A new Marvel movie is out so of course, I saw it. I see all of them. Captain America Brave New World, (henceforth to be abbreviated as: CABNW) is the fourth Captain American movie, but the first one featuring Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as Captain America. It’s really a sequel to The Incredible Hulk. MCU fans will like it because it does provide a little bit of continuity from other films like the aforementioned Incredible Hulk, and the Eternals, and from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It doesn’t do much more than that. It’s not an entry-level movie for someone who’s not seen any other MCU movies.

The non-spoiler plot is this: Frequent Avengers and Hulk antagonist, General Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) is now President Ross. He’s trying to enlist all of the world’s major powers to sign a treaty to cooperatively share the newfound resources found on Celestial Islands, which are the portions of the cosmic Celestial being that was petrified at the end of the Eternals movie. His efforts are derailed by an apparent assassination attempt against him. One of the would-be assassins is none other than the Korean War era of Captain America, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) the second person to assume the role of Captain America. The current Captain America, Sam Wilson doesn’t believe Isaiah and the others involved in the attempt were in their right minds and may have been controlled in some way. He and the new Falcon (Danny Ramirez) set out to find who and what was really behind the attempt. All this while President Ross tries to keep the coalition of major powers from falling apart and keep the possibility of a Celestial Islands treaty alive.

The action is good, it explores in greater detail the unique combat capabilities of the Falcon and Captain America flight suits. There’s no cringy CGI moments like in the latest Ant-Man and Wasp movie. The movie does a good job world-building, fleshing out concepts and locations originally seen in other movies, the Celestial Islands being the primary one. Yes, people in the MCU world did finally notice that giant, petrified man who rose from the Indian Ocean. That part is both a good and bad thing about this movie. As mentioned before, it’s not really a good entry point for the new viewer into the MCU. Too much depends on the audience being familiar with other works within the MCU, especially one of the first movies in the MCU cannon, the Incredible Hulk, which is just an OK movie.

My main criticism besides the necessity of some prior familiarity with the franchise, is that the plot wraps up in a rather unsatisfying way. There’s not a feeling of resolution and the ultimate defeat of the primary villain is almost portrayed as an afterthought. Maybe that’s me just being jaded into thinking the villain had one more trick up his sleeve before he’s really and truly defeated, but no, that’s it. Ross’ resolution isn’t much more satisfying. He’s given a motivation for doing what he does, but they really don’t build up the stakes, so there’s not much dramatic tension to be release upon the ending of his portion of the story. The only gratifying resolution deals with the ultimate vindication of Isaiah Bradly.

No real problem with the acting except you’ll want to see more of Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder character. One wonders if any of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

One worry of many fans is that it might go too woke or overtly pandering. Its prequel TV series Falcon and the Winter Soldier suffered from a little too much of this at times. No one wants to feel like their being lectured to. During the entire movie, my wokemeter barely budged. I get the feeling the movie desperately wanted to go there but read the audience and decided against it. There were supposedly a lot of rewrites, and I suspect a big part of that was writing out some element that played as too liberal.

It’s a good move, but didn’t blow me away. It was a good move to see in 3-D as I did, but otherwise, maybe save some money and see it on discount night.