**SPOILERS AHEAD**
In 1939, the world was introduced to a universe of superheroes, featuring humans, aliens, and even gods. As years have passed, more and more heroes have been introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the franchise becoming a ‘national treasure.’ In fact, as of January of this year, it has become the most popular and highest- grossing franchise in the world, bringing in over 30 billion dollars.

The Marvel Universe is broken down into three mini-worlds with different superheroes in each one. The first world, and the most well known, is the official Avengers Universe, having the most popular characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and so on. The most recently released movie from Marvel was none other than the new Captain America movie starring Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, marking the start of the ‘new Avengers.’

“Captain America: Brave New World” is formatted much like the previous Marvel movies, with an imminent threat to the peace of humanity. The movie takes place roughly three years after the events from Avengers: Endgame. This sets “Brave New World” in 2026, leaving the world in the wake of the chaos from Endgame and the projects in between.

As seen in “Avengers: Endgame” and the mini series “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” the character of Sam Wilson (Mackie) takes on the mantle of becoming the new Captain America after Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers ‘retired.’ The movie starts with Wilson and his new ‘sidekick’, Joaquin Torres played by Danny Ramirez embarking on a mission to retrieve a sample of a new, dangerous element that was stolen, belonging to a Celestial seed that never grew. This comes from the movie “Eternals,” set 6-8 months after “Endgame,” following the Eternals in their journey as they stop Earth from being destroyed by their ‘creator’ Tiamut and another Celestial that was being created from Earth.

Steering back to Wilson and Torres’ mission, they retrieve the element, called adamantium, and bring it back to President Thaddius Ross, played by Harrison Ford, who made an appearance before in “Captain America: Civil War,” where he was a minor villain, and he reprises the role as one of the villains in this new film.

While the film obviously highlights the superhero-related situations of the world, it does touch on some subjects and issues that are relevant in today’s society, such as corruption in politics, alliances between nations and discrimination based on race. The main alliance that is focused on in the movie is the one between the U.S. and Japan, who are meant to be leading countries in a treaty with various world powers to share the adamantium evenly and fairly among their respective countries.

Now, in the official trailer for the movie, Ross is shown in a light that casts him as the main villain, which is not the case in the film. The main villain in this movie is Samuel Sterns, a.k.a Leader, who is a character from the comics that hasn’t been featured in the MCU before. His main mission is to derail the alliance between the U.S. and Japan, isolating the two nations and potentially driving them to war, causing a barrier between potential world peace. Although many people seem to enjoy the character, many comic fans are disappointed with the character design Marvel picked, seeing that it’s not very accurate to the comics and it looked almost rushed in design, not to mention the way the character was written is almost nothing like the comic character.

This issue extends to other elements in the film, including the design of Captain America’s new costume and the introduction of Sabra (Shira Haas) as the new Black Widow. She plays a somewhat minor role in the movie, but fans commented that it felt almost like she was trying to fill the shoes of Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow, whether it was through her mannerisms or the way her character was written in the movie.

However, throughout the whole movie, it gave viewers the nostalgic feeling of experiencing the stories of the characters from the MCU, despite the new characters and unfamiliar stories. One thing that brought back nostalgia was the dialogue throughout, especially from Anthony Mackie. Every Marvel movie and mini series has at least one scene where the characters interact in a funny dialogue sequence, and Mackie not only managed to do that here, but he exceeded what many expected from the movie in terms of dialogue.

While the style of the older MCU projects will never be the exact same again, it still brings a warm, comforting feeling to fans knowing that the MCU they loved is not completely gone, and it may start getting back to its original glory. At the end of this new Captain America movie, a final post credit scene was shown with Sterns and Wilson talking about Sterns’ plans and Wilson’s success in stopping him. They briefly talk about how there are other heroes out there fighting to save the world, and that with the newer, unfamiliar heroes, came unknown threats as well. This hinted towards the existence of other worlds existing, setting up and re-introducing the ‘multiverse’ for the upcoming projects of the MCU.

The next project in the MCU will be the “Thunderbolts” film, due to be released on May 2 of this year, and then “Avengers: Doomsday” is predicted to be released on May 1 of 2026. “Captain America: Brave New World” is playing in theaters now. It’s rated PG-13 for strong language, as well as intense violence and action sequences.

Now, while the MCU is debatably the most popular of the ‘branches’ of Marvel, it’s not the only ‘world’ Marvel has. The second ‘world’ is the X-Men Universe, with a different storyline following different heroes and anti-heroes. They have some pretty popular characters as well such as the Wolverine, Professor X, Mystique, and many more.

Another upcoming project for Marvel is the new remake of the Fantastic Four, set to be released in July of this year, which connects to the third and final universe of Marvel. The final ‘universe’ of the Marvel franchise and one of the older ones, is also the one with the most remakes out of all the others. It’s none other than the Fantastic Four universe. As of 2025, another remake has been announced for this group of heroes, showing how popular it is and how relevant it has stayed throughout the years.

The future of Marvel is starting to be filled with new projects and potential new hope to go back to their original ‘style’ instead of sticking with overproducing movies and using all the money they can get while focusing on the wrong things.