Digital Trends' Captain America: Brave New World Review

This article covers the effects, and the way they make movies at Disney Marvel. Captain America: Brave New World review: a new rock bottom for Marvel

I know, I can't leave it alone. It is only a movie, but another nail in the coffin of the Marvel franchise that I loved. Past tense. Disney has surely killed it.

Early into this latest thriller from Marvel Studios, Harrison Ford dodders around a cemetery, delivering tidbits of backstory meant to illuminate the motives of his character, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, the warhawk general previously played in these movies by the late William Hurt. Except that there’s no actual cemetery — the scene has clearly been filmed on a soundstage, against a supposedly state-of-the-art digital screen that’s really the 21st-century equivalent of an old TV Western’s flimsy painted backdrops. The bright white “sky” glows unconvincingly around Ford’s head, creating a blurry halo, as though he were cropped and pasted into the frame.

Brave New World is marred by regular, almost casual ineptitude — by environments as immersive as a digital golf course, by shockingly sketchy special effects, by driving scenes where the camera quivers distractingly on the dashboard. No blockbuster that cost this much should look this shoddy. We’ve seen Marvel movies paced and shot like streaming content (The Marvels leaps to mind), but this is more like the $180-million version of a bottle episode — a globe-trotting adventure that often appears to be taking place entirely within one warehouse, redressed to play indoor and outdoor locales alike.

There is more. It isn't all bad, the reviewer, A.A. Dowd, said that the Red Hulk is "fun." Too bad Red Hulk is only in the movie for about 5 minutes. So, 5 minutes of fun. How much does it cost to see a movie in IMAX today? Five. Minutes. of. Fun.

Good luck to anyone brave enough to see the film, or foolhardy enough to waste money on it.