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 hunting the Leader instead of hanging around to see if Falcon will recover. (It might be possible to use some of this scene later. See #6.)
4. Add a beat to the last moment with Red Hulk. When Casablanca’s ending was not working, its creators realized there needed to be an extra beat for the protagonists and the audience to wonder what Captain Renault would do.
5. Cut the phone call with Betty and some of the references to her. They weaken her final decision.
6. Swap the final hospital scene and the scene in the Raft. Ross’s final fate is more interesting than Falcon’s — the audience expects Falcon to survive, but doesn’t know what will happen to Red Hulk. It may be possible to use some of the Bucky hospital material right before Cap and Falcon talk.
7. Cut the post-credits scene. It’s just boring pimpage for the next movie. The Leader has no connection to the multiverse, so it seems odd for him to talk about it.

Some things that should have been added:

1. A short social media news/documentary clip about Bradley to show us who he was and why he’s important now, mostly showing the young Bradley fighting in Korea, then being imprisoned. Someone like the Falcon could easily have googled it when wondering exactly who Bradley is.
2. A demonstration of the superiority of adamantium, showing it cutting through vibranium. The most powerful choice would be to show it cutting Cap’s shield. Perhaps Sidewinder could’ve obtained an adamantium fang.
3. Romantic interests for both Cap and the Falcon to show they have lives outside of heroing. We cared more about Steve Rogers because he cared about Peggy and Sharon. These characters could’ve appeared as potential love interests, as Sharon did in Captain America: Winter Soldier, or they could’ve appeared as people we hadn’t known about, like Hawkeye’s family in Age of Ultron.
4. At least one scene with the Leader showing that he loved someone or was trying to befriend someone. Monstrous villains are most interesting if we see that becoming a monster has a tragic side.

If you combine the additions with the tighter editing I’m proposing, the final movie would still be shorter than some Captain America movies.

My final recommendation: If you haven’t seen it yet and you’re a Marvel completist, don’t pay for a first-run ticket. At the very least, do as I did and go on a cheap Tuesday.