At the beginning of Captain America: Brave New World (2025), Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross stands before a crowd to celebrate his election victory. On stage, Ross bolsters hope for a new era in America; behind him, the word “Together” looms large on a screen. Ross is an ex-general previously seen in the MCU hunting down the Hulk and attempting to put the Avengers under government control. Now, he promises to bring the country back together. He stands for solidarity – or so he claims.
Over the next two hours, the film — Marvel’s newest entry into its all-consuming entertainment empire — shows this incoming presidency as it tries to establish a new world, a better world, a “braver” world. Yet there’s nothing brave to Brave New World. It is just another piece of Marvel’s machinery, yet another sign of apathetic, regressive politics that are not only belittling to audiences but representative of a larger shift in American culture as the second era of a Trump presidency commences.
Now, almost a month into Trump 2.0, the timing of Brave New World is prescient. But it also highlights Marvel’s cowardice, as they prove uninterested in provoking any questions, thoughts, or discussion about its subject. It’s possible the release timing wasn’t planned (after all, the film was in production far before the election was decided), yet it reveals a dark, depressing layer of the film’s true foundation. Brave New World hides its empty core of cowardice behind a costume of liberal progress and representation, revealing itself as the craven content machine it is.
Of course, this is nothing new. I have never expected Marvel to push the boundaries of our political moment and conversation. But that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to question the slop served to get people in movie seats. This time around, Marvel hopes Ford’s name and star appearance will allow viewers to shrug off the hollowness of its newest product.
Within the film, Ross represents a leader who believes “rebuilding” is the answer to progress. He appeals to people by preaching, “I stand for you” and “I’m for togetherness!” Yet, within himself, Ross is a monster – literally. He fights his internal rage until the film’s finale, where he becomes the Red Hulk and destroys large swaths of Washington, DC, including the White House and the Washington Monument.
The parallels to reality aren’t too subtle, with the president literally destroying the very institutions and monuments that define American power and history. But the film’s spiritless conclusion promises its viewers that everything is OK. By the end, Ross is under control, the White House is being rebuilt, the Avengers will return, and a new era has begun. A newscast proclaims this is “a significant step towards normalcy for the country.”
This message — appearing less than a month post-Biden, as a convicted felon (or, we could call him an election denier, or a megalomaniac, or an accused sexual predator, or an ascending fascist, or… you get the point) takes office — is indicative of Marvel’s spineless, knee-bending politics.
Brave New World imagines a world in which change is found in the past. We must rebuild the Avengers, we must recapture the “good old days.” This fear of forward-thinking change might as well say that America needs to be made great again.
Now, as Marvel flounders to recapture the cultural stronghold it once had, it has resorted to mining the past. Robert Downey Jr., the heart and soul of the pre-Endgame MCU, is back, albeit in a new role. Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) — a film that largely serves as a high five to its own blockbuster machinery — seeks to please its fans via a collection of cameos and call-backs; it hopes that you forget that all of the “newness” it promises is just a surface layer of cling film.
These films shallowly offer everything to everyone, but they don’t offer anything new, let alone signal for a “braver” new world. They make Captain America a Black man, yet they also make him entirely subservient to some unexplored sense of patriotism. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) sees his country imprison and experiment on his friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and learns that the president has extorted his way into the White House. Yet he continues serving his country nevertheless. Never once does Sam truly question his loyalty to American interests. He’s Captain America, and Captain America serves his country and his president. Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, though, questioned his allegiances often, as seen in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016). Yet Sam is not given that same agency – why? The undertones are problematic at best.
Brave New World — and Marvel as a whole — does enough to try and appeal to everyone. Their films, which have increasingly become less individual and auteurist and more unflinchingly corporate, hide behind a cover of safety — that it’s a popcorn movie, that it’s utilizing inclusive casting (to an extent), that it’s not “meant” to be dissected. It has no fangs because it wants no fangs. If it did offer anything of true substance, it’d put its own capitalistic goals at risk; it breeds complacency.
Marvel’s regressive politics don’t stop at its narratives; its very aesthetics have become sludge as they overwork crew members and VFX artists to ensure a steady stream of new content. There’s nothing “brave” in the visual language of Brave New World or Deadpool and Wolverine; they are Mad Libs films whose blanks are filled via heartless CGI slop.
The films don’t care to look good or be good in any way because Marvel seemingly doesn’t care about quality. Whether it be spelling out every plot point in clunky dialogue or disregarding interesting aesthetics in favor of efficiency, Marvel is indifferent to its audience, whom they seem to think can be pleased as long as they include a cool cameo. It shrugs off discourse and asks only for consumption.
The same mind-numbing tendencies are reflected in our national politics. The Trump presidency floods headlines with new restrictions, new firings, and new policies intended to destroy initiatives with any stench of “liberal” tendencies and the citizenry is being asked to stand by in indifference as they go about their destruction. But — as an actually bold film like The Zone of Interest (2024) poses — “standing by” can hide its own horrific evil.
Marvel’s place within this greedy system of capital isn’t a new concept, but the MCU is an emblem of the culture industry, a system that wants to be beloved by so many that it renders itself inert.
Some may say that films like Marvel’s — “blockbuster” movies intended to entertain rather than enlighten — aren’t worth such disdain and such air. Yet it’s that regressive thinking that goes alongside this fabric of complacency. The classic “let people like things” complaint, which can be seen in the vitriol whenever a dissenting review is posted on social media, indicates a culture that does not want conversation. It’s a shift away from discourse and towards affect, towards that which is stirring and “felt” on the surface.
Certainly, there are great, discourse-provoking films nowadays, but Marvel is far from one of these examples. Its blockbuster status aims, first and foremost, to be commercial, meaning that producers and creators likely heavily consider how their audiences will react to their products. Marvel’s on-screen and off-screen messages suggest the answer to achieving this commercial success and audience approval is homogeneity, apathy, and resistance to forward change.
We are indeed entering a new world, one where a power-hungry tech mogul is pulling the strings behind the biggest country in the world and a cranky old white man is weaponizing fear to tear down the very institutions the country thrives on, from diversity and inclusion to the Constitution itself. Brave New World, though, seems to think we’re entering a greater world. A world where the country, despite its leader being a rage-induced monster intent on destruction, is ready to rebuild.
There are bigger issues than Marvel’s empty politics and even emptier movies, but it’s impossible to claim these fascistic signals of a Trump win are separate from the movies. Brave New World is popcorn fodder, yes, but its rosy portrait of a new era America is out of touch at best and vile at worst. In the face of a monstrous presidency, Brave New World preaches compliance and forgiveness, finding safety in the problematic ways of the past. It tells its viewers that progress is to be found in the quiet, ambivalent acceptance of what is to come.
Article Courtesy of Carson Burton
Image Courtesy of Marvel via Empire Magazine