Thefirst trailer for Captain America: Brave New World dropped last week, and it looks like theMCU’s first big release of 2025 is going to crib from ’90s thrillers as much as The Winter Soldier cribbed from ’70s thrillers. By that I mostly mean that it’s a political thriller prominently featuring Harrison Ford.
Harrison Ford Was The King Of ’90s Thrillers
Ford made a lot of movies in that mode in the ’90s. The iconic actor has starred in thrillers throughout his career, like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation in 1974 — a supporting role back before Harrison Ford became “Harrison Ford” — and Firewall, a pretty middling bank heist flick from 2006. But in the ’90s, he owned the genre. Between 1990 and 1997, Ford headlined Presumed Innocent, Patriot Games, The Fugitive, Clear and Present Danger, The Devil’s Own, and Air Force One. That last movie is most relevant here because, as in Brave New World, he was playing the President of the United States.
As for any movie star in their prime, Ford’s presence was a special effect. If you wanted intensity, Tom Cruise was your top choice. You wanted the guy next door? You went with Tom Hanks. But if you wanted steely intensity that could devolve at any time into an irascible smirk? That’s Harrison Ford. It’s the reason that he makes for the perfect fictional president. You believe he could command the Situation Room and that he would be fun to get a beer with once the crisis was over.
Since 2008, when he donned the fedora for a fourthIndiana Jonesmovie, Ford has largely been playing the hits. He came back as Han Solo for the first time in 32 years for 2015’sStar Wars: The Force Awakens. Following that film’s massive success, he returned to Rick Deckard inBlade Runner 2049, Han Solo again in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Indiana Jones once more with last year’s Dial of Destiny. Thunderbolt Ross isn’t a character he’s played before, but the way the movie appears to be using him is a similar brand of pastiche.
When Ford plays these parts, it’s exhilarating to see him bring the energy, and he really seems to be bringing it in Captain America 4. In the trailer’s climactic exchange, he tells Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, “You might be Captain America, but you’re no Steve Rogers,” and it really hits. He knows how to play every facet of an intimidating old man, and when he throws the full light of his star power on it, it really shines.
Captain America: Brave New World Needs To Live Up To Its Iconic Star
The rest of the trailer… eh. It has the typical shoddy MCU compositing that brought down the visuals of movies like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania. That last one is understandable — the whole movie took place in the CGI goop of the Quantum Realm — but the worst looking shots in No Way Home and Shang-Chi are set in real-world locations. Does a shot of Peter Parker and Happy Hogan standing at Tony Stark’s grave really need to send us spelunking into the uncanny valley? An image of Shang-Chi standing in a field? These movies look so consistently bad, and the effects shots in this trailer are no exception.
The CGI is embarrassing. This moviereportedlycost $350-375 million — which means it will need to do Avatar: The Way of Water numbers to turn much of a profit — and the FX look like they were paid for with the change in Bob Iger’s couch cushions. The Red Hulk, the wings on Cap’s suit, the cherry blossom trees behind Sam — it all looks glaringly fake. And with it arriving less than a year after a visually spectacular movie like Dune: Part Two, viewers will notice. There just isn’t a memorable image in the trailer and, the ones that are meant to pop, stick out for their shoddy use of CG.
Hopefully a huge chunk of that budget went to Ford. He’s the only special effect I’m seeing that looks worth the price.
