“Captain America: A Brave New World,” the newest Marvel movie in the Avengers universe, was released on Valentine’s day and, so far, fans are loving it. 

Ask any Marvel fan, and almost every single one of them will tell you how horrible Marvel’s recent movies have been. From atrocious CGI, to horrible plots, and poorly written scripts, Marvel has been coming under fire for caring more about quantity than quality. 

However, Marvel may be having a comeback with their recent movies, especially the new Captain America movie. 

This movie continues from the “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) movie, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” (2021) series, and sprinkles in a reference to “Eternals” (2021) when a large celestial being crashed into the Indian Ocean. 

The movie opens with a returning character, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), giving a speech as the new United States president. It then cuts to six months later showing Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) as the new Captain America taking down an organization called Serpent in Mexico. It shows a returning character from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), taking Sam’s old spot as the Falcon to retrieve a package: stolen adamantium from Japan. 

Sam and Joaquin go back to America, where they get invited to the White House, along with fellow returning character Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). When in the White House, Ross is giving a speech about the adamantium and how it was stolen from Japan. During this speech, Isaiah becomes mind-controlled by an unknown source and shoots at Ross. Ross survives, and Isaiah runs away to which he ends up getting caught and arrested. 

To figure out how Isaiah was controlled, Sam and Joaquin go to an old military base, Camp Echo One, where they find the main villain of the movie, Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson). Ross previously had heart problems and turned to Sterns for help. Sterns agreed in return for being pardoned for previous crimes once Ross became president. Sterns created pills for Ross to help with the heart problems, but Ross never pardoned Sterns even after his help. Before Sam and Joaquin can catch him, Sterns ends up escaping from the base. 

Sam and Joaquin find out that Ross is attempting to race Japan to get to the previously mentioned celestial being. The being contains a new, incredibly strong material, adamantium. Which, yes, is what Wolverine was injected with back in the 60’s… Marvel isn’t the best at timelines. It is also the “package” they saved at the beginning of the movie. After Sam deescalates both Japan and America, Ross goes back to the U.S. to give a press conference. At the press conference, Sterns ends up turning himself in and plays a phone call between himself and Ross about the pardoning deal. Ross “hulks out”, which is found to be from Sterns’s pills being slowly laced with gamma radiation. Eventually Sam is able to control Ross, calm him down, and arrest him. Sam is also able to prove that Isaiah was mind-controlled and free him from prison. 

This movie had a lot happening in it, especially for a movie that was only two hours. There were a few other side-plotlines that happened throughout the movie as well, but somehow Marvel was able to combine all of the plotlines well. 

While Marvel has lately been lacking in terms of CGI, this movie was definitely a comeback for them. It might not have been the best CGI ever done, especially not in Marvel, but the CGI surrounding Ross turning into the Hulk was almost like the original Hulk CGI. 

This movie is definitely not the best to start watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as it had reference after reference to other MCU movies and returning characters from movies not really mentioned since 2008. In order to understand a lot of this movie, or to get the inside jokes and references, almost every other main MCU movie would have to be watched first. 

However, for an MCU fan, this movie was definitely a comeback for Marvel. Many fans seemed to be extremely excited about this movie as it made around $100 million in the opening weekend in America. Previous Marvel movies didn’t make nearly as much with “The Marvels” (2023) only making $46 million in its opening weekend. 

As with almost every MCU movie, there was an after-credits scene, but it definitely didn’t seem like one of Marvel’s best. It almost seemed like a reshoot of a previous scene that they didn’t want to scrap. It did seem like a really good build up to an upcoming movie, but it didn’t seem like a good after-credits scene.