Review
Culture
Film & TV
5 min read

Captain America's impossible task

Brave New World struggles despite some acting heroics.
Captain America crouches expectantly beside his shield
Ready for the next review.
Marvel Studios.

Captain America: Brave New World is the thirty-fifth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and the fourth film focusing on the character of Captain America. It’s also something of a sequel to a passible Marvel TV series. There is so much baggage, so much lore, so much build-up to this film; a production which has the unhappy task of honouring the seventeen years of previous storytelling, setting up plot points that can be explored in future films, and giving us a satisfactory stand-alone cinematic spectacle. I wouldn’t wish such a burden on anyone – an impossible task. 

Brave New World sees Sam Wilson fully inhabiting the role of superhero Captain America, a mantle bestowed on him by his friend and original Captain, super soldier Steve Rogers. Still doubtful of his worthiness and abilities, he seeks to wield the Vibranium Shield with style. He is sent on a mission to retrieve a stolen military secret from a group of mercenaries. He does so – with a few decent action set pieces – and is rewarded with an invitation to the White House.  

The newly elected President, General Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, is seeking to shed his past reputation as a warmonger by negotiating an international peace treaty. A newly discovered resource has the capability of changing the face of medicine, technological innovation, and especially warfare. Every great power covets it, and Ross wants to foster collaboration for the betterment of the planet. The gala event is ruined when Sam’s friend Isaiah Bradley, a super soldier from the Koren War who was wrongly imprisoned, goes all Manchurian Candidate and shoots at the President. 

The peace treaty is in jeopardy. The President’s inner circle is compromised. There are secrets and lies that will not stay buried. There is a shadowy villain operating behind the scenes, determined to destroy the President’s reputation. Only one man can fight for truth, justice, and the American way: Captain America. 

This is as much as I can say without spoiling the entire film. 

Not that it would matter. The film is a bit of a mess.  

Sam is proposed as an underdog (having not actual superpowers, only a suit of armour), but is shown to be essentially indestructible…he literally disables a missile by flying into it headfirst. There is no sense of tension or risk. This is not helped by lacklustre action and some genuinely appalling CGI. The plot is all over the place – a result of some rather obvious reshoots featuring green screen that even the most amateur filmmaker could’ve improved. Most of the secondary storylines peter out. New characters and introduced and given almost no personality or progression. 

The script compensates for this by giving characters long monologues where they deliver clunky plot exposition and background information. This was inevitable. To understand the plot and characters requires one to have been a careful watcher of the previous films and television shows. I was somewhat impressed how the film managed to give a gentle introduction to the casual viewer, but it is very much at the expense of pacing and character development. 

All of this is a great shame, as the performances are rather good. Anthony Mackie has always been a magnetic screen presence and manages to combine both charisma and pathos is an uncharacteristically restrained performance. Tim Blake Nelson enjoys himself as the puppet-master villain, oozing bile and sympathy in equal measure. Every minor friend and villain delivers their lines with real feeling. Bloody hell…even lovable grump Harrison Ford looks like he’s actually trying as President Ross. 

Unfortunately, no amount of charisma can make up for a film that has no sense of itself. The shambles of a plot is matched by the shambles of a theme; a sadness, as there is so much potential. Sam Wilson is one of only a handful of black superheroes, and his friendship with Isaiah Bradley is partly based on their shared experience of race and discrimination in the face of honour and duty. This was introduced in the TV show and could’ve been explored further. Sam’s lack of superpowers could have been explored, had he been put in positions of genuine peril. His sense of inadequacy and overwhelming responsibility are mentioned, only to be quickly dismissed with a pep-talk from a throwaway cameo character. The concepts of conspiracy and disillusionment with authority are hinted at, but they formed the thematic thread of the previous three Captain America films, and when this film does approach them, it is by echoing the better storytelling of previous films. 

There is one plot thread, one theme running through the story, which goes some way to redeeming the film. President Ross is haunted by his past. A patriot, a soldier, and tireless worker for American security, Ross has a past littered with sins and mistakes. His anger, his bullishness, his obstinacy (physically manifested at the end of the film), has left him all alone. His daughter doesn’t trust him, Sam doesn’t trust him, and his international partners don’t trust him. He is seeking to become a better man, working towards cooperation rather than force and violence. However, his past life and secrets continue haunt him and stall his progress at self-improvement. 

In the end, by being open and honest and taking responsibility for his mistakes, Ross does achieve a certain amount of peace. He is able to be the figure of nobility and unity that he longs to be by sacrificing his power and prestige, and truly atoning for his misdeeds. Despite all the problems with the film, this (admittedly underdeveloped) bit of character study kept me engaged. Perhaps it was Harrison Ford’s performance. Perhaps it was because we’re approaching Lent, when Christians make an extra effort to acknowledge their past mistakes and resolve to do better. Whatever it was, it furnished the film with a truly sympathetic and improving theme. I wouldn’t spend money in the cinema, but wouldn’t mind seeing it in the TV guide in the future. 

2.5 stars. 

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Article
Comment
Digital
Film & TV
Masculinity
1 min read

How our social media turns us against ourselves

We treat others differently when our eyes and hearts are forced inwards.
An unhappy father sits next to a scared son in a police interview room.
Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper star in Adolescence.
Netflix.

My wife turned to me this week whilst watching the compelling Netflix drama Adolescence and asked if it was based on a true story. That proves the quality of the acting, script, and storyline. But it also demonstrates the drama’s prophetic nature. Conceived two and a half years ago by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, the perversion of Jamie’s underdeveloped brain and developing masculinity by social media forces has come to reflect real-life extreme violence by young men. With the sentencings of murderers Axel Radakubana and Nicholas Prosper in recent weeks, Jamie’s actions resonate deeply. Adolescence isn’t based on a specific true story, but that doesn’t prevent it from being true. 

What about the role of social media in these narratives? Radakubana and Prosper were radicalised by violent content they had accessed online. With social media, extreme content does well, particularly on sites with no filters on pornography and violence like Reddit and X. We are beginning to discover that content algorithms are not neutral, instead siloing us into echo chambers that are deliberately forming us into better consumers of content, advertising, and objects. Social media harvests our data and sells it on- meaning it cultivates us as the product. 

Yet these manipulations cover over the deepest issue. Social media depersonalises us, preventing us from making genuine human connection and perverting our view of anybody but us. The German philosopher Martin Buber differentiated between two different ways for humans to exist in the world. One was I-It; in a person treats everyone and everything they come into contact with as an ‘It’- something to be used or taken advantage of. 

The other was I-Thou, in which humans approach every other person as a unique being, with resources to offer the I which ensures that a mutual, open, present connection ensues. For Buber, the ultimate ‘Thou’ was God, with whom humans can have the deepest and most transformative connection. 

Social media ensures we see life in ‘I/It’ mode by removing genuine contact with others and providing curated, fake, existences that can never be open to genuine connection with others. Love and affection become commodified; likes, follows, reactions. Our presentation of ourselves becomes more extreme, more perfect, more beautified, to keep mining the commodities. Our eyes and our hearts are forced inwards, and we lose any sense of encountering a ‘Thou’ on the way. We just keep encountering the I: our own thoughts, needs, desires, self-radicalised by our own insular minds. 

This can be our contribution to the conversation on the culture our young people, and particularly young men, are growing up in. To live I/Thou lives.

The great St Augustine back in the fourth century developed the idea of ‘original sin.’ All humans are prone to destruction: it’s in our DNA. The evidence for such an idea is found in every human experience, as the destructor and the one destructed. Left unchecked without genuine connections with others to challenge and expand our hearts, an I/It life digs deeper and deeper into these destructive impulses until our humanity is twisted into violent obsessions. 

The I/It life focuses completely on self-glorification through any means, something amplified by social media. What if we don’t get enough likes, follows, reactions? What if we cannot achieve self-glory through the more banal mediums of attraction, attention, popularity?  

Both Radakubana and Prosper said they wanted to be notorious, attempting to find the most extreme channel for their violence as possible to ensure they are never forgotten. They will not be the last. Jamie continues to deny his crime but in episode three of Adolescence he states that he could do whatever he wanted to Katie, the young girl he murdered. The same impulses come through; others as objects to take advantage of in achieving self-satisfaction. 

The good intentions for human connection that some of those early social media sites were set up for has been largely lost. But the good intention can remain in our own resolution to live an I/Thou life. Putting down social media and picking up connections with humans in the real world by seeing the other with curiosity and openness will ensure that we are constantly turning our heart outwards, embracing genuine relationships, and finding space in our heart to think of the other before ourselves. These are the relationships that will make us more human. 

Ultimately, Buber was right that the ultimate ‘Thou’ connection we can make is with God. The Christian story is full of God’s desire to seek out relationship with humanity, to allow us to find a connection with God that surpasses our own human experience and transforms us to be people that slowly grow away from our destructive instincts.  

What might Christian faith have to contribute to the conversation on the culture young men are growing up in? To live I/Thou lives that are curious, open, and seeking truest divine and human connection. Such a life might even touch those who have been ravaged by social media and ignored by other I/It lives. It might even inspire them to compassion and curiosity that look beyond the content that turns them inwards, to turn outwards and find a healthier future. 

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