With Deadpool & Wolverine and Comic Con just around the corner—Deadpool opens on Comic Con weekend—Marvel is ramping up for their latest round of major marketing, which means we’re getting a first look at Captain America: Brave New World, aka the one without Chris Evans.
Anthony Mackie is stepping up as the new Cap, and the question is not only can he carry a major franchise, but can he very specifically carry THIS franchise, which is so heavily associated with Chris Evans, who became beloved for playing the role of Captain America. The trailer at least acknowledges this, with Harrison Ford growling, “You’re not Steve Rogers,” a reminder to Sam the character but also we the audience that we’re dealing with a new Cap.
As for this trailer, it looks…fine. I WANT to be blown away, because SO much is riding on this movie, far beyond Marvel’s issues. It’s a test for Anthony Mackie, yes, but also, after some of the f-cksh-t we’ve seen recently regarding the rollback of more inclusive films, I’m rooting for Mackie as the new Cap to remind Hollywood that hey, remember, Black movies DO sell. Why are we pretending we don’t all know this—just this year, Bob Marley: One Love pulled in $179 million despite middling reviews—just because some of the worst people started throwing around “DEI” like it’s a curse? It’s just the most cliché thing in the world, that the SECOND the film industry hit a bump—okay, two bumps—in the economic road, the first thing they do is start backing down on more inclusive projects, despite how well films like Black Panther and its sequel, and more recently Bad Boys: Ride or Die, have done.
There’s also the reshoots of it all, though. This film has undergone reshoots just recently, so the trailer might be a little bit hobbled by how much footage is available. For instance, they only just manage to squeeze in a couple brief looks at Giancarlo Esposito, who is playing a new villain inserted into the film via reshoots, as opposed to Harrison Ford, who’s been around since day one, so there’s a lot more of him in the trailer. (I do love the bare minimum effort made to acknowledge Ford taking over the role of Thunderbolt Ross from William Hurt.) They’re also playing fast and loose with the Red Hulk, the figure glimpsed at the end of the trailer, but I assume that’s because they only have so much of the CG rendering done and given the very legitimate complaints about the quality of the VFX in recent Marvel movies, they’re not going to put anything half-finished on screen for us to judge.
Nerds will be stoked to see confirmation that Red Hulk is, in fact, in this film, though, as has long been speculated. I won’t ruin the twist for you about who is under the red skin, but I do wonder how long they can keep that secret, or if they’ll even try. They never really tried to hide that Bucky Barnes was the Winter Soldier back in the day, but I also feel like people aren’t devouring every bit of Marvel news like they were 10 years ago, so they might get away with a reveal this time, for more casual moviegoers, anyway, nerds already know who Red Hulk is. In this trailer, at least, they leave his head/face offscreen to hide his identity.
There are also brief glimpses of Danny Ramirez as the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres, who was one of the highlights in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He’s just so delightful, I look forward to seeing more of him. And we get to see a very little bit of Shira Haas as Israeli superhero, Sabra, and yikes, what a tough moment to introduce an Israeli superhero. Also, generally, I’m not sure how enthusiastic people will be for Captain America to sign on the dotted line with the US government. Captain America: Civil War was built on the idea that Steve Rogers fundamentally didn’t want to do that, and though Sam asks the same question Steve did—“What happens if we don’t agree?”—it looks like Sam is, at least, going to give it a whirl. I somehow doubt audiences will be into that unless it all ends with Sam walking away just as Steve did.
As both Comic Con and D23 are coming up in the next few weeks, I am sure we’ll be seeing more from Brave New World. I hope the more we see from this film, the more exciting it becomes, because there really is so much riding on it beyond the bottom line of a movie studio. I want this to work for Anthony Mackie, and for Danny Ramirez, though getting everyone on board with a new Captain America feels like such a tall order right now, not even getting into how we’ll all be feeling after the election. Cap was a tough sell fifteen years ago, but Marvel and Chris Evans made us love him once. Can Marvel and Anthony Mackie do it again?
