Did Critics Understand Captain America: Brave New World? The Co-Writers Opinion!
Captain America: Brave New World was the first MCU to release this year. Currently it’s grossed $406 million at the box office with a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. One of the writers recently did an interview where he talked about the movie and some interesting things to say. Let’s talk about it!
The Interview: Yesterday an interview was done with one of the writers for Captain America: Brave New World, Rob Edwards was asked about the movie and the response to it and said this. “I kind did, kind didn't I think similar things have happened…with a lot of different projects. It was weird to me, because some of my friends who are critics, I said, ‘I think you guys missed it. I think you guys got it wrong.’” I saw this quote and had some thoughts on it and want to share them, here it is…
My Thoughts
- I feel he was in a tricky position and spot when it came to writing Captain America: Brave New World. Infamously this movie went through massive reshoots and changes and got delayed multiple times. This movie was supposed to release in May 2024 then got delayed to July 2024 then got pushed back to February 2025. Had it stuck to its original release this movie would have been released almost a year ago. It’s tricky to be a writer for movies because sometimes movies get changed and reshot a lot. No matter how many times a movie is reshot and reworked your name is still attached as the writer. When the response to Captain America: Brave New World has been pretty mixed your name is attached to it and you get blamed for it. That happened with Jeff Loveness who wrote Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Widely regarded as bottom tier MCU and the weakest of the trilogy. At one point he was attached to write Avengers: Doomsday. People were saying “I’m worried about Doomsday because I didn’t like Quantumania”. I don’t blame Quantumania on him I blame that on the executes mandating the heck out of the movie. Jeff Loveless could be a great writer but we don’t know because the movie he wrote was micromanaged by a committee of people. Given that Brave New World went through a bunch of changes the script that he wrote isn’t the script that we saw.
- When I hear his quotes and try to defend the movie. On the one hand I want to look positively on the movie you worked on. It’s probably never a good feeling when a movie that you spent months, maybe even years working on gets disappointing reviews. I don’t think Kevin Feige, Anthony Mackie, the director, or the writers wanted the reviews it got. He’s trying to be defensive about the movie which is acceptable and totally normal to do. The part where these quotes I don’t think quite add up is he is very very very aware of the production for that movie not going smoothly. It’s probably also not a surprise to the cast and crew that the movie got less than favorable reviews due to the reshoots. It’s not like this was the original draft of the movie and there weren't any production troubles and they released a movie that people didn’t like. That’s a different story. But when a movie goes through multiple rounds of reshoots and rewrites there’s a good chance that the movie doesn’t turn out to be as good as anybody hoped. Therefore, the reshoots and the changes and how generic it feels, is why it has a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the third lowest rated MCU film on Rotten Tomatoes beating out Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
- The other thing to look at with the reviews of the movie and the discussion about it online. This isn’t a film that’s getting fantastic reviews or bad reviews. No matter if you’re positive or negative on it, it’s slightly positive or slightly negative. I seem to be more positive on it than most people, I gave it a “B” in my initial review. I saw it one time after that and stood by everything I said. Even the people that went negative on Rotten Tomatoes most of them are mixed negative like a C+. A C+ isn’t a bad score, it’s a fine score. I don’t think the movie is getting as crapped on as he seems to think it is based on his quotes and what he said. Its box office numbers are decent, they aren’t terrible but they aren’t great. The budget for the movie seems to be unclear if the movie really did cost $180 million which I highly doubt, $406 million is an ok number. If the budget is actually over $300 million then this is a disastrous number. Right now I think it’s doing ok at the box office and its reviews are fine.
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