It’s been six years since Steve Rodgers handed over Captain America reigns to Sam Wilson, Aka The Falcon, in “Avengers: Endgame.” Wilson (Anthony Mackie) will be the lead of Julius Onah’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” A trailer was released in the summer.
Two different cuts of the film test screened last week, and plot details for one of the cuts have leaked online. The person who attended didn’t seem to like the movie all that much.
Based on the folks I’ve spoken to, those who attended were either given a red or green bracelet and were split up into two different theaters. The reactions I’ve heard have not been very kind to this movie, which is being described as “inessential” and “flat.”
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Reshoots on ‘Brave New World’ happened in August. This could explain why two different cuts were shown. Last year, after receiving negative test scores in another screening, and Marvel themselves underwhelmed by an early cut they saw of the film, ‘Brave New World’ was delayed to February 2025. Extensive reshoots were called, with “three major action sequences” having been filmed, between May and August 2024 in Atlanta.
‘Brave New World’ had originally wrapped filming in June 2023, and was set for a July 2024 release date, but it’s now turned into this monstrous mess for Marvel. You just don’t push a movie this big out of your calendar, and then decide to dump it in February, unless major trouble is brewing.
Last December, Matthew Orton was hired by Marvel to pen “additional scenes and material”. Orton’s work was shot during this summer’s reshoots. They’ve also added new characters to the story. Will audiences even show up to a Captain America movie that doesn’t star Chris Evans?
They’re trying to do the impossible with this character. He is critical of the actions of the in-world corrupt establishment but also unquestioningly loyal to it. The climax of his last story was asking a bunch of senators who canonically caused a human rights emergency to try harder. He literally just asked them to try harder. That was the resolution. Also the people who were fighting for the victims of the human rights emergency that the MCU American senate canonically caused were all killed because boot-licking is framed as the “correct” way to address systemic issues. More than any other IP, I think this one is the US military’s favorite for recruiting purposes.
It’s pretty hard to pitch the Flag Smashers as victims or the “good guys”.
The real problem with the aftermath of The Snap is that it basically became an in-universe analogue for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but there’s still no easy answer in the MCU counterpart so it’s just frustrating because it can’t be resolved without hurting someone.
Yeah, like most MCU villains they started committing random acts of violence as their leader “goes bad.” The in-universe MCU Senate canonically already went bad. The solution proposed by the story was to kill the flag smashers and ask the people who (I keep repeating this) are canonically responsible for the problem due to their negligence, are asked to “do better.”
IDK I got the idea that a lot of people in the Flag Smasher’s inner circle were beginning to question their leaders’ violent decisions, I feel like the show was definitely portraying the leader as worse that the members, even though they were all in the wrong here
lol the only person canonically responsible is Thanos