The New Captain America’s Disappointing Reception Is Actually Part of 10-Year-Old Problematic Marvel Trend

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Captain America: Brave New World has now been out for a few weeks, and the movie’s fate may already be sealed. While it had a more than respectable opening weekend, its tepid-at-best reviews have yielded a box office intake that may see it end up flopping. Unfortunately, this cements many current issues with Marvel Studios, especially when it comes to Sam Wilson.

Making Sam Wilson into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new Captain America emulates the largely unsuccessful “All-New, All-Different” era of Marvel Comics, making the decision incredibly questionable. The character’s transition into the role was even more haphazard than it was in the comics, which may have impacted viewer reception. Furthermore, it seems that Marvel Studios is now unable to get its current crop of characters over with fans, be they mantle swaps or newcomers.

Marvel’s Most Controversial Era Was the Wrong Basis for the MCU

As noted, the All-New, All-Different banner for Marvel Comics was the company’s most notorious time period in recent history. Implemented about a decade ago in the mid-2010s, All-New, All-Different saw Marvel Comics introduce numerous legacy characters and mantle swaps all at once, with the idea being rather controversial. Thus, the Steve Rogers Captain America was replaced by Sam Wilson as Captain America, the traditional Thor was replaced by Jane Foster as Thor, and Iron Man was eventually replaced by Ironheart, among other changes.

Likewise, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan and the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man were pushed just as much as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and Spider-Man/Peter Parker, with these two being the only real successes of this time period. Given all the changes being made at once, it was a lot to ask of fans. To make matters worse, the stories weren’t particularly successful or popular, which only added to the negative backlash. Ironically, this all went against a sentiment that Marvel’s former editor-in-chief had about the company.

Joe Quesada once commented upon Marvel having “characters and not costumes”, with this meant to contrast with the focus on legacy characters seen at DC Comics. Both mantle swaps, legacy characters and the multiverse were once concepts that were fairly exclusive to DC compared to Marvel, with the latter rarely using them in major properties on the regular. In both comics and the movies in the past decade, this has changed with Marvel, which might explain why these concepts aren’t working.

The multiverse and legacy characters are antithetical to the Marvel Universe and its best stories, so trying to pivot the comics and movies to accommodate these ideas will almost always feel unnatural. Conversely, as mentioned, Sam Wilson’s Captain America, like most of the other mantle swaps in the past decade, didn’t gain any noteworthy stories when he took on his new name. Thus, with no real material to adapt, the movies copying this comic book development would come off as much worse. As a result, Sam Wilson’s solo Captain Americamovie focuses more on the Hulk mythos and villains than anything else.

One of the biggest issues with Sam Wilson becoming Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the lack of work done to build up to this moment. The MCU’s Sam Wilson was barely noticeable as a sidekick to Steve Rogers’ Captain America, fading into the background in almost all of his appearances. For instance, he interacts with Steve the most in his debut appearance, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but even there, he’s sharing the screen with the more charismatic Black Widow and Nick Fury.

The same was definitely the case in Captain America: Civil War, where he came off as less of Captain America’s sidekick and more like a guy that Steve knows. Even his appearance in the first Ant-Man movie gave him the aura of being a second-string hero at most, and the character’s overall aura hasn’t improved since then. Given this lack of real interaction and camaraderie, Steve giving Sam his shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame was especially forced. Things didn’t improve in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which actually devolved the character, despite finally having him take up the mantle for himself.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier deprived Falcon of what little charisma he had, and by the time he became Captain America, his character was incredibly dull. Instead of taking the Super Soldier serum, he developed the “superhuman power” of poorly-written speeches and generally coming off as an uninspired stand-in for the idea of Captain America than actually acting like him. It didn’t help that many felt that Bucky Barnes was a much more natural fit to become the new Captain America.

While it can be argued that his dark past as a mind-controlled assassin would sully Bucky for the role, this is the exact reason Bucky becoming the new Captain America worked in the comics, and why it would have done the same in the MCU. In the source material, the Winter Soldier replaced the dead Steve Rogers as Captain America to honor his fallen friend and atone for his own sins. This same narrative path would have been logical for the MCU, and Falcon could still have been his sidekick. Likewise, Falcon’s tendency to give speeches and talk about things might have actually been organic, as he could have essentially been Bucky’s therapist to help him deal with trauma.

Sam was chosen in the MCU to replace Steve Rogers to match the more recent All-New, All-Different comics, despite their lack of popularity. Thus, Captain America: Brave New World was just a continuation of questionable plot threads that were planted in Avengers: Endgame and reaped into a foul harvest in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. If moviegoers without Disney+ hadn’t seen the streaming TV show, and tried watching the new Captain America movie, they might wonder why Falcon is Captain America now.

This issue was pointed out by famed video game creator Hideo Kojima, and it points to a major issue. Too many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most pivotal developments have taken place in or been tied to the Disney+ shows, leaving general audiences confused as to what’s going on. The same was the case with the 2022 MCU movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which arguably only makes narrative sense if viewers also saw the 2021 Disney+ TV series WandaVision beforehand. It goes to show how badly the Disney+ shows destroyed the MCU’s momentum. Since it wasn’t shown on the big screen, Falcon’s transition into Captain America feels even more forced and like an afterthought.

Guardians of the Galaxy Was an Exception, Not the Rule

It’s now clear that Sam Wilson as Captain America simply doesn’t entice audiences in the same way as his predecessor did, and given what’s looking like a potential box office bomb for his solo movie, said film might be his last. The same seems to also be the case with the other new properties/heroes, legacy characters and mantle swaps introduced after Avengers: Endgame, with only a few exceptions. For instance, Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel is well-received, but the character’s show Ms. Marvel was the Disney+ Marvel series with the lowest viewership.

The same was the case with her tepidly-received sequel movie, The Marvels, which was the MCU’s biggest box office flop. Cassie Lang as Stinger/Stature was a poorly-received part of the already disliked Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. While Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was very successful, the inclusion of Riri Williams/Ironheart was heavily criticized by some. Most weren’t impressed by the design used for what was essentially a cameo appearance by Hulk’s son Skaar in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

Only Kate Bishop/Hawkeye and perhaps Yelena Belova/White Widow are well-received new mantle characters, and the MCU has largely failed to make mantle swap characters popular. The same is even the case with new properties, with the MCU seeing a fraction of its former success. 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was a modest success, but given how it’s mostly hardcore Marvel fans who are asking for a follow-up, it seems that its modicum of generated interest was due more to the remaining goodwill of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

Fellow 2021 movie Eternals was a flop and the first MCU movie that was given a “rotten” score on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. Since then, both Marvel Studios and Marvel Comics have largely backed off with trying to astroturf these characters back into a clearly non-receptive market. The Captain Marvel property as a whole is likely dead after the The Marvels’ box office flop, making it more obvious that Carol Danvers’ first movie was very much one of the many ships raised by the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s rising tide.

Even for former success stories such as the Ant-Man series, the Thor series and now the Captain America series, they’ve been slammed into branding brick walls by way of third/fourth entries that were either financial disappointments, critical duds or both. Marvel Studios has both destroyed the goodwill of existing properties while failing to cultivate new franchises to replace them. As a result, some of the only properties that anyone cares about would be Spider-Man and X-Men, including both Deadpool and Wolverine.

​​​​​​​The lack of interest in these new properties has made calls for the X-Men and gritty antiheroes such as Ghost Rider and Blade the Vampire Hunter even louder. The rebuttal to this is that Marvel should give the failed properties another chance, especially since the MCU didn’t start with the proverbial big guns. Likewise, the MCU in its heyday turned the once obscure Guardians of the Galaxy into a household name, and some Marvel Cinematic Universe diehards see this as a reason to give C-list/D-list heroes more chances. The problem with this argument is that it completely overlooks the nuances that made the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise such a hit.

The Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy had the talented James Gunn at the helm, and this was more important than many realized. Not only is Gunn a worthwhile director, but he’s also a fan of the comics, which went a long way in manifesting the love seen on the big screen in the series. Gunn, Joss Whedon, the Russo Brothers, Jon Favreau and even Kenneth Branagh were some of the notable directors involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe during the Infinity Saga, with Gunn, Whendon and the Russos responsible for mapping out the first three phases of the MCU.

This contrasts sharply with the lack of a plan that’s now more than apparent with the current Multiverse Saga. Not only are there no overall architects guiding the broad ship, but the talent pool of directors has gone down in some cases. Directors such as Taika Waititi were given too much creative control for movies such as Thor: Love & Thunder. While director Chloé Zhao is definitely talented, there was little indication beforehand that she was the right choice for the ambitious Eternals, given her former filmography.

These new movies had very different people at the helm compared to what Guardians had. Guardians of the Galaxy came about in 2014, which was when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was really building into its peak of popularity. For all intents and purposes, Marvel Studios really could have turned into brand or set of characters into a popular movie property at that time. On top of that, the humorous movies were the zenith of the now infamous “Marvel formula”, which is known for constant comedic quips.

Audiences weren’t yet tired of Marvel humor when the first Guardians of the Galaxy came out, so it simply felt like a super-sized version of an archetype that they largely still loved. If the series had been released now amid increasing disinterest in both Marvel Studios’ projects and the humor that once made them successful, it’s unlikely that it would have succeeded nearly as much. After all, similar attempts to replicate that formula have failed to gain an audience, even in the case of the well-received 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Needless to say, Guardians of the Galaxy was very much lightning in a bottle as far as Marvel Studios is concerned, and James Gunn now being at DC Studios means that the property is essentially finished on the big screen for the time being. It’s simply a fool’s errand to keep banking on concepts that even comic book fans have rejected in the vain hope of another Guardians-style breakout, and for now, Marvel should stick to things that are tried and true in order to restore brand confidence.

​​​​​​​This doesn’t mean to only rely on Spidey and the X-Men, but for now, they’re where the money is and the easiest route to bringing fans back. Even if financial/economic conditions were optimal across the board, moviegoers simply aren’t going to shell out consistent amounts of money for properties they care little about, especially with the lack of momentum being built up to something they do care about, such as an Avengers crossover. Unfortunately, that number now includes the Captain America series, which is possibly facing its own twilight’s last gleaming.

Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters.

“}]] Captain America: Brave New World is flying at half-mast, and it reflects Marvel Studios’ struggle to make Sam Wilson and other heroes popular.  Read More