I’ll tell you why Captain America: Brave New World failed. It doesn’t build Sam Wilson up as a character. Look at successful movies about superheroes and superhero-adjacent characters. The Dark Knight, Casino Royale, Avengers: Infinity War, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Matrix. What’s one thing they all have in common? A duality between the hero and the human.
The hero-aspect of these stories is what allows the genre to be big, bold, and dynamic. But it’s the human-aspect that gives viewers an emotional connection to the character and a reason to cheer them on, to care about what’s happening and why. If you only have the human-aspect, then there’s nothing super or heroic—it’s an everyday drama, comedy, etc. And if you only have the hero-aspect, it’s not a story—it’s a spectacle.
Sam Wilson Who?
Now think about Captain America: Brave New World. What’s the extent of Sam Wilson’s social life? We know he’s friends with Joaquín and Isaiah Bradley. But do we see him actually being friends with these people? Every scene with Joaquín is part of a mission or the aftermath of a mission. When they first go to see Isaiah, it’s to train. And when they all go to the White House together, it’s a consequence of the opening mission.
Notice how everything is work-related? Sam’s not trying to relax. He’s not trying to have a hobby. He’s not trying to find love. He’s not doing anything other than being Captain America. Sam Wilson, the person, is an empty shell.
“But, Chris, they developed him more in the TV show.” That doesn’t matter. Doing it once, in a different medium, isn’t some achievement that means the MCU can abandon Sam’s character development. In fact, Falcon and the Winter Soldier only proves the shallowness of Sam’s characterization in Brave New World. Watch both, back to back, and you’ll notice an extreme difference in how much you care about Sam in one versus the other.
Remember the first MCU film, Iron Man? It spends so much time developing Tony Stark. Who he is, what he cares about, what he doesn’t care about, who he is, who he wishes to be, and who others wish he would be. None of that happens in Brave New World. Almost all of the character development goes to Thaddeus Ross. In many ways, Ross is the true protagonist, while Sam’s reduced to a plot device.
Who does the villain care about? Thaddeus Ross. Who has the happy ending? Thaddeus Ross. Who grows over the course of the movie? Thaddeus Ross.
Earning Relationships
Sam gets Isaiah out of jail. That’s awesome. But what’s that really mean for Sam’s life? How important is Isaiah to Sam? Do they hang out every week? Or once a month? Or once a year? We barely know anything about their relationship. They met during Falcon Winter Soldier. Brave New World is two years later. Have they been inseparable since then? It’s the same with Sam and Joaquín. We don’t see them spend time together as friends. The extent of their friendship, the depth of it, is implied rather than shown or developed. “They joke around a lot, so I guess they’re really close.”
Compare that to movies that actually earn the relationships between characters through scenes that bond them. The reason we care about Peter B. Parker and Miles Morales in Into the Spider-Verse is because the movie works so hard to show us Miles needing a role model. There’s a whole subplot about the strained relationship Miles has with his dad. Then another subplot about Miles’s friendship with his shady-but-cool uncle. Then a subplot with Peter Parker that’s cut short when Kingpin kills Parker. In the first 20 minutes, we meet three different role models and see the ups and downs Miles has with each. Peter B. Parker shows up when Miles is the most confused and scared he’s ever been. And the support Parker provides, initially unwillingly, causes a powerful change in the life of the young hero.
Brave New World doesn’t do any of that. It’s all plot with no effort put into Sam Wilson as a character. You could argue that Captain America is a symbol, so doesn’t have a personal life. You may even point to the Steve Rogers Captain America movies. But those just prove my point.
Steve Rogers Vs. Sam Wilson
The first Captain America absolutely has a dichotomy between Steve Rogers and Captain America. And it culminates with Steve making the choice to sacrifice himself, and his potential life with Peggy Carter, for his country. When he wakes up nearly 70 years later, he has to fully embrace being Captain America because there’s nothing left of the life Steve Rogers had in the 1940s.
But that’s exactly why Cap’s so gung-ho about saving Bucky in Winter Soldier. Bucky’s a living, breathing connection to Cap’s past as Steve, the closest thing he had to a brother, the closest thing he has to family. That’s also why he “chooses” Bucky over Tony in Civil War.
And that’s why Cap’s send-off in Endgame was so powerful. He has the option to go back in time and be Steve Rogers and have that life with Peggy. That means something to everyone who had watched the MCU up to that point because the movies spent time developing Cap’s character. We knew both the hero and the human. Which is why we cried tears of joy when he got a happy ending.
Unfortunately, Feige and co have dropped the ball with Sam Wilson. He’s affable. Admirable. Heroic. But they’ve refused to humanize him. Which is why Brave New World is such an empty shell of a film. It’s kind of astounding to me that people at Marvel and Disney keep okaying obviously broken scripts like this, Quantumania, and Love & Thunder. You have all the money in the world, access to the best talent in the world, and this is the result? Something is wrong.
