My Corner

February 2025

Walking into Captain America: Brave New World felt like entering a familiar cathedral of superhero cinema where stained-glass windows depict heroes locked in eternal combat, yet emerging from the theater left me unsettled, not because of a profound epiphany about justice or freedom, but because of the gnawing sense that Marvel crafted a film that gestures toward radical politics without ever daring to fully inhabit them, leaving behind only the hollow echo of what could have been a powerful meditation on Black heroism and American violence.

Anthony Mackie imbues Sam Wilson with a sincerity so unbreakable that even when President Ross, played with stoic, weathered gravitas by Harrison Ford, extends an invitation dripping with political motives rather than human kindness, Wilson responds with a graciousness that borders on delusion, revealing a truth about his character that resonates far deeper than any Vibranium shield ever could.

Julius Onah, directing with a keen eye for muscular physicality and moral texture, orchestrates action sequences such as the gripping Mexico fight against Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder, which possesses a tactile crunch, each punch delivered and received with such raw finality that audiences cannot help but wince, for these moments remind viewers that real bodies break and bruise, unlike the weightless, swirling pixels of so many past Marvel battles.

Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley delivers the film’s most haunting performance, his presence imbued with decades of suffering and dignity, his eyes carrying centuries of betrayal and sorrow, and the scene where he walks through the White House reception, shoulders taut and breathing shallow, will remain with viewers long after the credits roll, for in that silent passage lies a history of promises broken and reparations unpaid.

Harrison Ford’s portrayal of President Ross provides a portrait of weary authoritarianism tinged with regret, and while the narrative chooses to transform him into Red Hulk in an explosion of impressive visual effects, the emotional scaffolding beneath his character collapses under the weight of narrative shortcuts that prioritize spectacle over complexity, leaving the transformation feeling more like a contractual obligation to franchise continuity than a cathartic culmination of his journey.

Throughout Brave New World, Marvel attempts to balance Tom Clancy thriller aesthetics with aspirational family entertainment, and although the film occasionally succeeds in weaving political intrigue and superhero melodrama into a coherent tapestry, especially in its earliest scenes of clandestine meetings and smoky deliberations, the film ultimately recoils from delivering any lasting critique, choosing instead to comfort viewers with speeches about hope, unity, and forgiveness that ring hollow against the lived reality of the characters portrayed.

One cannot deny that Mackie’s Sam Wilson remains a compelling figure, a man who, unlike Steve Rogers, feels the full weight of history bearing down on his shoulders, yet still chooses to stand upright, shield in hand, prepared to protect a nation that regards him with suspicion and condescension, a choice both admirable and deeply tragic, revealing the fatal optimism of a hero who believes that a country’s soul can be saved merely through earnest representation and moral speeches rather than through dismantling the systems that forged its injustices.

Captain America: Brave New World, therefore, emerges not as a revolutionary text of Black liberation and American reckoning, but as a weary compromise between a studio that wants moral grandeur and an audience that wants familiar comforts, producing a film that feels at once ambitious in intention and timid in execution, leaving viewers with a lingering question that the film itself dares not answer: Who is freedom truly for, and at what cost does one become its protector?