Disney’s latest installment of the “Captain America” series reportedly has an implicit reference to President Donald Trump, marking just the latest example of how the commander-in-chief lurks in the subconscious of Hollywood actors and producers.
“Captain America: Brave New World,” which is slated to hit theaters next month, had to undergo massive reshoots after viewers reacted poorly to the superhero flick in early test screenings, according to entertainment news outlet Vulture.
In this flick, the classic Marvel superhero is not played by Chris Evans, but by Anthony Mackie, the actor who played Falcon in previous installments of the series.
(There is another conversation that could be had about the Hollywood race-swapping trend this casting decision implies, but that is actually one of the less controversial elements of the film.)
“Brave New World” is centered on Harrison Ford’s character, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, who Vulture described as a “demagogic military leader who morphs into an irrational, orange-hued superhuman.”
Sounds oddly familiar.
The outlet added that the direction of the character “created unforeseen political resonances for the studio in an inaugural year” since the film was mostly shot before the election.
One technical crew member told Vulture that Disney was not particularly eager to wade into yet another cultural or political controversy with this latest movie.
“He’s this very powerful general who becomes kind of a fascist and turns into a raging Red Hulk. That was seen as an allusion to Trump,” the crew member acknowledged.
Will you watch “Captain America: Brave New World”?
“Disney was realizing, ‘Hey, we’ve been bleeding for a while. Let’s try not to piss off our core base anymore than we have been over the past couple of years.’”
Disney was correct to make that realization.
They have lost massively on various movies and TV series that tried to shove ideology down viewers’ throats in rather blatant ways, especially when they had the nerve to include that ideology — particularly surrounding sexual themes — in content for children.
But this attempt to salvage “Brave New World” merely shows that Trump has thoroughly broken the ability of Hollywood to tell compelling stories that range beyond caricatures of the Orange Man, which are much more reflective of the fever dreams of Bel Air and Beverly Hills elites than they are accurate reflections of the current occupant of the West Wing.
America is sick of wokeness, political correctness, and cancel culture. They are sick of being demonized for wanting border security and low prices. They therefore like Donald Trump, even decisively voting him back into the White House. Disney may finally be accepting that.
They are also sick of being pressured to hate their own country, a reality that does not bode well for the film since Anthony Mackie recently told the world that Captain America no longer represents America in his mind.
In other words, Disney created a film called “Brave New World” even as the entertainment industry enters its very own “Brave New World.”
They only seem to be very recently realizing this truth.
We will see whether or not they have time to course correct.
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