Red Hulk, Blue Politics

The real protagonist of Captain America: Brave New World—the fourth in the franchise, if you’re keeping score—isn’t the man with the star-spangled shield. It’s the American president, and he has a mean temper, trust issues, a long history of saying and doing foolishly hotheaded things, and a wise daughter who is eager to keep her distance. Sound like anyone we know? 

But this president is named Thaddeus Ross, not Donald Trump, and he’s portrayed with churlish charm by the eighty-two-year-old Harrison Ford. To show his daughter that he is a changed man, this crass America Firster must grow softer and sweeter, engage the world’s nations in a mutually beneficial treaty that spreads the wealth equitably, and bring peace on earth and goodwill to all men. 

If that sounds perfectly idiotic, it’s because it is. As the president wrestles with his demons, Captain America must find the villain who is manipulating the commander in chief and pushing the world to the brink of disaster. The movie requires intimate knowledge of several other minor Marvel Studios productions from years past, the sort of clunkers that none but the nerdiest among us have watched or care to recall. But at the end of the day, the only fact the movie demands us to notice is this: Captain America, now played by Anthony Mackie, is black.

In a world imagined by halfway decent human beings, this fact shouldn’t matter; content of character, as a real-life superhero once reminded us, should always outweigh color of skin. But this is Hollywood we’re dealing with, which means we’re in for plenty of speeches about representation and “a seat at the table,” making Brave New World more of a grad school thesis than an actual functioning movie. 

Mackie’s Sam Wilson inherited the Captain America mantle from Steve Rogers (played, with considerably more charisma, by Chris Evans) at the end of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, the last Marvel movie that made any sense or generated any real excitement. Unlike Rogers, a World War II-era weakling who was injected with a super-soldier serum, Wilson refuses to alter his DNA. His only advantage is a high-tech suit of armor delivered by Wakanda, the fictional African country portrayed in Marvel’s Black Panther films. The Wakandans have mined an alien metal called Vibranium, which can do everything our puny Western gizmos cannot, and so Wilson can fly, shield himself against bullets and grenades, and approximate superpowers without inherently possessing them. 

“Steve gave them something to believe in,” one observer notes mid-movie as he summarizes the differences between the two Captains. “You give them something to aspire to.” 

And belief, or lack thereof, is precisely the theme of Brave New World. Wilson doesn’t believe in the president or the government, a mistrust explained in part by an equally ludicrous subplot about a previously unknown Captain America, a black soldier named Isaiah Bradley, who was imprisoned for thirty years because the U.S. government—during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, mind you—was too systemically racist to accept a dark-skinned all-American hero. Nor does he believe in anything resembling transcendence: While his predecessor fought aliens to make the planet safe for mankind, Wilson and his screenwriters believe that there’s no real evil in this world, just misguided men who have made imprudent political calculations. 

That’s a very dim way to approach life, and it’s an even duller way to approach a major superhero blockbuster. Unlike virtually every single other Marvel superhero or supervillain, Mackie’s Wilson receives no classic origin story. His melanin, the filmmakers seem to believe, is enough to define him, and enough to make us cheer as he travails to heal America of its innate, incurable, and sadistic supremacy. 

In case any viewer failed to grasp this point, the film’s final battle breaks out in the White House Rose Garden. President Ross, finally succumbing to his quite literal toxic masculinity—we learn that he’d been injected with Gamma Rays to alleviate the strain on his weak heart—mutates into a red Hulk, a monstrosity interested (presumably, in Hollywood’s telling, like all men who did not vote for Kamala Harris) in nothing but violence. He leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in ruins, then smashes the Washington Monument before grabbing an American flag and using it to spear down an Air Force helicopter. Thankfully, just as had been the case in August 1963, America is saved again by the presence on the National Mall of a dignified black man with a dream, whose wise words are enough to curb the white man’s innate appetite for destruction. President Ross, now de-Hulked, repents, resigns, and spends the rest of his days in prison, giving Hollywood the happy ending on screen it could not inspire Americans to support in the voting booth. 

Yesterday Hollywood doled out its highest honors, the Academy Awards. Sam Wilson would have felt very much at home at the Dolby Theatre: Karla Sofía Gascón, a biological male, was nominated for Best Actress, only failing to secure the statuette, according to most insiders, after taking to social media and saying unkind things about George Floyd. The award for Best Documentary went to a widely discredited bit of pro-Hamas propaganda; Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist?, by far the highest-grossing documentary of 2024 and a hilarious and thought-provoking look at the DEI racket, wasn’t even nominated. Nor was the excellent biopic Reagan, which failed to meet the Academy’s new rules demanding that any movie, no matter the topic, feature a full slate of actors from “underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.”  

This, then, is the Brave New World Hollywood’s bigoted bosses have in mind, one that not only rejects traditional American beliefs but that sees belief itself as nothing more than oppression in a nice suit. It’s a sad turn of events for us all, but it’s particularly devastating for Captain America. The character was created in 1940 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, two anonymous Jewish artists who were terrified to learn how many of their fellow Americans were perfectly content to let Adolf Hitler devour the world while Washington did nothing. The comic’s very first issue depicted Cap socking it to the Fuhrer on the cover, as clear a demonstration of American might and moral clarity as there had ever been in popular culture. The sentiment resonated with readers: The second issue sold upward of a million copies. 

That we now have a Captain more interested in remaking America according to the lunatic ministrations of its dour domestic detractors is a tragedy. But have no fear: If comicdom teaches us anything, it’s that while old defenders may falter and fall, there’s always a new American hero just around the corner ready to rise and save us. All we have to do is believe.