Captain America 4: What A Good Editor Could (and Could Not) Fix

I am a Captain America fanboy and I must scream

Captain America: Brave New World frustrates me: it’s one of Marvel’s shortest movies, but it suffers from redundant dialogue and a lack of urgency. A strong editor would fix those problems by cutting ten to twenty minutes, deleting lines, trimming scenes, and doing a little restructuring—there’s only one short scene that should be longer.

Editing alone would not make it a great movie, but it would make it more satisfying, raising it from the bottom third of Marvel’s movies to the top half. The script is surprisingly talky, perhaps from a misguided attempt to save on production costs, but more likely because the writers or producers forgot that “show, don’t tell” is especially true in film.

Spoiler alert!

Some things an editor could do:

1. Cut every instance of a character telling another character about things we’ve already seen. We will assume that information was conveyed offscreen.
2. Cut the telepathic dialogue from Tim Blake Nelson’s Leader while Thunderbolt Ross is struggling to keep from becoming Red Hulk. The Leader’s lines are not necessary or interesting.
3. Cut the hospital scene with Bucky. Cap should be…