Captain America: Brave New World review/rant

Another new MCU film has arrived, Captain America: Brave New World.

As with every MCU film to date (35 in total), it falls somewhere on the scale of decent to incredible. 

And as with any new MCU film in the last half decade, it has triggered a slew of negative to be negative reviews and click bait bullshit.

BNW is the first solo movie for the Sam Wilson version of the character, following The Falcon and the Winter.Soldiwr series, and Anthony Mackie is terrific as usual. 

The plot involves a conspiracy that calls back all the way to 2008's The Incredible Hulk, and that runs all the way to the top with the newly elected President Ross (Harrison Ford taking over for William Hurt).

Sam takes the lead on trying to solve what's going on, as the film mimics the spy thriller tone of The Winter Soldier (and no, it's not nearly on THAT level). 

Like most MCU fare, we get some returning characters (the new Falcon, and Isiah Bradley from the TV show), a few new ones (a female secret service agent with MCU ties), and a couple cameos.

The film wants to be Winter Soldier. It's not. This film's plot is not nearly as compelling (TWS was a game changer). But it's a solid frame to tell its story. There's some rehashing of the TFATWS premise of Sam trying to fully take on the role of Cap.

The action scenes are really cool, especially one aerial battle that takes place above that dead celestial from Eternals. Which is made up of adamantium. The upgrades they give Sam's suit are really impressive. He doesn't have the serum, but he can fly.

Ford is given equal billing with Mackie, and him turning into Red Hulk is hardly a surprise (it was a centerpiece of the marketing). What is maybe surprising is how good Ford actually is. He's taken on many a role and phoned it in, but here he seemed really into this. Ross is still a dick, but he's not quite as much of a dick now. Yeah, the notion of a grumpy old white president with sometimes fascistic tendencies having a redemption arc is ill-timed, but it works in the movie.

This isn't a great MCU film. On my official ranking, I placed it 25th of of 35 (yes, there have been 35 MCU proper films). So it's basically top of the bottom tier. It's good.

But you wouldn't know it from the latest predictable round of BS coming from the internet outrage factory. The factory will tell you this film is a disaster, and the end of the MCU, and a bunch of other crap that doesn't hold up to the tiniest scrutiny.

We know that a large part of this is fueled by the oxygen thieves who are mad that there's now a black Captain America. Do these idiots not know Chris Evans is a huge lefty? 

But I have tired of the people who join in the Marvel bashing just to avoid drawing the ire of these people. These critics who act like the MCU is dead. Hello! Their last film before this was a smash success. Thunderbolts looks fabulous. Fantastic Four looks really promising. There's a gd Avengers film next year! And a new Spiderman. 

Sadly, the factory has contributed to hurting a lot of MCU projects. Any project that isn't led entirely by a straight white man is being attacked. And people are straight up lying and saying some projects were failures. 

It's exhausting to deal with. People can't just watch a movie anymore. It all has to be torn apart, usually for thin at best reasons.