Captain America: Wasting a Movie Star
The Winter Soldier of our discontent.
We’re in the midst of a quiet Harrison Ford renaissance. It’s been fun and fascinating to watch this octogenarian surprise us, especially after a few decades sleeping through some real doldrums1. He’s crushing it on television, with his performances in the Yellowstone prequel 1923 and Shrinking showing off some heretofore hidden depths. And every time he returns to one of his towering roles in genre-defining franchises, he complicates the role by playing the weight of living a future that he barely belongs in. Marvel casting him as the improbably named President Thaddeus Ross opened up some intriguing possibilities for that same kind of legacy interrogation. There’s Jack Ryan, the badass CIA analyst (lol) from Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. And, even more relevant, there’s Air Force One’s President James Marshall, which is the last time you’ll read that name here. He’s President Harrison Ford on the poster, and he’s President Harrison Ford in our hearts.
In all of his ‘90s political thrillers, Harrison Ford was the gruffly handsome face of liberal hawkdom. He stood for America using its benevolently aggressive might to help any country that needed us, due to the moral obligation that that might conferred.2 Those politics, as displayed in the movies, are bananas. Like, there’s an obscene amount of extrajudicial violence in Air Force One—including the execution of a separatist general who had just been released from his legally questionable imprisonment—that we’re supposed to cheer for.
But the politics were narratively consistent, at least, and extremely crowd-pleasing at the time. To bring this man into the MCU as a neocon hawk general-turned-president is to immediately invite some striking compare and contrast. It could be just like bringing the stupidly handsome face of ‘70s paranoia in to play the secretly fascist government bureaucrat in Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Steve Rogers’s disillusionment and disappointment in seeing hot Bob Woodward portray the exact kind of government corruption he warned us against was electrifying, because it matched our own. That kind of electricity is what makes The Winter Soldier some of the best the MCU has ever served up.
Unfortunately, Captain America: Brave New World completely lacks that or any electricity, and is some of the dimmest the MCU has ever served up. That dimness comes with some particularly unfortunate timing—the image of a rampaging president destroying the White House should be so potent and provocative right now. Unfortunately, it didn’t provoke anything in me but sighs.
As it plays out, there’s no reason for Harrison Ford to be the one playing Thaddeus Ross. There’s no reversal of the iconic “How dare YOU, sir?” There is a scene on Air Force One, but the president’s Peloton ride is the focus, and he never tells anyone to get off his plane. He never even does the famous Ford finger-wag.
Ford’s President Ross isn’t in conversation with his Jack Ryan or his President Harrison Ford at all. He’s barely in conversation with any coherent plot points, let alone politics. Ross is essentially a Boomer estranged from his Gen X daughter Betty (Liv Tyler, literally phoning in most of her performance) and using his “Together” campaign promises to prove to her that he’s not the raging warmonger he once was. So, his Shrinking character, but a president instead of a therapist, and thuddingly boring instead of surprisingly sly.
The movie surrounding him is thuddingly boring, too. The liberal hawkdom of the ‘90s, and even the bracing cynicism of some of the earlier MCU entries, are gone. Instead, there’s a plot about discovering adamantium that may make a bit more sense if you saw The Eternals. There’s a primary villain that may give a bit more of a thrill if you loved Edward Norton’s Incredible Hulk. And there’s a promise to rebuild the Avengers if you’re not already exhausted by what these movies have become.3 All of these unmotivated plots take the foreground in what’s supposed to be a hard launch of Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the new Captain America, and it’s all a mess.
The incoherent politics are matched by incoherent editing4 and plotting; all symptoms of frantic reshoots, to be sure, but also of the total lack of any point of view. Sam is struggling to fill Steve’s super serum shoes as Captain America, but that struggle is never meaningfully conveyed. In particular, Disney doesn’t have the minerals to make explicit his specific struggle being a Black Captain America when America famously hates Black people. Instead, we get one monologue about the pressure to be excellent and honour “everyone who has fought for a seat at the table.” It’s just plausibly deniable allusions to something substantive, but not substantive in its own right. Or, as my wife put it, a series of lazy gestures towards being a movie. And an utter waste of Harrison Ford in his renaissance era.
Mr. Campopiano, those are photos of three different possums.
As opposed to conservative hawkdom, which is more about using America’s belligerently aggressive might to conquer.
Based on my calculations, there’s about 17 people who are about to fucking LOVE this movie.
At one point, I asked my friend if we were accidentally watching an advance cut that hadn’t gone through a full round of editing.
I just re-watched Dial of Destiny, and Harrison really brings it for those moments when he’s talking about Marion. Or TO Marion. The scene at the very end is so poignant.