Captain America: Brave New World

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

Don’t expect to see Steve Rogers in Captain America: Brave New World. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), formerly known as Falcon, has picked up Cap’s shield, and Marvel Studios is hoping he’s the guy to lead an updated team of Avengers.

In this film, Sam and his sidekick Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), the newly dubbed Falcon, investigate an international incident that threatens President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the deceased William Hurt). Ross and Sam haven’t seen eye to eye in the past, but Sam is willing to see if the newly elected president has had a change of heart.

There’s not much suspense to the film’s central mystery because Marvel bombarded fans with promotional clips of Ross’ transformation into the Red Hulk. We already know where things will end up, so the 90 minutes or so it takes to get there feel tedious.

Even more tedious is Sam’s relentless speechifying. This new Captain America isn’t a super­soldier, so his fists don’t pack the same mighty punch. But he can surely bludgeon both friends and foes with self-righteous platitudes. The same guys who wrote the cringeworthy Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are responsible for this film’s script. The leftist political overtones are somewhat subtler in Brave New World, but the humorless scolding is still there.

The writers should have spent less time on the exposition and more time on the story. The ­mastermind behind the intrigue doesn’t astonish us with his brainpower, and the film’s plot feels like loosely connected leftovers from other Marvel movies.

At one point, Sam questions whether he should ever have accepted Steve Roger’s shield. It’s safe to say the answer is no.