Steven (my 10yo) and I went and saw the new Marvel movie yesterday. It's the fourth Captain America movie, but of course following the events of Avengers Endgame (where Steve Rogers retired) and the Disney+ show Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where Sam Wilson becomes the new Captain America, it's got Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson in the title role. So maybe the start of a new Cap trilogy? We'll see.
I'll try to avoid spoilers here, since the movie just released this week.
Overall, it was a solid political/espionage thriller with superheroes involved. Much like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, while it had its superhero action scenes, it was really a story about solving a mystery and preventing political ramifications from damaging the status quo. In that sense, I really liked it. It didn't need to be a "big damn movie" to tell its story. It used the political and espionage angles to inform us about the characters, rather than setting up a mystical MacGuffin to prevent the end of the world/multiverse.
Most of the characters had clear motives, and most of the principle characters had a satisfactory story arch within the movie.
The action scenes were well shot and well edited, so I never felt confused, or that I was just watching a big CGI puke vomited all over the screen.
The dialogue could have been snappier at times. There were a few funny bits, but not as much as in previous Cap films or in the FatWS series.
There were a couple of well-placed cameos of characters from previous films/shows that made sense within the narrative, not just as "member-berries."
Was it great? I wouldn't say that. I enjoyed it, and I think people who don't really care about superheroes or science fiction but like espionage thrillers (Bourne movies, etc.) would enjoy it despite the supersoldiers and gamma-fied people and whatnot. And it's got just enough of that comic book goodness to keep the comics nerds in their seats.
I think it could have been improved if they had not spoiled a few things in their own promotional materials. If they had kept people wondering "will he? won't he?" about Thunderbolt Ross turning into Red Hulk, for example, that might have been better. But that might have been an impossibility in today's social media spoiler age.
So again, a solid movie. Worth the price of admission, but probably not one to set up among the best of the MCU. But in comparison to the MCU movies of the past two years, it's nice to see them putting out something small, contained, and decently crafted.
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