SPOILER REVIEW: Captain America: Brave New World - Top 3 Things Mike Liked and Didn’t Like

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, and this is the spoiler review of Captain America Brave New World. With every new Marvel movie that comes out, specifically ones that I have issues with, it's usually rooted in the ending. And I don't like to talk about endings when I do my full reviews, aside from how I feel if it's good or bad. But I wanted to get into this one because there are a lot of conflicting feelings about it. Some people really love this movie, some people really hated it. I found it entertaining, but overall, when it comes to what the MCU is right now, didn't really feel like it moved the needle. But I think when I did my spoiler free review, it sounded like I focused a lot on the negative, so I wanted to address it here and I'm gonna do three things I liked about it and three things I didn't like about it, So I go positive and negative. Because I didn't hate the movie. I just felt betrayed by the trailer that gave it this cool spy thriller fee And it was really that first trailer that I had a different opinion on it because I wasn't that excited about it. I thought the Disney Plus show was okay, and moving forward in the MCU, it just kind of feels like we're still dealing with the scraps and I just want to focus on the new I'd rather focus on the new Avengers than the people who have been around for a while. But that's neither here nor there. The movie is out, it's happened. It did pretty well at the box office. I think it'll continue to do well. So let's get into this spoiler review first. We'll do the positive. Three things I liked First, his buddies and I didn't get to talk about my dude at all in my spoiler free review. But Danny Ramirez a Joaquin Thoris was really good. I enjoyed him. It's also cool seeing somebody with brown skin who looks like me is also relatively the same age as me, be the new sidekick, be the new Falcon. I thought he did a really good job in it, even though I felt his character overall was a little bit one dimensional, Like they gave him some lines here and there that I thought were pretty pretty good. He had some heroic moments specifically whenever he basically sacrificed himself whatever trying to take down these planes to stop this attack. That was really the only emotional part of the movie. And for him to get the more emotional part, not that it was super emotional, because he gets injured, he ends up in the hospital. That image of his face masks kind of beat up and you see him just laying there lifeless, that was the most emotional part for me. And I feel like in a movie that is Captain America, the most emotional part should have come from Sam Wilson, and it really wasn't that emotional because you didn't really know a whole lot about his character, which I think is kind of some issues here that we're getting into. Is there not really doing a great job at building up a lot of their backstory. They just don't really have the time too. This was a relatively quick MCU movie, right under two hours. But I think overall, for the screen time he had, for the dynamic he had with Sam Wilson, and just being by his side the same way that Sam Wilson was for Captain America aka our old boy Steve Rogers, I thought it was good. I also really liked Carl Lumby as Isaiah Bradley, who, even though he didn't have that much of a backstory, I felt like there was some emotion in his character, even though I think his whole plotline was riddled again with cliches of him being controlled by his phone, by it flashing in his face, him not realizing that he had taken a shot at the president, then took off running and just ended up outside and had no idea how he got there. That ends up going back to prison, and then he's at the Mercy of Sam to clear his name. It just felt like it's something that we kind of seen before. The whole mind control thing has just been used so much in the MCU, going back to Avengers the first one, whenever Loki takes hold of the scientist takes hold of Hawkeye through mind control, and it's like, oh, you shouldn't be doing these things. Yeah, it's all mind control. We've been there before for so that whole plot point wasn't that interesting to me. But again focusing on the positive here, I did like his buddies in the supporting cast in this movie. Number two thing. I like John Carlo Esposito as one of the Villains. He was also a great villain in The Mandalorian. He just has that ara to him. He does it so well, and I think I found his character a better villain than Samuel Stearns, who was originally in the two thousand and eight Incredible Hulk movie. His whole plotline in this was pretty flat, being responsible for the pills that not only saved Thunderbolt Ross's life but also caused him to turn into the Hulk. I feel that John Carlo Esposito's character is going to be a bigger threat later in the MCU. I think he is solid. He's not my favorite villain of all time right now, but I think so far has been one of the most memorable villains. And that's not saying a whole lot. But I did like his demeanor. I did like his fight with Sam Wilson when he gets stabbed after first trying to take them out by throwing a bomb in his truck. That whole action sequence was actually pretty decent. I think again. To me, I used to feel emerged in the action scenes in Captain America movies and there was very little set design in one of the best action sequences being that one in this movie where it goes from him throwing the bomb into that brand new truck that exploded before it got its little commercial in there, and then they just kind of moved to this abandoned set piece with a few random things in like this grassy not even a full field, but like sectioned off, little empty house, scrapyard thing, and that was it. It just looked very empty to me, like they were just in a lot in Georgia. All right, let's put this thing together, roll camera, all right, we're out of here. I mean, they used to have full on highways that they would have these chase scenes and explosion scenes, to have Captain America jumping off one highway to get down to another car, and this was just very little of that. It felt very cheap for a movie that cost over two hundred million dollars to make. Where did this budget go? But that's number two. Number three. I did like that they brought back lived Tyler as Betty, kind of bringing full circle the Incredible Hulk two thousand and eight movie here, And that was the one cameo I wasn't really expecting going into it, probably because I didn't know how much of The Incredible Hulk that they were actually going to include in this movie. So I thought that was a good moment, Much like whenever in Thor they brought back Natalie Portman. I was glad to see liv Tyler returned and hopefully she made some pretty good money on that cameo. All right, but now let's get into the three things I didn't like the major three. Number one thing I just couldn't stand for was the ending, The fact that Sam Wilson defeated the Red Hulk with his words. The Red Hulk had him by the head, was about to squash him like a bug. In no way did he have any leverage on defeating the Red Hulk in that moment, and through the power of his words, and not even the strongest of words, all he did was basically remind the person inside of the Red Hulk President Thunderbolt Ross about his daughter Betty, and they're surrounded by these Japanese cherry blossoms, and that's all it took to take the Red Hulk from about to be the one responsible for the death of Sam Wilson to reverting back to Harrison Ford and then everybody surrounds him. He steps down his president and that was it. That was Sam Wilson's big shining moment in the movie. That was the definition of a buzzkill in a movie. Where I love going to Marvel movies because there's always that one big heroic moment, the moment that makes you want to leap out of your chair, the moment that makes the audience scream and excitement. Every good MCU movie needs that. If it doesn't have that, it's not getting above a three. The highest you can go without that moment in a movie in the MCU is a three. This didn't have that, and I'm not just speaking for myself. I always like to feel the energy in the room in the theater. That's why I love going to see movies in theaters. Nobody was excited while watching this movie. You had nobody cheering. I mean I think even in Yeah, of course, in Dead Pulling Wolverine, there were people cheering at moments. I feel that the energy has gone down in this phase in the MCU, but that movie still had those moments. This one didn't really have that because there wasn't that big shining moment. This movie just kind of ended on a whimper and doesn't really set Sam Wilson up to have a heroic story arc in this. So that was my biggest thing that I didn't like my number one from Brave New World. At number two, it was a Hulk sequel without the Incredible Hulk. I thought, maybe, just maybe there would be a cameo with the Green Hulk. I thought there would be no one else who could even put up a fight against him. I was like, Oh, they're tricking us. They're building up all this with Red Hulk and Captain America fighting. At the end of it, Green Hulk is gonna come out. Bruce Banner's gonna show up and take them on, maybe even Ed Norton's Green Hulk. That would have been awesome. That would have brought everything together. But there was no Green Hulk, and I guess I should have known. Because Universal still has the rights to standalone Hulk movies. That's why we haven't had one since two thousand and eight. However, Marvel still controls the characters' appearances and other MCU movies, so he can be in team up movies. That's why he can appear in movies like Avengers, thor Ragnarok. I don't know exactly why this one doesn't qualify though. But that is why we haven't had a solo Hulk movie is because that'll only happen if Universal makes it, and I doubt they're gonna make it, just because I don't feel like there's money in that anymore. That's why we've had the Hulk in the She Hulk Disney Plus series, but why we couldn't make a whole sequel here. So instead we used all the parts from that movie and put him into this Captain America movie. And I think it's because there is a fan base for that two thousand and eight movie. I'm a part of it. I love that movie, and maybe Marvel thought that we could get away with taking what people loved about that and give them just enough to make people excited about it in this state. And I believe that without the Green Hulk, it just isn't the same. So the fact that there was no surprise cameo, the only cameo we got aside from liv Tyler was Bucky and Bucky's about it being the Thunderbolts and his character made no sense. He's like running for to be a senator or something in government. I was just like, why are we showing him like Why do we need him. Why isn't he helping Sam fight? I don't care what he's running for. He's an Avenger. You should be here to save the world. But that was number two, the fact that we didn't get Green Hulk at all, and at number three third thing I didn't like about this movie. It just doesn't set up Sam for a good trilogy. And it's interesting here because his character is at a bit of a disadvantage With every other major standalone Marvel character. For the most part, they've all had their standalone movie. Even Black Widow had her own standalone movie. Say what you want about that movie. I enjoyed it at the time, but if you look back, Thor of course had his origin story, got his trilogy. Same with Captain America, Iron Man, Spider Man later, even though they handled it a bit differently in the MCU. Spider Man would be the best example of he didn't really have a traditional origin story movie. But I think that's primarily because we've already had that so many times in film. They didn't want to retread on that. They just brought us into Homecoming, said you have your superpowers, we don't need to show you being bit by a spider. Let's just hit their ground running and go. And I think us as the audience were okay with that because we had seen it time and time again. Didn't need to experience that anymore. Or with Anthony Mackie as the Falcon his first movie being back in twenty fourteen Captain America The Winter Soldier, we haven't really had a chance to learn a whole lot about him as a person. What are the things he is fighting for? What are the things we haven't really got to know a whole lot about him as a person, as a character, what makes him tick? What is he like? What doesn't he like? What is the root of him wanting to be a hero? What are his flaws? He has always just been supporting cast, sidekick for lack of a better term, So we haven't really had his origin story us getting to know him. And now he's thrown into this first movie and we still don't have that. We still don't really know his values. The only thing we really know is that he struggles with not feeling like a hero because he hasn't taken the serum. He doesn't feel like. Captain Erica gets into the whole thing of can you be a superhero without superpowers, and he is trying to I guess, be a beacon for people and a motivation for people, like, oh, you don't need to have all that to inspire people. I feel like that was kind of just thrown in there. But this movie doesn't really set up his character arc of him now being Captain America going into the second film. If he gets a second stand alone movie, I don't really see a sequel or trilogy playing out of it all feeling like one cohesive story. Instead of that, it really just feels like it's setting up Avengers Doomsday and then of course building up to Avengers Secret Wars. The post credit scene alluded to both of those things, at least to doomsday. Whenever you have Stern, the villain in this movie, giving them this warning, all you heroes protecting this world, do you think that you're the only ones? You think this is the only world? We'll see what happens when you have to protect this place from the others. So apparently they're gonna have to team up, maybe against some other heroes, some villains from another dimension. Again, we're living in the multiverse here, and that felt like a very empty threat to me. It's something that I guess the Falcon and now Captain America Sam Wilson wasn't aware of. So maybe it was supposed to be like a big revelation, like, oh now he is aware of the multiverse. But as far as post credit scenes go, that one was pretty weak. Ah crap. I think I went too hard on the negative again, so I'll give one more positive. I actually think the vfx on Red Hulk were pretty good. The motion capture with Harrison Ford and you can actually see his face, which is something they first implemented with Mark Ruffalo. Whenever Ed Norton changed into the Green Hulk, he didn't retain any of his facial features, and they thought, well, let's make it look more like the actual actor playing them to kind of connect the two. And that did really great with Mark Ruffalo's version of the Hulk, and they implement to that now with Harrison Ford turning into the Red Hulk still kind of looks like him, has like the hairy chest. I thought was a good touch. So overall, I did think the Red Hulk looked really good. The action was what I wanted out of it. It just wasn't enough. Will they bring him back I hope so out of anything that was established in this movie. Hopefully the Red Hulk is just a thing now and they can utilize him in fighting whatever they're gonna fight next. It's just funny to me that I think at one point Harrison Ford was so against doing a Marvel movie, But as soon as you drop a pile of money in his face, he'll put on that motion capture suit and look like a complete idiot because the money makes you do stupid things that make you look ridiculous. That is the job of an actor. That is my spoiler review. Thank you for listening, thank you for being here, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.