“Captain America: Brave New World” hits theaters this weekend, and its box office prognosis is …pretty bad: a 51% critics score of Rotten Tomatoes currently and a projected opening weekend of less than $100 million after a $12 million opening last night. That’s not as dismal as, say, 2023’s “The Marvels,” but it’s not a return to form similar to last year’s “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
But according to Vulture, the tepid response to “Brave New World” comes as no surprise to Marvel Studios. An anonymous source told the publication that Marvel knew it had a clunker on its hands as early as this time last year for multiple reasons. Disastrous test screenings were one, as well as the film’s extensive reshoots and script revisions (which included adding Giancarlo Esposito at the last minute), but MCU fans already knew about those.
Unsurprisingly, the source also called out Harrison Ford for being difficult on set, calling him “very much a diva” and “one of crankiest performers I ever dealt with.” Ford has a reputation as a curmudgeon, but the source defended director Julius Onah‘s work on the production, stressing that “dealing with A-list egos was the issue. It was mainly just Harrison Ford.” Then there is the film’s problematic characterization of Ford’s Thaddeus Ross, whose alter ego, Red Hulk, “reads as an allusion to [President Donald] Trump.” Oh, and as far as the source is concerned, the film’s original subtitle, “New World Order,” didn’t help things either; that’s easy fodder for conspiracy theorists.
The first paragraph of the source’s comments to Vulture reveal that those who worked on “Brave New World” knew it was doomed early on. “I think everyone on the crew knew this is probably not going to be a good film,” stated the source. “Some of the action sequences were not believable. We had a lot of frustrations on set. After principal photography was finished, it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to introduce the leader of the Serpent Society.’ It was on, then it was off, then it was on again. That’s very expensive to do. My co-workers who spent more time on “Brave New World” than I did said, ‘Yeah, this has been a really rough production.'”
In a word, ouch. The Vulture source also called the film “the most tense Marvel shoot I’ve ever worked on” and blamed the studio for the film’s swollen budget. “Reshoots are a part of making any movie like this with a big budget. But this isn’t Marvel’s first rodeo,” continued the source. “Entire sequences we shot won’t make it into the film, and that’s very expensive.” If Marvel doesn’t recoup its production costs at the box office with “Brave New World,” (and it’s an outside shot that happens), then the source thinks the studio has no one to blame but themselves.
The source paints a grim picture, but it’s too early to call “Captain America: Brave New World” a dud just yet. After all, the MCU is still king (for now) of the box office, and “Deadpool & Wolverine” performed incredibly well in theaters last summer. But if this film does poorly this weekend, then there’s more pressure on “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” later this year, and superhero fatigue may well have hit its crisis point.
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