‘Captain America: Brave New World’ is a disappointing, disjointed MCU entry

Happy Valentine’s Day and welcome to the Friday edition of Popculturology. Chocolates are great, but I’d love a world where Elon Musk and his buddies aren’t set on destroying Wikipedia — one of the greatest achievements of humanity’s online era.

Captain America: Brave New World has little to say

This year was supposed to be the year that the MCU found its footing again. After going light in 2024 with only Deadpool & Wolverine hitting theaters, the MCU was going to storm back in 2025, unleashing Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Captain America: Brave New World is not a good foundation for that plan.

I caught Brave New World — which is the fourth Captain America movie and 35th entry in the MCU — on Thursday night. I went into the theater hoping to see a film that showed that Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios had gotten things back on track. I left wondering why the studio had released a sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk with Anthony Mackie’s Captain America squished into it seventeen years after that film had premiered.