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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is taking a bit of a break in 2024. With only one major movie release on the calendar – Deadpool & Wolverine, which opens in July – the MCU is being uncharacteristically quiet in an era that has increasingly seen the franchise releasing three to four features in the same year.
This year off for the MCU seems to be the result of the series losing its grip on Hollywood post-Avengers: Endgame. While the MCU has delivered hits such as Spider-Man: No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness over the last few years, the series’ successes have been outnumbered by failures like Eternals, The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder.
It’s clear to see that the MCU has become much more hit-and-miss following the close of the Infinity Saga. Even Deadpool & Wolverine, which is poised to be the big cinematic centerpiece of the summer box office, is doing so off the strength of the previous Deadpool and X-Men films, which were notably disconnected from the MCU. However, the MCU is looking to have a big year in 2025.
While new faces to the franchise are set to be introduced in films like The Fantastic Four and Blade, the broader fate of the MCU lies in the hands of the first Marvel Studios film set to hit theaters in 2025 – Captain America: Brave New World. Here’s how:
Captain America Is Rebuilding the Avengers
It has been five years since Avengers: Endgame was released in theaters, and in that time the MCU has grown increasingly directionless and scattered. One of the biggest reasons for this is also one of the simplest: the Avengers have been completely absent. While we’ve seen our favorite heroes’ stories continue in standalone films and shows such as Thor: Love and Thunder, Hawkeye, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, She-Hulk and WandaVision, the overall status of the Avengers has been unclear.
There have been no Avengers films to tie everything together, and the specifics of who is and isn’t on the team – as well as if the team even exists at all anymore – have been left vague.
However, this looks like it is about to change with Captain America: Brave New World, which is set to open in February 2025. This past week, Marvel Studios debuted the first look at the fourth Captain America film at CinemaCon, the industry convention which gives theater owners and exhibitors the chance to get a preview of the upcoming slate of features from Hollywood’s major studios.
In the footage that was shown, Anthony Mackie stars as Sam Wilson, who has now taken up the mantle of Captain America. He is speaking with Thaddeus Ross, now played by Harrison Ford, after the passing of William Hurt, who has been elected President of the United States. President Ross tasks Wilson with a major endeavor: to rebuild the Avengers Initiative.
While the rest of the footage shows other action scenes and a tense interaction between Wilson and Ross, the core of the film is clearly pitched as Wilson reviving the Avengers. This implies that the team has been mostly inactive since the events of Endgame, and the world has been relying on the actions of individual heroes rather than any organized effort.
With Wilson taking the reins of bringing some version of the Avengers together again, Captain America would once again be the leader of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, likely including new members such as Shang-Chi, She-Hulk, Star-Lord and more.
The Cap Movies Have Always Been Central to the MCU
Tying the events of Captain America films so closely to the Avengers movies is nothing new. The first Cap film was subtitled The First Avenger, then The Winter Soldier upended the entire political system that established the Avengers team to begin with before Civil War came along and focused on how the team reckoned with those changes, even factoring most Avengers characters into the story and causing many fans to label the third Captain America movie as Avengers 2.5.
By making the reformation of the Avengers a central part of Brave New World, Marvel Studios is continuing the tradition of making the Captain America series central to the broader story of the entire MCU.
Now, we don’t expect Brave New World to operate as a mini Avengers movie in the same way that Civil War did. While there may be some exciting cameos here and there, as there often are in major Marvel releases, the story of Brave New World seems likely to focus very closely on Sam Wilson and his relationship with President Ross, who is rumored to transform into his comic-book alter-ego, Red Hulk.
In addition to that, the film is bringing back a handful of characters that have not been seen since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, such as Liv Tyler’s Betsy Ross and Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns. That said, Mackie made it clear in a conversation with EW that viewers do not need to go back to the 2008 Hulk film with Edward Norton in order to understand Brave New World, stating that “This movie is a clear reset. It really reestablishes the idea of what this universe is and what this universe is going to be.”
Mackie continued on to say that Brave New World feels very reminiscent of The Winter Soldier in that way, as the second Captain America film brought a new creative direction to the MCU that went on to define much of the Infinity Saga’s future. If the same really is true of Brave New World, then fans may finally get a solid feel of how Marvel’s universe operates in a world after Endgame. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige also likened the film to The Winter Soldier during his CinemaCon presentation, saying that this new film is “another fast-paced, relatively grounded action thriller.”
Does the Good Will of the Infinity Saga Still Exist?
With Deadpool & Wolverine building on the X-Men and Deadpool films from Fox, while both Blade and The Fantastic Four are gearing up to introduce new characters and ideas into the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World stands alone as the only imminent MCU film that is firmly rooted in the franchise’s pre-existing story.
This fourth Cap flick will be directly building on the previous three, as well as the Avengers films and 2008’s The Incredible Hulk to boot. This deep connection to so many other MCU features from the last 15 years is precisely what will make Brave New World such a crucial marker for the long-term health of the franchise.
Much of Marvel’s success in the latter years of phases Two and Three were because of the immense good will that Marvel Studios had built with general audiences. Both casual and die-hard fans loved this world and its characters. The MCU was consistently delivering great films that satisfied and excited audiences on a broad scale, which led to a time in which the MCU was averaging a box office gross of over $1 billion per movie. After Endgame, the MCU has scattered its characters to the wind, isolating many of their stories from one another and introducing many new characters along the way.
This has produced mixed results, but many of the most successful films have been those that steered closest to what Marvel was doing before – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. From what we can tell so far, Captain America: Brave New World is aiming to fall in line with films like these.
That said, if audiences were to reject Brave New World, it would be a much more substantial blow to the MCU machine than if The Fantastic Four or Blade were to fail. That is because both Blade and The Fantastic Four are being positioned as new additions onto the existing MCU, whereas Brave New World is something that exists at the very core of the franchise.
Everything we know about this fourth Captain America film points toward it being engineered to feel like classic Marvel, something reminiscent of the franchise’s peak years a decade ago. If this movie were to crash and burn, it would be audiences clearly communicating that they are no longer interested in following the core of the MCU. Such a turn would be detrimental to both the franchise’s overall reputation and the prospective success of any future Avengers film. However, if Brave New World connects with audiences and becomes another major hit for Marvel Studios, it could also get the MCU back on track to continue its incredible run as Hollywood’s biggest franchise.
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