Captain America 4 director Julius Onah explains how the movie is different from previous Captain America films. Chris Evans made comic book hero Steve Rogers an MCU movie character beginning with 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Now the franchise will carry on with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson taking on the mantle previously held by Rogers.
Captain America’s future indeed seemed very much up in the air after the events of Avengers: Endgame, which saw Rogers going back in time to live out his natural life and ending up as an old man on a bench. Of course fans were made ready for the transition to a new Captain America when Old Man Rogers handed his shield to Wilson’s Falcon, anointing him as his successor. The transition later became official on 2021’s Disney+ show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, whose story is set to continue in the recently-announced movie Captain America: New World Order.
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The very title Captain America: New World Order indeed implies that things have changed for the MCU since Rogers was Cap. Speaking recently to IGN, the movie’s director Onah addressed the changing superhero landscape faced by Mackie’s Wilson in the upcoming film:
“Well, look, he is a different human being and coming from a different set of experiences. Back in the Winter Soldier, we saw what it means for somebody like him to take the shield. But it is also a very different MCU. It's a post-blip MCU. It's a post-Thanos MCU. So, the world has changed a lot too. And the role of a hero has changed.”
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier obviously addressed some details of Wilson’s background and the different set of experiences that shaped him as Captain America, tackling class- and race-related themes in an admittedly rather indirect and calculatedly inoffensive fashion. It remains to be seen how directly Captain America: New World Order will tackle such themes, but it’s safe to say the movie will at least somewhat address the obvious differences between Wilson and Rogers. Onah’s remarks about Wilson dealing with a “very different MCU” are also intriguing as Kevin Feige and company attempt to move on from Thanos to establish new and terrifying threats for their various heroes to face.
It of course remains to be seen if the MCU can maintain its wild popularity as it proceeds through Phase Five. The multiverse is of course in play now after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which opens up entire new worlds of possibilities for heroes and villains to emerge – or re-emerge. Mackie’s Wilson is of course an interesting piece of this whole puzzle as he is something of an Everyman, at least compared to other more super-powered MCU characters. But of course as long as Wilson has Captain America’s shield, he’ll be a formidable foe for any supervillains who emerge from the multiverse or anywhere else. Captain America 4 now has the task of fully realizing Wilson’s character on the big-screen, while carrying on the tradition established by the Rogers Captain America movies – all while addressing this new MCU reality, and trying to build its own legacy as well.