In an ostensible effort to salvage the long-past-its-prime franchise’s reputation amidst its continuing quality decline, according to Captain America: Brave New World star Anthony Mackie, the upcoming sequel is aiming to provide a “clear reset” for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s currently-messy creative direction.
The Sam Wilson actor offered this insight towards his first full outing as the winged-version of the Star-Spangled Avenger while speaking with Entertainment Weekly‘s Nick Romano following Marvel’s first public screening of footage from the film at the 2024 CinemaCon.
Beginning with his thoughts towards how Brave New World will be less fantastical in its premise than some of Marvel’s more recent films – rather than multiversal variants or universe-ending threats, Sam will instead find himself tasked with reassembling the Avengers whilst also putting down a plot from within the White House to kill newly-elected US President Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (as played by Harrison Ford) – Mackie opined, “It made more sense for it to be more of a grounded espionage action movie as opposed to aliens and airplanes coming through portals and s–t.”
“Even though I’ve been in so many of them and have seen it all now, the opportunity for Sam to really establish himself as a true action star and Avenger comes with this movie,” he added.
Further, Mackie would assert that not only would Brave New World represent a ‘scaling back’ of the Captain America series’ scope, but also mark the start of a new creative direction for the overall MCU.
“This movie is a clear reset,” explained Mackie. “It really reestablishes the idea of what this universe is and what this universe is going to be. I think with these movies, you’re getting a clear, new branding of what Marvel is headed towards the same way they did with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
To this end, Mackie finally noted that the film’s title, Brave New World, was itself a reference to this concept of ‘refreshing’ the franchise.
“The title implies that there’s a new, bigger enemy now; there’s a new frontier that we have to conquer,” he ultimately told Romano. “From Captain America: The First Avenger to Endgame, the enemy was always good versus bad. Now that we’ve conquered that, where do we go from here? When the bad guys reappear, in what form are they reappearing? It is a new storyline with new characters, with new beliefs, and it creates a new idea of this new world that we’re going into.”
Interestingly, on the specific mention of the film introducing a set of “new beliefs” into the MCU, this is not the first time Mackie has indicated that his version of Captain America would deviate from that portrayed by his predecessor, Chris Evans.
During a February 2023 interview with Yahoo! Entertainment’s Kevin Polowy, when askedhow his “approach to the mantle departs most dramatically from Chris’,” Mackie affirmed, “My Cap, he’s not a superhero.”
“He doesn’t have a super-serum,” the actor detailed. “So his superpower is his humanity. So I think with him he has to come to the stage with a very different understanding of what it is it to be a good guy or be a bad guy, and what are the decisions that make you tow that line in the way that you did.”
“I just see him as more of a humane Cap, as opposed to a Cap of judgment, where this is right, or this is wrong,” he added. “There are decisions that make you choose right or wrong.”
At current, Captain America: Brave New World – starring Mackie as Sam Wilson, Ford as President-elect Ross (as well as his purported Red Hulk form), and, according to the actor himself, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner – is is on track to freefall into theaters on February 14, 2025.
Meanwhile, the ragteam team of ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ that Sam will eventually assemble are likely to make their proper debut as a full-fledged team in the upcoming Avengers 5 (formerly The Kang Dynasty).
