Marvel’s new ‘Captain America’ is a risky superhero handoff. Is it the reset Disney needs?

Minutes into the first fight scene of the new “Captain America: Brave New World,” a foe quips that the Captain America he dreamed of killing was bigger than current mantle-holder Sam Wilson, played by Anthony Mackie.

The legacy of that patriotic moniker looms large over the film’s narrative — and is a central question for Marvel Studios’ overall franchise. How do you keep a beloved character, but reintroduce him on the big screen with a newer, though familiar, face?

It’s a billion-dollar question, particularly as Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios looks to recapture the audience interest and box office revenue it reaped with the films leading up to the 2019 blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame.”

The answer is: very carefully.

Mackie’s character, Wilson, has been in the franchise for years as fellow hero Falcon, introduced in 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” After Chris Evans’ Captain America concluded his story in “Endgame,” he passed his shield to Mackie, who fully assumed his role as the new Cap in the 2021 Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”

The stakes of getting the handoff right are high. Nate Moore, a producer on the film and a longtime Marvel executive, calls the character a “cornerstone franchise” of the Marvel universe.

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“We want to make sure that this movie works because Captain America is so significant,” he said. “It’s important for audiences to feel like, even with all the change ... there is still a Captain America, he is still worthy, and he’s still out there, protecting people.”

A Marvel Comics staple, Captain America debuted in 1940 as Steve Rogers, a “super-soldier” who was injected with a serum that enhanced his physical abilities. Evans first took on the role in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger,” anchored two more Captain America films and became the counterweight to Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man.

But even as Evans’ portrayal ended, Marvel executives knew they wanted to maintain the spirit of what Captain America represented, Moore said.

“It’s always been about somebody who sees the dream of what America stands for and tries to embody that dream,” he said. “Even though we wanted to wrap up the story of Steve Rogers in ‘Endgame,’ we didn’t want there to be an absence of that feeling in the [Marvel Cinematic Universe].”

Maintaining that feeling — and character — is also crucial to the reconfiguration of the Marvel franchise, which has struggled in recent years to pump out consistent hits at the box office. Although last year’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” raked in more than a billion dollars, films such as 2023’s “The Marvels” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” received lackluster reviews and did poorly in theaters.

“Captain America: Brave New World,” which arrives in theaters Friday, is tracking for a projected $80-million to $95-million three-day opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, on a reported $180-million budget before marketing costs. Reviews, however, have been decidedly mixed.

That range would be in the ballpark of domestic opening weekend totals for standalone Marvel films such as 2021”s “Eternals” ($71 million) and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” ($75 million) as well as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” ($95 million).

The tracking is in line with the expectations for a restarted franchise, said Daniel Loria, senior vice president at Boxoffice Co., a theater data firm. Because Marvel is in a “rebuilding phase,” the financial prospects for the new film have to be “a little more grounded” for the studio, he said.

“We have to remind ourselves that Marvel is retooling with a new vision in some of these marquee properties,” Loria said.

With a subtitle that draws comparisons to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” the film embraces the sense of a fresh start, director Julius Onah said.

“We are resetting the universe of the [Marvel franchise],” he said. “I’ve always liked the sense of irony that comes in those words, ‘brave new world.’ So we are leaning into that irony. We are leaning into the unknown and the uncertainty.”

However, as a result of the interconnected storylines throughout Marvel and its strategy of using its movies as building blocks, the film will have to hold up on its own. It also has to drive audience interest to the studio’s next release, “Thunderbolts,” which is set to come out in May.

A consistent string of Marvel hits is key to Disney’s overall ambitions and Chief Executive Bob Iger’s efforts to turn the company around. Marvel is the highest-grossing movie franchise in history, and the studio’s popularity powers not just box office revenue, but also theme park visits and attractions, merchandise sales and streaming subscriptions.

The move to keep Captain America in the mix but have a new actor portray him could allow the franchise to reset, said Lilly Goren, co-editor of the book “The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and a professor of political science at Carroll University in Wisconsin.

A similar parallel exists with the three separate Spider-Man film series, in which the titular character is played by three actors, as well as the many reimaginings of Batman in the DC Comics film universe, though there’s less effort there at maintaining continuity and more focus on rebooting the series.

“It allows for the continuation of this popular cultural icon, while giving a lot of running room to redevelop the narratives around him,” Goren said. “It is a kind of reconfiguration of the superhero.”

That rethinking of Captain America is what attracted Onah to the project. Unlike Evans’ Captain America, who was essentially superhuman, Mackie’s character has no serum-enhanced abilities.

“It’s a wonderful way to evolve this character,” he said. “Part of what drew me to telling this story was a Captain America whose superpower is his empathy, his humanity. Not only is it something that is, I think, relatable in a very specific way, it’s something that is aspirational.”

There’s also special significance to Mackie, who is Black, now assuming the role of Captain America.

The implications of this were first explored in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” which takes place shortly after Mackie’s character accepted Captain America’s shield. The show delves into “what that means, quite frankly, for a Black man to be handed a mantle that can be problematic, but also can be really inspirational,” said Moore, the producer. “And I think the character’s journey in that show was, the inspiration is worth it.”

The significance of having a Black Captain America today is that “America is for everyone,” he said. “It’s important for the audience to see themselves reflected in the character, and that reflection is not only a skin color, but it’s also morality and integrity.”