With ‘Captain America: Brave New World’, Marvel looks to reset

Minutes into the first battle scene of the new “Captain America: Brave New World,” an enemy quips that Captain America, he dreamed of killing, was bigger than the current mantle holder Sam Wilson, played by Anthony Mackie.

The legacy of the Patriotic Moniker weaves greatly over the film’s tale – and is a key question for Marvel Studios’ total franchise. How do you keep a beloved character but reintroduce him on the big screen with a newer but familiar, face?

That’s a billion dollars, especially when Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios seems to regain the audience interest and ticket office revenue it harvested with the films leading up to the Blockbuster in 2019 “Avengers: Endgame.”

The answer is: Very careful.

Mackie’s character, Wilson, has been in the franchise for years as a colleague Hero Falcon, who was introduced in 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” After Chris Evans’ Captain America ended his story in “Endgame,” he sent his shield to Mackie, who fully took over his role as the new cap in the 2021 Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”

The efforts of getting the hand offs to the right are high. Nate Moore, a producer of the film and a long -time Marvel director, calls the character a “cornerstone franchise” of the Marvel universe.

“We want to make sure this film works because Captain America is so important,” he said. “It’s important for the audience to feel like, even with all the change … There’s still a Captain America, he’s still worthy and he’s still out there and protects people.”

A Marvel Comics staple, Captain America debuted in 1940 as Steve Rogers, a “super-soldier” that was injected with a serum that improved his physical abilities. Evans first took over the role of 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”, anchored two Captain America films more and became the counterbalance to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man.

But even as Evans’ portrayal ended, Marvel leaders knew they would preserve the spirit of what Captain America represented, Moore said.

“It has always been about someone who sees the dream of what America stands for and is trying to embody this dream,” he said. “Although we wanted to wrap the story of Steve Rogers in ‘Endgame’, we didn’t want there to be an absence of that feeling in it (Marvel Cinematic Universe). ‘

Maintaining this feeling – and character – is also crucial to the reconfiguration of the Marvel franchise, which has fought in recent years to pump out consistent hits at the ticket office. Although last year’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” rocked more than a billion dollars, movies received films such as 2023’s “The Marvel” and “Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania” defective reviews and did badly in theaters.

“Captain America: Brave New World”, arriving in theaters Friday, tracks for an expected $ 80 million to $ 95 million three-day opening weekend in the US and Canada, on a reported budget of $ 180 million Before marketing costs. Reviews though has been determined mixed.

This range would be in the ballpark of the domestic opening weekend stitch for the free-end Marvel movie and 2021’s “Eternals” ($ 71 million) and “Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings” ($ 75 million) as well as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier ”($ 95 million).

The tracking is in line with the expectations of a restarted franchise, said Daniel Loria, senior vice president of BoxOffice Co., a theater data company. Because Marvel is in a “rebuilding phase”, the financial prospects of the new movie must be “a little more grounded” for the study, he said.

“We have to remind ourselves that Marvel is recovering with a new vision in some of these marquee properties,” Loria said.

With a subtitle that makes comparisons with Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” the movie embraces the feeling of a fresh start, said director Julius Onah.

“We reset the universe of (Marvel franchise),” he said. “I’ve always wanted the feeling of irony that comes with these words, ‘courageous new world.’ So we lean into that irony. We lean into the unknown and the uncertainty. “

As a result of the interconnected history lines throughout Marvel and its strategy of using his films as a building block, the film will have to hold up on its own. It will also run audience interest in the next release of the study, “Thunderbolts”, which will come out in May.

A consistent series of Marvel hits is the key to Disney’s overall ambitions and CEO Bob Iger’s efforts to turn the company around. Marvel is the highest gross film franchise in history, and the study’s popularity forces not only cash office income, but also theme park visits and attractions, sale of merchandise and streaming.

The move to keep Captain America in the mix, but get a new actor to portray him could let the franchise reset, said Lilly Goren, co -editor of the book “The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and a professor of political science at Carroll University in Wisconsin.

A similar parallel is found with the three separate Spider-Man movie series, where the titular character is played by three actors, as well as the many reimaginations of Batman in DC Comics Film Universe, although there is less effort to maintain continuity and more focus on restarting the series .

“It allows for the continuation of this popular cultural icon while giving a lot of continuous space to remodel the stories around him,” Goren said. “It’s a kind of reconfiguration of the superhero.”

Reconsidering Captain America is what attracted Onah to the project. Unlike Evans’ Captain America, which was essentially superhuman, Mackie’s character has no serum -enhanced abilities.

“It’s a wonderful way to develop this character,” he said. “Part of what drew me to tell this story was a Captain America whose superpower is his empathy, his humanity. Not only is it something that I think, relatable in a very specific way, is something that is ambitious. “

There is also a special impact on Mackie, who is black, now assumes the role of Captain America.

The consequences of this were first explored in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, which takes place shortly after Mackie’s character accepted Captain America’s Shield. The show covers “what it means, frankly, for a black man who has to get a mantle that can be problematic, but can also be really inspiring,” said Moore, the producer. “And I think the character’s journey in that show was, inspiration is worth it.”

The importance of having a black captain America today is that “America is for everyone,” he said. “It is important for the audience to see themselves reflected in the character and that reflection is not only a skin color, but so is morality and integrity.”