A Bridge Too Far: Captain America: Brave New World (2025) Review

Director: Julius Onah

Notable Cast: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Tim Blake Nelson, Carl Lumbly, Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, Xosha Roquemore, Johannes Haukur Johannesson

 

Although many fans seem to have been burned by the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) at this point, the series' transition in the wake of waning audience interest and a relatively public meltdown over its future makes the current slate perhaps more fascinating than the last half-decade. Attempting to soft reboot the MCU with a new Captain America film certainly seems like gold on paper, but the fourth film in this series within the grander franchise is far more fascinating in the larger context than “good” as a film.

 

Captain America: Brave New World is heavily focused on bridging the past and the future. Even the title, although perhaps hard to swallow when compared to the iconic book that shares it, seems to indicate a strange relationship between what has happened before and where it wants to be.  That’s not to say that every MCU film hasn’t been aggressively obsessed with callbacks and flashforwards, but the relationship here in Brave New World is one of the most unusual.

 

In the wake of Avengers: Endgame, the world changed. That applies to both the film itself and the fictionalized reality its characters inhabit. There was no more Captain America. Or Chris Evans. No more Iron Man. Or Robert Downey Jr. (…at the time of its release). Disney was struggling to find their voice and plot with new heroes, despite some genuine successes in films like Shang-Chi or misfires like The Eternals. The meteoric descent of Jonathon Majors left the new era without its Kang the Conqueror and a gap for a new major villain. And while the series was retooled, pulling away from a variety of increasingly ignored Disney+ shows, they needed a breather.

 

That’s where Captain America: Brave New World falls into place.

 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Notable Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto, David Dastmalchian, Barkhad Abdi, Hiam Abbass, Wood Harris

The original Blade Runner has reached an almost God like status as a piece of cult cinema over the last 30 years. It was built on the recipe of such. It’s loosely based on a Philip K. Dick story, it’s a film meant to be outlandishly detail oriented, it’s science fiction that asks big questions and never answers them, and it has multiple cuts that fans can pick apart for its details and philosophical elements. For these things, it feeds into its own influential status in the science fiction genre along with being somewhat abrasive in its slow, stylish approach that often plays against the usual tropes which also makes it wildly divisive among cinephiles. It’s either worshipped or treated with disdain. Which gives it the ultimate cult status. When it was first announced that the sequel, ultimately titled Blade Runner 2049, would actually go forward with some of the hottest talent in the industry in director Denis Villeneuve and star Ryan Gosling, it was almost not believable. Could they pull off a film that retains the tone and style of the original (a divisive aspect of the film) to appease the long time fans, but find a way to advance the story 30 years after the fact? Oddly enough, the answer is very much yes to both of those. Not only does Blade Runner 2049 accomplish the feat of continuing the story without essentially remaking it, but it might even be more ambitious in its style and approach than the original. It’s also a film that may be even more divisive for the absolutely intense style and slow burn approach it uses, so like the original, it is not going to be for everyone.