It’s been six years since Steve Rodgers handed over Captain America reigns to Sam Wilson, Aka The Falcon, in “Avengers: Endgame.” Wilson (Anthony Mackie) will be the lead of Julius Onah’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” A trailer was released in the summer.
Two different cuts of the film test screened last week, and plot details for one of the cuts have leaked online. The person who attended didn’t seem to like the movie all that much.
Based on the folks I’ve spoken to, those who attended were either given a red or green bracelet and were split up into two different theaters. The reactions I’ve heard have not been very kind to this movie, which is being described as “inessential” and “flat.”
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Reshoots on ‘Brave New World’ happened in August. This could explain why two different cuts were shown. Last year, after receiving negative test scores in another screening, and Marvel themselves underwhelmed by an early cut they saw of the film, ‘Brave New World’ was delayed to February 2025. Extensive reshoots were called, with “three major action sequences” having been filmed, between May and August 2024 in Atlanta.
‘Brave New World’ had originally wrapped filming in June 2023, and was set for a July 2024 release date, but it’s now turned into this monstrous mess for Marvel. You just don’t push a movie this big out of your calendar, and then decide to dump it in February, unless major trouble is brewing.
Last December, Matthew Orton was hired by Marvel to pen “additional scenes and material”. Orton’s work was shot during this summer’s reshoots. They’ve also added new characters to the story. Will audiences even show up to a Captain America movie that doesn’t star Chris Evans?
The problem is not enough people liked Falcon/Winter Soldier. Its the same thing when people say they liked Marvels or whatever, good for you that you enjoyed it, but nowhere near enough people did for the amount they spent on it and it lost huge sums. Disney simply cannot sustain huge bombs time after time and if they are going to spend this sort of money it has to be a success, which means making stuff that is actually popular.
I like the fact that they went with a black Captain America, the problem is casting. Mackie is clearly well connected as hes hardly lead a massive commercial success in his time, just the opposite. The problem that Marvel has is that they stuffed so many of the bigger name black actors into Black Panther, including a few who would have been a much better choice than Mackie, now they are reluctant to recast them in a different role. Sure they have done this a few times, but very rarely when its to face roles rather than one face role and one CGI or “blue face” role, or one film and one TV series on Netflix.
The Marvels served the role of a TV-Movie for the Ms. Marvel series, they should have had it straight to Disney plus with a modest budget. Several of these smaller marvel movies/shows probably might have been better off with lower budgets. Not everything needs to be a homegoenous tentpole and by trying to force it, Disney is just setting expectations too high and burning money disappointing a large audience when they could have been entertaining a smaller audience.