Captain America: Brave New World makes Marvel history in the worst way

New film has hit an unfortunate milestone for the comic book franchise. The director of Captain America: Brave New World has addressed the tepid reviews of the latest Marvel outing. Released on 14 February, Brave New World sees Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson assume the Captain America mantle after Chris Evans’s exit in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

The film, directed by Julius Onah, has not fared well with critics, earning a paltry 49 per cent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. More worryingly, however, Brave New World has made cinema history for the comic book franchise for the worst possible reason.

CinemaScore measures a film’s appeal by polling early reactions to major releases. It is the only Marvel film to have ever earned a B- rating, with The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels all scoring higher with a B+.

Even the much-maligned Eternals (2021) scraped a B+ rating. By comparison, at the top end of the spectrum, earning an A+ was The Avengers, Black Panther, and Avengers: Endgame. That said, it’s not all bad news for Brave New World with the film performing much better with fans than its history-making low CinemaScore might suggest.

Since its release, the film has managed to earn a much better audience score of 80 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes based on over 5,000 verified reviews. During a recent appearance on the Phase Hero podcast, Onah addressed the film’s mixed-bag reception. “I’m just excited to be sharing the movie with audiences,” he said. “You make this for audiences to go have a great time and have a really, really good experience, and we also had a great time making this movie and worked really hard to create something that spoke to themes and ideas that were personal to us.”.

Instead of focusing on how his movies are perceived, the director explained that the process is simple: “At the end of the day, you make the best movie you can, you put it out there, and you let audiences react to it.”. The filmmaker added: “I’m a big believer that, when the audience finds the movie and gets the movie, it becomes theirs.”.

Onah – also behind The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) – said he enjoys being a part of those conversations “as a fan, too,” and therefore he “welcome[s] [critiques] as a storyteller”. In a two-star review of Brave New World, film critic Adam White wrote: “I suppose it’s a victory of sorts that Brave New World isn’t the catastrophe that its endless delays and reshoots might have suggested.

“But in the wake of Eternals, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels – otherwise known as three different shades of slop – the MCU cannot afford to rest on producing merely functional entertainment anymore. Remember when these movies used to dazzle?”.