cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18397465
It’s been six years since Steve Rodgers handed over Captain America reigns to Sam Wilson, Aka The Falcon, in “Avengers: Endgame.” Wilson (Anthony Mackie) will be the lead of Julius Onah’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” A trailer was released in the summer.
Two different cuts of the film test screened last week, and plot details for one of the cuts have leaked online. The person who attended didn’t seem to like the movie all that much.
Based on the folks I’ve spoken to, those who attended were either given a red or green bracelet and were split up into two different theaters. The reactions I’ve heard have not been very kind to this movie, which is being described as “inessential” and “flat.”
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Reshoots on ‘Brave New World’ happened in August. This could explain why two different cuts were shown. Last year, after receiving negative test scores in another screening, and Marvel themselves underwhelmed by an early cut they saw of the film, ‘Brave New World’ was delayed to February 2025. Extensive reshoots were called, with “three major action sequences” having been filmed, between May and August 2024 in Atlanta.
‘Brave New World’ had originally wrapped filming in June 2023, and was set for a July 2024 release date, but it’s now turned into this monstrous mess for Marvel. You just don’t push a movie this big out of your calendar, and then decide to dump it in February, unless major trouble is brewing.
Last December, Matthew Orton was hired by Marvel to pen “additional scenes and material”. Orton’s work was shot during this summer’s reshoots. They’ve also added new characters to the story. Will audiences even show up to a Captain America movie that doesn’t star Chris Evans?
I mentally checked out of the MCU after Endgame. The only Marvel content I’ve seen beyond that is Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
I watch pretty much all of it still. Eventually. Sometimes months later. I think Echo is the only one I haven’t finished, but I saw several of them months late.
It’s mostly fine, but that’s about as far as I’d go. Among other issues, Multiverses dangle the specter of irrelevance in front of every story. I know it’s not always there in the script, but the meta commentary that everyone is replaceable and any event can be undone unavoidably reduces the stakes and my investment in characters. If they bother to make a point of concluding the “multiverse” arc, it needs to be something that promises to make the storytelling crutch mechanic of crossing between them much harder to invoke in the future. It can be utter handwavium, but I need that promise from the Marvel Industrial Complex to me as an audience member.
Then more generally, the Marvel “house style” is either so overwhelming that it ends up the equivalent of pleasant but low-stakes episodic TV from the before-times with 23 episodes per season, or else it’s shoehorned into a halfhearted attempt to let a director or showrunner do their thing and reduces the effectiveness of both. There was good TV then, and there is good Marvel now, but the specialness has worn off.
Among other issues, Multiverses dangle the specter of irrelevance in front of every story. I know it’s not always there in the script, but the meta commentary that everyone is replaceable and any event can be undone unavoidably reduces the stakes and my investment in characters.
I hear this a lot, but except in “What If…” for one character, they’ve never even hinted at doing this. I understand that it’s always hanging there, but is that a real concern or an imaginary one?
Tony invented time travel and it’s clear by the end of Endgame they can use it whenever. However no one ever says that lowers the stakes even though clearly everything can be fixed by that too.
Every story could just be solved by having Thor and/or Captain Marvel show up. They’re invincible. They have super strong powers. And yet we’re understanding when they don’t show up and solve everything.
Again I understand the concern, but I feel like they are imagined and not what is being told.
crossing between them much harder to invoke in the future.
I can assure you after Secret Wars that will be the case.
Wasn’t the time travel pretty clearly multiversal in nature, though? They wouldn’t be able to change their own past, only create a different future for another universe.
This was also going to be my response since I see this “anyone can come back” mentioned often, because of the Multiverse. Thanos: Dead, Tony Stark: Dead, Cap: Gone, Black Widow: Dead, HawkEye: likely retiring. The only two that came back were Gamora, because James Gunn had a story to finish, and Loki, which resulted in one of my favorite shows and was mostly isolated. Even without the “multiverse” aspect of it, heroes can come back from the dead in many ways.
Hell, they could easily have done a “Nomad” show of Cap and his adventures with Peggy in the new timeline in the past, but they opted not to do that.
I liked Loki (esp the season 2 ending) but I can understand why others didn’t. It’s slow and attempting to be more cerebral than it really is. But IMO it’s still far better than all the films. I watched the whole Antman quantumania movie and I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about.
You’re missing surprisingly little.
IW + Endgame were such a high note to end on, they basically killed the series because everything else dies in comparison.
Gotg was fun, and well executed, but otherwise there’s basically been nothing, except Loki which was excellent, but then Deadpool and wolverine tried and fell over themselves in my book.
After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
I could not be less interested.
Harrison Ford, or at least his cumulative body of work, is a goddamned national treasure, but the man is 82. Stop throwing money at him and encouraging him to leave Wyoming to do boring things. Besides, he might try to fly himself, and we as a country don’t need that kind of stress.
Anyway, it’s so unrealistic. Why would America ever elect an octogenarian president?!?!?!
Harrison Ford claimed that he lives down the street from Conan O’Brien, on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend. That and the Jon Stewart episodes are hilarious.
Oh boy, a secret global plot… the entire world in danger… Sounds so refreshing…
The Falcon is an alright character, but he’s too much of an asshole to take him seriously as Capt America.
What would make you interested?
Or specifically which part do you find uninteresting?
T’Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country’s past.
That’s the plot line of Black Panther.
Political involvement in the Avengers’ affairs causes a rift between Captain America and Iron Man.
That’s Captain America: Civil War.
What are you expecting to read?
If the movie doesn’t end with him assembling a new team of Avengers out of Marvel’s most popular characters (including a mysteriously resurrected Wanda — no explanation needed yet) to help him defeat the bad guy, they’re wasting their time.
And all the new Avengers need to say that they’re only joining the team because of their person respect for Sam Wilson. That makes Sam important, and leans into his greatest strength, which is being a nice guy.
That’s a great point. Cap was important because he meant something to everyone, given his WW2 hero status. Sam is just a guy, nothing that makes him fill that role in any newer group. If they want to maintain the importance of the character in the film world, they need to fix that.
Anthony Mackie sucked so bad in Altered Carbon S2 that I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy anything he’s in again.
I don’t really blame him for that… I blame the book being better, and everyone on set clearly knowing it.
Also that he was basically given the job of doing an impression of another actor doing a character rather than being able to do something unique. Joel Kinnaman has an intensity that seems like it would be very hard to imitate.
First, he didn’t try.
Second, he didn’t have to, we wouldn’t have cared.
The guy couldn’t have been less in the moment if he spent the whole season on his phone, he kept trying to dramatic act his way through scifi, that doesn’t work, you need to relax and go with it, otherwise you just sound like an angsty asshole getting frustrated with your blue screen.
So straight to streaming then?
