Captain America: Brave New World failed to deliver a great Sam Wilson story because it didn’t really deliver a Sam Wilson story at all. The film’s main character didn’t have much of an arc in his own movie. His old nemesis did, though. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross’ desire to live long enough to earn back his daughter’s love made a previously unlikable character more complex and sympathetic. It also gave the movie an emotional anchor.
Ross’ story wasn’t a perfectly developed subplot, but it was still effective for some very basic, very important reasons. And both its strengths and shortcomings provide lessons the MCU should learn from going forward.
The MCU Should Tell More Stories From Non-Hero Perspectives
The MCU doesn’t often tell stories that center non-heroes. But when it does it finds a whole lot of success, both critical and commercial. Aveners: Infinity War, one of the most impressive superhero movies ever made, is told from Thanos’ point of view. Black Panther, another box office smash and the franchise’s only Best Picture nominee, is just as much Killmonger’s story as it is T’Challa’s.
The franchise has also found success by investing in their antagonist’s story. A big reason Captain America: Civil War is one of the MCU’s best is because it shows exactly why Baron Zemo has a genuine reason for hating the Avengers. His story, given real thought and weight, forced us to reexamine Earth’s mightiest heroes in a way that made the group more dynamic and interesting well past the film’s own runtime. Meanwhile Loki became a face of the franchise because the Thor series made us understand why he did evil things. Just as Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings wouldn’t have been half as good if it didn’t treat its villain, Tony Leung’s Wenwu, with genuine reverence.
Thaddeus Ross might have held a few defensible positions before, but he was never a hero in the MCU. At best he was always an obviously unlikeable antagonist. It wasn’t until Captain America: Brave New World that he became actually interesting because the film treated as more than just a cigar-chomping general filling a stock role in someone else’s story. He became an actual person with a story of his own worth caring about.
He was one of the best parts of a very flawed film because for the first time the MCU humanized him. It showed even a macho general in a world of “enhanced individuals” elected to the highest office in the nation was still just a person with normal failings and vulnerabilities. He wasn’t driven by an ambition few will ever understand. He was driven by something far more relatable. A sick old man was just a dad trying to make things right before it was too late.
Despite his presence and power, Ross had only ever filled a position in the MCU. He posed an obstacle to the real heroes. Any high-ranking soldier/politician could have done that without changing any film he’d appeared in. This time he was an actual character with a story worthy of our emotional investment. That made the movie better, which is something Marvel Studios should remember. Because while the MCU has told plenty of great stories about heroes, it’s also really good at telling stories about non-heroes, too. And since they’ve told so few of them, there’s more creative opportunity on the dark side of the hero/villain divide.
Remember to Give Major Characters an Actual Arc
This seems so very, very obvious, and yet….
Captain America: Brave New World is not the first MCU film to forget about a basic element of storytelling. Lately the franchise has a tendency to forget main characters should get an actual story, not just something to do. The central figure of a story should undergo some kind of change as a result of dealing with a specific conflict. That’s where themes comes from, and those are the entire point of telling stories.
That didn’t happen with Sam Wilson in his own movie, just as it didn’t happen with Scott Lang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Instead both were just sort of present as stuff happened to other people. They began and ended those movies as the exact same people they started as. That’s bad on its own. It’s even worse when M.O.D.O.K. gets way more of an arc in an Ant-Man movie than Ant-Man.
(Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also suffered from a less egregious version of this. The movie abandoned Shuri’s very personal, very emotional arc halfway through the film before suddenly remembering it in the third act. She did undergo a change, but it had less impact than it should have.)
President Thaddeus Ross’ story in Captain America: Brave New World wasn’t exactly a masterclass in storytelling. (We’ll get to why and the lessons Marvel can learn from its shortcomings.) But it got the basics right. He had a logical, relatable (though not wholly defensible) motivation for everything he’d done and planned to do. Then a new conflict—which was especially poignant since he was ultimately responsible for it—interrupted those plans. He then dealt with the problem and emerged from it changed. The Ross at the start of the film never would have publicly admitted to his wrongdoings like the Ross at the end. As a result he actually did achieve the one thing he wanted. He regained his daughter’s trust and love, a result that evoked genuine pathos.
That’s a simple concept, one the most successful movie studio in the world shouldn’t need to be reminded of. But lately the MCU has forgotten that basic principle of storytelling.
Don’t Sacrifice Story for Spectacle
Ross might contribute Captain America: Brave New World most interesting story, yet it would have been more impactful if the movie spent even more time on it. Since he’s not the main character, we didn’t get as many scenes of his internal turmoil and self-reflection as his story deserved. (Also it doesn’t help when two vital scenes we did get are so unnatural you have to swear a real human was on set to film them.) But the arc the film chose to tell also would have been even more impactful if we never saw the Red Hulk. That monster’s appearance undercut the story the film told.
It’s hard to tell a superhero movie to not show a big red rage monster fans have waited more than 15 years to see. MCU movies are not quiet little dramas. They are big, bold, entertaining mythological tales of gods and monsters literally fighting one another. Red Hulk’s entertaining White House destroying sequence was certainly that. But it wasn’t entirely honest with what preceded his arrival.
The conclusion to his internal conflict—about fighting his worst natural instincts in a desperate end-of-life attempt to atone for past mistakes—would have been far better if Ross’ story had actually overcome his worst instincts. Sure, the Leader had unknowingly fed him gamma radiation, but the Red Hulk only came out because Ross lost his temper. That’s what the old Ross always did. Seeing him become a better man would have had more meaning if he’d successfully done that without becoming a big red rage monster first.
The MCU instead sacrificed a part of its story (which again, it chose to tell) for the sake of spectacle. It wanted it both ways. Marvel wanted to show us Red Hulk and then have Ross change with anoff-screen confession. It still worked, just not as well as it could and should have. It wasn’t as honest a development as it should have been. And in a movie where its main character didn’t get his own story, it needed the best version of Ross’s it could deliver.
The MCU has always delivered great spectacles. That was true in Captain America: Brave New World. But plenty of meaningless movies and forgettable franchises can deliver that, too. A great cinematic universe can only continue telling stories if it continuously makes us care about the people in them. That’s what keeps us coming back.
Embrace Your Characters’ Deep MCU Past
The MCU has a problem few franchises will ever face: it got really old really fast. Iron Man came out in 2008. Since then Marvel Studios has released 34 more movies (and counting). To appreciate how incredible that is, just compare that to another Disney-owned behemoth. The first Star wars film came out in 1977. So far Lucasfilm has “only” released 12 movies. When you also factor in all of the MCU shows, specials, and other Marvel releases that are now part of the franchise thanks to the multiverse and that’s a whole lot of story. It’s really hard for the MCU to avoid completely rehashing old releases, let alone making new ones that feel fresh and original.
But Thunderbolt Ross’ story in Captain America: Brave New World shows the MCU’s age can also be a great asset. Ross’ story had more resonance than another antagonist with a similar arc would have because viewers have a past with him. We’ve known who he was for a long long time. That made the very act of seeing him try to change meaningful by itself. It also meant something that we knew just how long he’d been estranged from his daughter. And by bringing back two characters from long ago the film also reminded fans that the more you invest in the entire franchise the more you’ll get out of it.
At a time when the MCU has abandoned the serialized storytelling it used to build an empire, drawing on its characters’ rich and lengthy past is a way to recapture that. By having the seemingly forgotten Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns be a major part of Ross’ story even after all these years the movie made clear that what happened before matters and always will. That gives us more reason to invest our time, energy, and care into these stories going forward.
And that’s all we want even after all these years. That’s all we’ll want for as long as Disney keeps making MCU films and TV shows. Give us a reason to keep caring. Give us stories and characters worth caring about. If, after all this time Marvel Studios can do that with Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, it can do it with anybody.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He believes now is the time for a Justin Hammer MCU redemption arc. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.