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There have been other less-than-super Marvel movies before this latest one. Remember the dreadful "Eternals"? Or the only slightly less awful "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"? Remember not long ago when whispers of "superhero fatigue" started making the rounds? The new "Captain America: Brave New World" is a reminder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now 17 years old, and definitely showing its age. The sight of computer-generated super-beings zooming around computer-generated skies is no longer that big a deal, and even the calculating attempts to sentimentalize these movies' characters are no longer likely to elicit much more than a sigh and a slump among viewers. (One of the non-super participants in the new picture dreams only of walking once again amid the cherry blossoms of Washington, D.C.)

The movie's concept portends an uphill climb to find favor among Marvel fans. Captain America -- a comic-book character rooted in the long-ago days of World War II -- has always been a valiant patriot capable of taking on such vicious antagonists as Red Skull and Baron Zemo and the hateful Hydra. And as incarnated by the irresistibly appealing Chris Evans, he was a classic big-screen good guy. That Captain America is now gone, however (Evans' Marvel contract was up), and he's been replaced by Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson, who you will know if you were dutifully watching the Disney+ TV series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" four years ago, has been promoted to the position of Cap's replacement, inheriting the big guy's bad-ass shield and retaining his own big flappy wing-suit.

The main problem here is that Mackie, an excellent actor, is overqualified for this role, and isn't naturally inclined to manifest the bright-eyed pulpiness required to play it. Adding further complication, his character, once a junior assistant to Evans' Captain America, has now acquired his own subaltern, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), a young man who has the misfortune of not having been given very much of interest to do.

Those who remember "The Incredible Hulk," that early Marvel hit from 2008, may happily note the return here of two characters from that film - the mad scientist Dr. Samuel Sterns, played once again by Tim Blake Nelson (a great performer not at all equipped to be a hissable comic-book villain, even with the addition of laser-green eyes), and, very briefly, the lovely Betty Ross, likewise returning, and still played by Liv Tyler. You'll recall that Betty is the daughter of the stormy General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, previously played by the late William Hurt, who, with the character now promoted to president, has been replaced by Harrison Ford. Ford has been given what was clearly intended to be a centerpiece scene in the movie -- at the end of it, during an action outburst that borders on ho-hum, when he suddenly turns into Red Hulk (in other words, he turns into a giant guy who in every way resembles Mark Ruffalo's Hulk except he's red). This might have been a fun surprise if Marvel hadn't already loudly revealed it in the movie's trailer -- but, for reasons that surpasseth all understanding, they did.

I wish I could say something positive about this movie, because a lot of people spent a lot of time and a lot of money ($180 million, purportedly) making it. But it quickly withers in memory. The picture is low on energy (director Julius Onah may have been undermined by what are said to have been extensive reshoots and by a script that required five writers to churn out). The big-deal conspiracy at the center of the story is too whatever-whatever to care about, and one potentially interesting character -- an Israeli Mossad assassin called Sabra in the comics but more carefully dismissed as Ruth Bat-Seraph here -- flits in and out of the standard-issue action like a lost gnat. No superheroes were involved in the production of this movie.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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