Why I Never Pay for Marvel Movies (And Why This One Made Me Reconsider) **SPOILER FREE**

Feb 13 – “Never see a Marvel movie unless it’s free.” That’s a personal rule I established for myself a few years ago after watching another disappointing flop of a film - Antman: Quantumania.

This year I’ve seen three of them (all for free). First was a rewatch of Avengers: Endgame dubbed in Japanese while I shadowed the speech – no subs – on a flight back from Hawaii.

Second and the third I saw on the same day – yesterday.

A lengthy car repair wait allowed me to watch the now decade old (hard to believe) Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Later that evening, there was a rare advanced screening on base of Captain America: Brave New World (CA: BNW). The movie is due to release tomorrow.

BNW is the best Marvel film I’ve seen since Avengers: Endgame.

I shared these thoughts and more with the Disney rep following the movie.

It was good because it acknowledged that Sam Wilson’s Captain America is not Steve Roger’s.

He has a more versatile moveset, greater agility and can (obviously) fly. But he lacks the raw physical strength and fighting prowess that made Steve a formidable match for anyone he stood against. (Some of the action sequences suffer from a sluggishness because of this.)

He’s Black. This is an important part of his character and one of the many reasons it resonated with me well.

CA: BNW “goes there” as it pits Wilson’s Cap against enemies many Black men know well: the government, silent yet ever present racial judgement, and the overwhelming need to always be on your “A” game to keep your seat at the table, especially in high social settings. The movie explicitly states this, but does it in a way that makes it relevant for Sam’s first solo run in the suit.

This is another thing the movie did well. Not sure if it’s the overall cultural vibe shift or not, but gone is Marvel’s heavy handed “woke” lecturing or shameless displays of “marginalized” minorities or hollow social justice grandstanding. It’s a quieter depiction (at least by previous Marvel standards) of a reality I’ve experienced throughout my life, that I found refreshing. It was just a movie again without the heavy messaging.

Sam Wilson is not Steve Rogers. My fated rewatch of CA: WS yesterday reminded me.

Steve uses the front door, Sam takes the long way around back.

Steve says it’s true, he’s believed. Sam receives upfront skepticism until proven right.

The movie handled this well.

Because it takes a while to reveal the who (and what) the real threat is, this movie can be slow toward the middle. I didn’t mind though. It was necessary to ground Wilson’s CA in a believable way, while establishing an entirely new cast of characters, linking plot points from two decades worth of movies, and charting a future course for the franchise - the task was big and the movie executed admirably.

There were also smaller aspects of it that marked a conscious shift from the awful post-Endgame/COVID era films.

One was the choice of the adversarial country (which is a major plot point. I won’t spoil it, since the movie isn’t out yet, but it’s a bold move from a studio that’s played it safe (formulaic) for the last 5 years.

The movie is very timely. References to Trump’s America, Trump himself, effects of AI and control of it, and “everything is politics” culture, added layers of depth that made it much more interesting than most Marvel CGI flashfests.

Even with all the above mentioned, don’t get me wrong, this is still a Marvel movie with the standard loadout: superhero move showcase, big blowout battle at the end, the “I-could-kill-you-instantly-but-I-won’t-because-that-would-be-a-boring-short-and-disappointing-movie-if-I-did scenes”, some (but significantly less) snark humor, nostalgia nods, etc.

But I’d say all of these things have been balanced and tweaked. The result? A movie that (for me) marks an upward inflection for the studio after a nosedive in revenue, popularity, and cultural significance since the start of the decade.

This is not 2014. Superhero movies are no longer in their heyday. Marvel understood this and delivered a solid movie that (while not terribly innovative) points the franchise in a new positive direction, proving that anyone can change and anything can happen in this brave new world.