I finally went to see 2025's Captain America: Brave New World yesterday and enjoyed it more than the reviews suggested I would. It seems like people have always complained most of the MCU movies don't feel very cinematic. I don't always agree but it's certainly the case here; this movie very much feels like an extra episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Disney+ series. But Captain America: Civil War had that same, general, diffuse, sort of dim cinematography.
The strongest part of the film is Thaddeus Ross with Harrison Ford taking over for the late William Hurt. It would've been nice to see Hurt follow through on this character he'd played since The Incredible Hulk in 2008 but Ford does an amazing job. Ford tends to convey much more vulnerability than Hurt did (despite his name) which added great suspense to the moments where he was trying to hold the monster in.
It's usually DC stories that have more interesting villains than heroes but this certainly didn't feel like a DC movie. Neither Sam Wilson or Steve Rogers are quite as lofty as DC heroes tend to feel.
Sam really needs to take the super soldier serum. He's already doing things a mortal man shouldn't be able to do--how many times would a real life human have blacked out from his barrel rolls? So it just doesn't make sense.
I was surprised how much Japan factored into the plot. I saw it in a Japanese movie theatre, of course (I live in Japan), so I felt kind of embarrassed when Sam Wilson's few lines in Japanese showed he was even worse at it than I am. When he spoke in Japanese, he had Japanese subtitles. It was that bad. The fictional Japanese Prime Minister in the film, Ozaki, was played by Takehiro Hira, who's lived in the US since he was 15 years old. Once again, just like the stars of Shogun, the only Japanese actors the US seems able to import are actors who've lived outside of Japan for a significant amount of time. And, as usual, there are no location shots in Japan though at least the whole movie wasn't shot in Georgia this time. The Washington DC scenes are actually made in Washington DC. Not exactly a world away from Georgia but it's some improvement.
The fight choreography seemed oddly slow. Maybe it's just because Sam's not a super soldier, I don't know.
Of course the title, Brave New World, is a Shakespeare reference if it's not an Aldous Huxley reference. I'm not really sure how it may relate to either one. I guess Thaddeus Ross is sort of like Prospero and his daughter, Betty, is kind of like Miranda? It really felt like she was supposed to have a larger role but Liv Tyler wasn't available for very long. The movie is so Hulk-centric it felt really odd that Bruce Banner wasn't in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment