I’d like for you to consider a question, and there’s no right answer (not yet, anyway): What do we want from Marvel?

In this post-2020, post-COVID, post-MAGA, post-Endgame world, what constitutes a “good” Marvel movie? What do we expect from Marvel Studios, and are those expectations realistic? What do we need from them?

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure Marvel Studios itself knows the answer to that, certainly not after so many plans went awry. They bet the farm on the multiverse, and nobody cared about it. They bet the farm on Chadwick Boseman and he prematurely died of cancer. They bet the farm on Jonathan Majors and he turned out to be a piece of shit domestic abuser. And that’s not even getting started on the COVID lockdowns, the AMPAS holdouts, the Disney corporate shenanigans, and all this other shit that nobody at Marvel could’ve possibly predicted or had any control over.

So now Marvel is taking even more big gambles, paying RDJ a king’s ransom to come back and play the most iconic supervillain in Marvel’s history (and a strong contender for one of the most iconic supervillains in all of pop culture) while also betting big on this year’s Fantastic Four reboot. (Third time’s the charm? And no, I’m not counting the Roger Corman take, that was never officially released.)

Marvel Studios is clearly taking steps to try and course-correct. The billion-dollar question here is how will we know if they’ve succeeded?

And let’s get one thing perfectly clear: I don’t believe for a minute that the MCU is “over”. Remember the Dark Universe? Remember the Snyderverse? Remember The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the Spider-Man megafranchise without Spider-Man? We know what it looks like when a franchise of this scale loses relevance and dies. The MCU isn’t there yet, not by a long shot.

But then we have Captain America: Brave New World. I’m honestly not sure if it’s the best or the worst possible timing that the “political suspense thriller” branch of the MCU got a new entry at the exact moment in time when the USA is undergoing a constitutional crisis by way of unprecedented political upheaval. Granted, Marvel Studios hasn’t exactly been shy about taking on the white patriarchy, but that was primarily by way of Disney+ (“Ms. Marvel”, “She-Hulk”, “Echo”, etc.) — one of their mainstream cinematic tentpole features leaning hard into politics has significantly less precedent. And the one time they had the audacity simply to try a female-driven picture with a black female writer/director, it got politicized and The Marvels got sandbagged.

Anyway, this one has been in some stage of development since 2021. It’s no secret that the film was the subject of massive delays and reshoots and re-edits. And yes, the end product does have some glaringly obvious ADR, a few minor plotlines that get abruptly dropped, some lines of dialogue that were in the trailers and not in the final cut, an abundance of exposition from TV news reports, throwaway bit characters who only exist to move the plot forward, and other such telltale signs of getting drastically altered in post. Even so, despite all of that, the movie works.

Remember, folks, we’ve seen what it looks like when reshoots and inconstant direction result in a hackjob. Hellboy (2019) was a hackjob. The theatrical cut of Justice League was a hackjob. Borderlands was a catastrophic hackjob. In comparison to those examples, and by the standards of a two-hour political suspense thriller set in the MCU, these filmmakers did a surprisingly good job of stitching together a coherent narrative.

Moreover, it’s safe to assume that the filmmakers took advantage of those delays to try and course-correct as best they could. For instance, Shira Haas appears as Ruth Bat-Seraph, famously an Israeli superhero in the comics. The news of this casting was met with immediate controversy, most especially after the Israelis started committing outright genocide in the Gaza Strip. Thus in the movie, while the character’s Israeli origins are mentioned in passing, she’s been reworked into an alumna of the Red Room and the film makes a significantly bigger deal of hyping her up as an ex-Widow. Call it a sensible compromise, call it cowardly wishy-washy both-sidesing, but that’s the best we were ever going to get from goddamn Disney.

Of course the other big red elephant in the room is Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, with Harrison Ford stepping in for the late William Hurt. A short while back, “MovieBob” Chipman posited that the MCU was very much a product of the Obama years and a pop art reflection of America’s place in the world while Dubya was out of office but we were still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of how much you believe that, it’s undeniably true that the MCU as we know it was built during the Obama years, that all art is to some degree a reflection of the context in which it was made, and the world has irrevocably changed since Obama left office. And if the goal is to readjust the MCU to comment on a post-MAGA world, putting Red Hulk in the White House might not be a bad way to do it.

(Side note: There’s no word whatsoever on Ross’ running mate. The vice president is totally anonymous, nowhere to be seen or heard from, and apparently does absolutely nothing while everything else is going on. Horseshit.)

But of course Marvel Studios and the Disney brass would never go that far. Granted, Ross is still portrayed as a man far too ambitious for his own good, who rose to power through heinous means, and nearly brings the world to ruin through a lethal combination of unilateral action and deteriorating mental stability. On the other hand, there’s another villain (more on him later) who’s puppeteering Ross from the shadows, and Ross is clearly shown to be capable of shame, all of which muddies the waters and softens the blow quite a bit.

But with all due respect, I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect a blazing intellectual treatise on politics from this movie. For one thing, of course we’re never going to get any such thing from a four-quadrant corporate product built with the express goal of pleasing as many people as possible. Moreover, if this movie doesn’t really know what to say about the times we’re living in… well, do you remember the election night of 2024? Half of America was shell-shocked by the result and nobody knew what to make of it. “The Daily Show” had this whole extended bit about how nobody knew what to say or how to feel at the time. I have a rough time blaming the filmmakers for not being ready with a coherent message when literally nobody had any idea what to say or do until a month ago.

And lest we forget, this is a movie about a guy with vibranium wings beating up a giant red CGI monster. Just like any other superhero movie, this is inherently a story about a lone hero taking unilateral action to singlehandedly solve a problem that the greater establishment is incapable of solving. In other words, fiction!

Any superhero movie is inherently a fantasy. More specifically and importantly, a superhero movie should be a fantasy with some element for the audience to aspire to. In this case, the superhero fantasy is probably the notion that a corrupt politician can be taken out by a lone vigilante with no consequences or pushback whatsoever. On a more aspirational note, this movie hinges on the notion of putting leaders in place who are willing and able to take accountability, and are capable of changing with the times.

It’s been said that the ones who most want power are the ones least qualified to have it, and the movie takes some issue with that. In a sweet little monologue at the end, the film posits that the ones who most want responsibility are the ones most qualified to have power. It’s a neat way of reframing one of Marvel’s most iconic philosophies about heroes and leaders, most especially in a political context.

And of course we can’t forget the race angle. It’s kind of a big freaking deal that we’ve got a black man (of course it’s Exec Producer Anthony Mackie, in the role of Sam Wilson) carrying the title of Captain America, especially considering that he’s a mere mortal without the serum that made Steve Rogers a superhuman. And let’s not forget that he’s using a costume with Wakanda tech, which adds another layer of black empowerment.

Even better, we’ve got Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), who apparently stepped in between films to take over Sam’s old suit and act as the new Falcon. Speaking of sidekicks, there’s Leila Taylor (Xosha Roquemore), a Secret Service agent graciously liaising between Captain America and the White House. That’s a Latino man and a black woman, both shown to be competent at their jobs, both of whom act off of Mackie so effortlessly that it’s like they were always there to begin with.

Still, as far as the race issue is concerned, the most important character in the film is Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). For those who need a refresher on the Disney+ material, Bradley was a Korean War veteran who was locked away for decades in a series of failed experiments to try and replicate the original Captain America serum. The MCU iteration of this character was introduced in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” as a living embodiment of black people who were made to suffer for the greatness of the USA. In particular, Bradley evokes the black war veterans who served in WWII and Korea only to come back to a segregated USA, not to mention the black people who needlessly perished in the name of science in the ethical abomination at Tuskegee.

In this movie, it’s Bradley who somehow gets framed for trying to assassinate the president. Thus he’s thrown right back into prison and Captain America gets his personal reason for untangling the assassination attempt and clearing Bradley’s name. In the meantime, Bradley serves as a deeply unsettling reflection of the black men who make up a wildly disproportionate section of our inmates in jails, prisons, and death rows. Not that any of this is explicit in the text, but the message is implicit and appropriately unnerving.

Speaking of callbacks, the casting news has already spoiled that Tim Blake Nelson came back to reprise Samuel “The Leader” Sterns, complete with an explanation as to where he’s been and what he’s been doing since The Incredible Hulk all the way back in 2008. This in addition to the conclusion of a character arc for Thaddeus Ross, and a last-minute cameo appearance from Liv Tyler herself in the role of Betty Ross. It’s impressive and greatly appreciated how the film resolves these plot threads that have been frustratingly left unresolved for almost as long as the MCU itself has been around.

Even better, the film head-on addresses what might be literally the single largest unresolved story thread in the MCU to date: The end of Eternals. Yes, while pretty much everyone has apparently moved on from The Eternals like it never happened, there’s still the matter of the giant stillborn god sticking up out of the Indian Ocean. Well, Marvel retconned a convenient explanation: Adamantium. Yes, it turns out that the god’s corpse (tastefully named “Celestial Island”) is a motherlode for this newly-discovered miracle metal, and the nations of the world have all been stuck in a diplomatic cold war for the past few years to try and figure out who gets it.

(Side note: I’m sure Namor and his undersea empire will be thrilled with the news.)

Thus the MCU gets its long-awaited introduction of adamantium, this giant gaping plot thread gets resolved, and we get a political crisis to build a conspiracy thriller around. Freaking brilliant.

With all of that said, the movie goes out of its way to loop in just enough exposition so that anyone coming in cold will be brought up to speed. I love that. I deeply appreciate how the filmmakers don’t blindly assume that everyone’s seen “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” or cares about The Eternals or caught up with The Incredible Hulk recently. The MCU has gotten to be so massive and unwieldy, and it’s been around for so long, these steps will be necessary even for those of us who’ve been keeping up with the MCU for the past several years.

Last but not least, there’s the matter of Giancarlo Esposito in the role of “Sidewinder”, a mercenary with the Serpent Society. Very likely, there were some earlier drafts of the movie in which Sidewinder and his mercenary crew played a much more prominent role. As it is, I’m perfectly fine with the Serpents taking a backseat to the greater political intrigue, playing out in such a way that the Serpents come off as a serviceable red herring. Of course it also helps that we’ve got Giancarlo Fucking Esposito in the role, because we all know he’s sure as hell capable of doing a lot with extremely little.

…Oh, sorry, I almost forgot about the post-credits stinger. Honestly, it comes off as something of an apology. Like the filmmakers all but turned to the camera and said “Yeah, we know you don’t really care about the multiverse and we tried really hard to keep it out of this movie, but the multiverse is still a thing. We’re already too far invested into the concept and it’s a central part of what we want to do in the long term, so we’re sticking with the multiverse for now. Sorry, please bear with us.”

I know Captain America: Brave New World has been getting thrashed in the reviews, but I’m not seeing why. The action is fun, the performances are solid, the plot is coherent, and the callbacks to prior films are deeply rewarding for longtime viewers even as the filmmakers help bring the newcomers up to speed. If that’s not enough to make a good Marvel movie, then I have to repeat the question: What exactly makes a good Marvel movie? If this isn’t what we’re expecting from the MCU, then what the hell are we expecting?

It’s certainly not a great movie, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it could’ve (and probably should’ve) been. I’ll grant that the film is politically incoherent, but if you’re expecting clear and intelligent political discourse from a Disney tentpole franchise movie, I’m pretty sure that’s a “you” problem. Personally, I’m genuinely impressed that the film turned out to be as good as it was and I find it to be a perfectly serviceable entry in the canon. Here’s hoping this is a sign that Marvel Studios can turn things around.