cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18397465
It’s been six years since Steve Rodgers handed over Captain America reigns to Sam Wilson, Aka The Falcon, in “Avengers: Endgame.” Wilson (Anthony Mackie) will be the lead of Julius Onah’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” A trailer was released in the summer.
Two different cuts of the film test screened last week, and plot details for one of the cuts have leaked online. The person who attended didn’t seem to like the movie all that much.
Based on the folks I’ve spoken to, those who attended were either given a red or green bracelet and were split up into two different theaters. The reactions I’ve heard have not been very kind to this movie, which is being described as “inessential” and “flat.”
…
Reshoots on ‘Brave New World’ happened in August. This could explain why two different cuts were shown. Last year, after receiving negative test scores in another screening, and Marvel themselves underwhelmed by an early cut they saw of the film, ‘Brave New World’ was delayed to February 2025. Extensive reshoots were called, with “three major action sequences” having been filmed, between May and August 2024 in Atlanta.
‘Brave New World’ had originally wrapped filming in June 2023, and was set for a July 2024 release date, but it’s now turned into this monstrous mess for Marvel. You just don’t push a movie this big out of your calendar, and then decide to dump it in February, unless major trouble is brewing.
Last December, Matthew Orton was hired by Marvel to pen “additional scenes and material”. Orton’s work was shot during this summer’s reshoots. They’ve also added new characters to the story. Will audiences even show up to a Captain America movie that doesn’t star Chris Evans?
I mentally checked out of the MCU after Endgame. The only Marvel content I’ve seen beyond that is Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
I watch pretty much all of it still. Eventually. Sometimes months later. I think Echo is the only one I haven’t finished, but I saw several of them months late.
It’s mostly fine, but that’s about as far as I’d go. Among other issues, Multiverses dangle the specter of irrelevance in front of every story. I know it’s not always there in the script, but the meta commentary that everyone is replaceable and any event can be undone unavoidably reduces the stakes and my investment in characters. If they bother to make a point of concluding the “multiverse” arc, it needs to be something that promises to make the storytelling
crutchmechanic of crossing between them much harder to invoke in the future. It can be utter handwavium, but I need that promise from the Marvel Industrial Complex to me as an audience member.Then more generally, the Marvel “house style” is either so overwhelming that it ends up the equivalent of pleasant but low-stakes episodic TV from the before-times with 23 episodes per season, or else it’s shoehorned into a halfhearted attempt to let a director or showrunner do their thing and reduces the effectiveness of both. There was good TV then, and there is good Marvel now, but the specialness has worn off.
I was wondering how they were going to pull off multiverse shenanigans in a movie series and it turns out they just weren’t!
Among other issues, Multiverses dangle the specter of irrelevance in front of every story. I know it’s not always there in the script, but the meta commentary that everyone is replaceable and any event can be undone unavoidably reduces the stakes and my investment in characters.
I hear this a lot, but except in “What If…” for one character, they’ve never even hinted at doing this. I understand that it’s always hanging there, but is that a real concern or an imaginary one?
Tony invented time travel and it’s clear by the end of Endgame they can use it whenever. However no one ever says that lowers the stakes even though clearly everything can be fixed by that too.
Every story could just be solved by having Thor and/or Captain Marvel show up. They’re invincible. They have super strong powers. And yet we’re understanding when they don’t show up and solve everything.
Again I understand the concern, but I feel like they are imagined and not what is being told.
crossing between them much harder to invoke in the future.
I can assure you after Secret Wars that will be the case.
This was also going to be my response since I see this “anyone can come back” mentioned often, because of the Multiverse. Thanos: Dead, Tony Stark: Dead, Cap: Gone, Black Widow: Dead, HawkEye: likely retiring. The only two that came back were Gamora, because James Gunn had a story to finish, and Loki, which resulted in one of my favorite shows and was mostly isolated. Even without the “multiverse” aspect of it, heroes can come back from the dead in many ways.
Hell, they could easily have done a “Nomad” show of Cap and his adventures with Peggy in the new timeline in the past, but they opted not to do that.
I forgot about Gamora, largely because it isn’t a drop in, it’s a whole film to understand that it isn’t a drop in.
In terms of Cap (Steve Rogers), I fully expect them to cash that in someday, but honestly I’m ok with that. Not day one, but someday.
Wasn’t the time travel pretty clearly multiversal in nature, though? They wouldn’t be able to change their own past, only create a different future for another universe.
It’s pretty hand wavy, even though Hulk explains. For example Steve goes back and stays in the past, but it also becomes the future for everyone else. Or did we change which universe we followed when Steve stayed in the past?
I believe it’s implied that Steve traveled back to our timeline for the end of the movie.
It’d be real odd for just one scene to follow that logic while every other one doesn’t.
It was ambiguous. He also mentioned it being hard to just sit back and watch as the events of Avengers one occurred IIRC, which implied he needed to sit back to avoid affecting the timeline.
I liked Loki (esp the season 2 ending) but I can understand why others didn’t. It’s slow and attempting to be more cerebral than it really is. But IMO it’s still far better than all the films. I watched the whole Antman quantumania movie and I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about.
You’re missing surprisingly little.
IW + Endgame were such a high note to end on, they basically killed the series because everything else dies in comparison.
Gotg was fun, and well executed, but otherwise there’s basically been nothing, except Loki which was excellent, but then Deadpool and wolverine tried and fell over themselves in my book.
After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
I could not be less interested.
Harrison Ford, or at least his cumulative body of work, is a goddamned national treasure, but the man is 82. Stop throwing money at him and encouraging him to leave Wyoming to do boring things. Besides, he might try to fly himself, and we as a country don’t need that kind of stress.
Anyway, it’s so unrealistic. Why would America ever elect an octogenarian president?!?!?!
Yeah and one who is secretly a traitor plotting for global instability. Man, these writers need a reality check.
Harrison Ford claimed that he lives down the street from Conan O’Brien, on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend. That and the Jon Stewart episodes are hilarious.
Yeah, he’s great when he doesn’t have to promote and can just hang out not giving fucks left and right.
Maybe I’d watch if terrorists hijacked Air Force One and Harrison Ford yelled GET OFF MY PLANE
Oh boy, a secret global plot… the entire world in danger… Sounds so refreshing…
The Falcon is an alright character, but he’s too much of an asshole to take him seriously as Capt America.Yeah, Mackie has was too much baggage, and he kind of sucks at anything except serious dramatic acting.
He singlehandedly ruined altered carbon, that took effort.
What would make you interested?
Or specifically which part do you find uninteresting?
T’Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country’s past.
That’s the plot line of Black Panther.
Political involvement in the Avengers’ affairs causes a rift between Captain America and Iron Man.
That’s Captain America: Civil War.
What are you expecting to read?
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Yeah, no, I’d rather see him in shrinking, he was actually fun to watch there and I hate those kind of shows.
Harrison Ford either loves shooting a movie, or he HATES shooting a movie, and you will feel the same.
If the movie doesn’t end with him assembling a new team of Avengers out of Marvel’s most popular characters (including a mysteriously resurrected Wanda — no explanation needed yet) to help him defeat the bad guy, they’re wasting their time.
And all the new Avengers need to say that they’re only joining the team because of their person respect for Sam Wilson. That makes Sam important, and leans into his greatest strength, which is being a nice guy.
That’s a great point. Cap was important because he meant something to everyone, given his WW2 hero status. Sam is just a guy, nothing that makes him fill that role in any newer group. If they want to maintain the importance of the character in the film world, they need to fix that.
wait when did Wanda die
Doctor Strange 2
Jesus, I guess it was even more forgettable than I initially thought
It is a pretty relevant plot point. Especially with Agatha All Along running right now.
Yeah but AAA also is dancing around the fact that she might come back.
Anthony Mackie sucked so bad in Altered Carbon S2 that I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy anything he’s in again.
I don’t really blame him for that… I blame the book being better, and everyone on set clearly knowing it.
Also that he was basically given the job of doing an impression of another actor doing a character rather than being able to do something unique. Joel Kinnaman has an intensity that seems like it would be very hard to imitate.
First, he didn’t try.
Second, he didn’t have to, we wouldn’t have cared.
The guy couldn’t have been less in the moment if he spent the whole season on his phone, he kept trying to dramatic act his way through scifi, that doesn’t work, you need to relax and go with it, otherwise you just sound like an angsty asshole getting frustrated with your blue screen.
I was so excited by Altered Carbon S2. Now I’m sad again.
You’re mistaken. There is no Season 2 of Altered Carbon.
Yeah, I’ve rewatched s1 several times, but s2 only once
It’s not his fault lmao. He’s completely different in Twisted Metal.
So straight to streaming then?
For a $350 million budget? Not a chance, if they can salvage anything out of it.
That’s not great news.
Also for a film coming out in February, there isn’t much more than can do. Maybe ADR a few lines.
I also wonder if they’ll introduce a little more in the later trailers to prime folks for some of the, what I assume were going to be, surprises.
Of course maybe the other cut is better, and we don’t have any news on that.
Has there ever been a time when a test screening was wrong?
Then again, why would any company admit to it? Who knows, maybe the test screening of Joker 2 was to wild applause.
Test screenings gave us the shitty ending to I am legend
Producers gave us the shit CGI in that movie, and in the requel of The Thing.
While it is hard to get “official” information about it, there definitely have been news reports that some of the most successful movies ever had some bad test screenings and vice versa.
I can’t put my finger on the specific film, but there are those where the happy ending seems especially contrived, and the director’s commentary lamented that’s because anything less than a happy ending tended to test poorly with viewers. It might have something to do with the fact that they tested them tight after they watch the film rather than letting it sink in for a bit.
Test screenings are the J.D. Power Initial Quality Award of the film industry.
The Average Joes were supposed to lose to Globo Gym, but I don’t know that I’d call a line infraction leading to a blindfolded sudden death throw-off contrived…
I don’t think Joker 2 had a test screening
I’d completely forgotten about that TV show. I watched all of it, so that’s rather telling.
We could barely even remember the name of it.
The wife insisted on calling it Wingman and Handjob.
I just couldn’t get on board with the idea of a guy with a billion dollar set of equipment struggling to get pennies together to save the family boat business… Weren’t you billionaire Tony’s best mate? You seriously telling me he left you nothing?
Weren’t you billionaire Tony’s best mate?
That’s the other Black guy.
Damn it. I got the wrong light skinned, mechanically flying black man sidekick of a white superhero.
In fairness Anthony looks more like Terrence “Mathman” Howard than Don Cheadle does…
Wingman and Handjob.
It would have been so much more enjoyable with that title.
Inessential is a good word for it. It’s a marvel story nobody was begging for
Not only that, but the superhero bit is getting played out. Comics can have some real depth (and some real dumb stuff) but I feel like they haven’t done much besides the usual “not hero, gets powers, struggles with bad guy, understands powers, beats bad guy, happy ending, sequel teaser”.
They need to mix it up. Gimme a superhero crime drama, a romance novel, a true comedy not just quips, etc. They have a whole universe and years of content to draw from and they keep telling the same story over and over.
It’s well known that Marvel has done a wide variety of genres. The period piece/war movie, the Shakespearean drama, the heist movie, the space opera, the mystic stuff, the ethnic sociology piece, the spy movie - and then there’s the TV shows like Wanda’s literal sitcom, the mental drama in Moon Knight, surviving with general trauma in Hawkeye, a bit of classic horror with Werewolf by night, Agatha is doing pure witch drama, Falcon and WS was an international buddy cop show… Black Widow tried going hard as a super spy thriller (the Soviet style sleeper cell family that breaks up then reunites, the international assassin syndicate), it was just terribly done.
A lot of these do have their own genre and just happen to feature someone with superpowers. Is Winter Soldier (Cap 2 I mean) not just James Bond with a frisbee and the muscles to hold a helicopter or punch a car? Is Ant-Man 1 really a superhero movie if you take him out of Civil War and Avengers? Sure, there’s some overlap, and it’s never really “pure so-and-so genre” but always in the context of this shared universe. But it’s definitely more varied than some give it credit for.
It’s only in the latest phases that they don’t know what else to do while still introducing new faces (yes, there’s been a bunch of misses, but some are still working well). Would Blade as a gothic horror romance work? Is too much special effects the problem?
Oversaturation. Audiences are exhausted of Marvel. Take a 4 or 5 years off, Feige, make sure you have some kick ass ideas and scripts before you come back. This ain’t rocket science.
Given how few things Marvel has released this year, this isn’t exhaustion. I get the concept and Marvel was definitely guilty of it before. But it could just be that people don’t like the story. I feel Falcon and The Winter Soldier was comparably disliked. Maybe people just aren’t as behind this character as they were behind Evans’ Captain America
Have to disagree on that one. Yeah, Falcon has always been a C list character, but he’s been one of the prominent ones in the last several movies. I’m having trouble myself seeing how he can fill Cap’s shoes with no serum, but maybe he gets it in this one.
But what do I know, I thought Snyder’s Justice League franchise was total dogshit, and lots of people (cough, teenage boys, cough) thought it was awesome. And no, Whedon didn’t ruin it, it was garbage to start with.
The Eternals was the first Marvel film that I just completely didn’t care for, and then they followed it up with a weak Doctor Strange, a weak Black Panther, a weak Ant Man, a weak Thor, and a bunch of other bad movies. Guardians 3, Spider-Man 3 (even though it was Sony), and Deadpool were all pretty good, and I thought WandaVision and Loki were great. Other than that it’s been pretty bad.
I was hoping this little break they’ve had broken by Deadpool would breathe new life into the franchise, but it looks like that isn’t going to be the case.
Eh. If the IMDB casting page is correct, I’m still looking forward to it.
Isaiah Bradley was actually already in the TV show and there’s a clip of him in the trailer
Both of those characters where in the TV show. Neither did anything action wise though.
Ah, totally missed Joaquin in the TV show! Thanks!
My own theory is that this movie is going to relate to the asterisk in “Thunderbolts*” and is leading up to Secret Avengers based on the timing of when they come out
The Asterisk is revealed, its the Kill The Avengers subtitle
Source? I know that was a comic run but hadn’t seen any coverage on that in regards to the MCU. Plus, are there even “Avengers” to kill right now in the MCU?
I dont know tbh the algorithm showed me and I cant find it now.
Yeah, test screening reactions rarely are indicative of anything.
Months after Isaiah was rescued from Germany, he was able to finally return home where he was promptly court-martialed and given life in prison for stealing the Captain America costume. Starting in 1943, Isaiah served seventeen years in solitary confinement.
That’s almost cartoonishly evil, and at the same time in reality it would have probably been worse.
Noooo I had high hopes
