Commentary — ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Suffered Because Of Its Marketing
by Frank Martin
Audiences tend to overlook just how important marketing is for a film or television show. Despite artistic aspirations, the message of an ad campaign drastically affects how the audience experiences a given project. Marketing is what sucks the audience into a film’s (or show’s) appeal, and that can come from many different directions. For Captain America: Brave New World, the campaign relied heavily on the inclusion of the Red Hulk, which ended up damaging the film as a whole.
Even though this is the fourth film in the Captain America series, it’s the first with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) taking the lead as Captain America. He was given the mantle by Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in Avengers Endgame and decided to fully embrace the role in the Disney+ series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. The plot of Brave New World focuses on Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), who had been held in captivity by General — now President — Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) for years. Now that he has broken loose, Sterns seeks revenge on Ross by showing the world his true anger, which he hopes to accomplish by transforming him into the Red Hulk.
There’s no doubt that the Red Hulk is an interesting character to captivate audiences. Comic book fans will be familiar with him, but the general public would be curious as to why a Hulk is red. Sensing that Sam Wilson’s Captain America wouldn’t be enough to sell the film, it leans heavily on the Red Hulk’s inclusion. However, the Red Hulk wasn’t a significant part of the story; he only showed up at the end. The film would have benefited greatly if the Red Hulk was a surprise. That way, the experience of building up towards the Red Hulk’s emergence would have a lot more impact. Instead, audiences were expecting him from the very beginning, and so the entire film just turned into one big waiting game for the character to arrive.
Captain America: Brave New World Is now in theaters.
