sure of its own paranoia. Against that, it is a more focused and more grown-up piece of work than the studio’s recent multiverse sprawl, and it does something The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on television only gestured at, which is take Sam Wilson seriously as the lead of a feature. As a political-conspiracy Marvel film it sits in the middle of the pack: below the two Russo brothers peaks, comfortably above the weaker recent entries.
Critics versus the rest of us
The split here is stark. Critics have landed around 50%, some of the roughest notices the franchise has had, with the visible reshoots, the crowded plot and the unfinished effects all taking fire. Audiences are at 80%, a thirty-point gap. I come down nearer the audience. The critical case is fair on its particulars, the effects are patchy and the story is overstuffed, but it undersells what works: a genuinely engaged lead performance, a thriller plot that mostly holds together, and a sincerity that the franchise had been mislaying. It is being marked against the best Captain America film rather than judged as the solid, watchable one it actually is.
Verdict
This is a film I expected to enjoy and did, more than its reputation suggested I would. It is not top-tier Marvel and it never threatens The Winter Soldier, but it is a grounded, character-led action thriller with a lead worth following and a plot that respects the audience’s attention. The effects wobble and the story is busier than it needs to be. None of that stops it being the kind of entry I would happily put on again on a wet Sunday, which for a mid-franchise sequel is no small thing. The scores are harsher than the experience. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the film became one of the lower-grossing recent MCU entries and did little to lift the franchise’s wobbling fortunes, and its reputation has settled roughly where the original split left it, dismissed by critics, defended by a good chunk of the audience. It is now available to buy and rent on digital and disc, and streams on Disney+.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate violence, bloody images, language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Scenes include gunfights, fistfights, use of bladed and improvised weapons, explosions, and use of fantastical powers. Action scenes occasional include brief bloody images, implied bone breaks, and injury detail. A person under mind control takes their own life.
Threat and horror: There are extended sequences of action threat, in which people are caught in explosions, collapsing buildings, vehicle crashes and gunfire. A man mutates into a large monster.
Language: There is use of moderate bad language (‘son of a bitch’) and milder terms including ‘shit’, ‘ass’, ‘bastard’, ‘screw’, ‘damn’, ‘hell’, ‘God’, ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’.
Drugs: There are occasional references to a fantastical pill.
Injury detail: A man is seen in an operating theatre receiving treatment to burn wounds, and there is occasional sight of blood in the aftermath of violence.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
