But she notes that even as Sam ostensibly had a more central role in the franchise in recent years, it was hard to see evidence of that onscreen—or in the franchise’s promotion and marketing. “As a POC, you tend to hope and pray that you can get merch of the characters that look like you,” White says, but she has found little for Wilson or Brave New World from the usual distributors. “Come on. It’s Black History Month and you can’t get your teams together to celebrate Sam Cap?”
It’s been widely observed that for Marvel, franchise fatigue—and the flagging quality of the studio’s projects—set in just as they finally diversified their leading roster after hanging up the jerseys of its beloved white male heroes in Endgame. “For Anthony Mackie, that’s unfortunate,” says Lowe. “The time is just not right—and that’s not on him. That’s not even on the production. It’s just that history has marched on.”
Brave New World in particular is also facing a boycott from fans. First called for by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, which leads a range of economic-focused actions against Israel, the boycott is a response to the film’s inclusion of the Israeli comic character Sabra, an agent in Israel’s intelligence organization Mossad. While the character’s name and backstory have been changed for the film, the movie’s Hollywood premiere on Tuesday was met with in-person protests. Many fans, it seems, are looking to sit this one—and even the broader franchise—out. These geopolitical discussions also connect to critiques of the MCU’s relationship with the US Department of Defense, long a point of discussion within the fandom but thrust into mainstream focus when 2018’s Captain Marvel was used for Air Force recruitment.
Bad critical reviews or ambivalence around the source material aren’t necessarily impediments to fan creators—just look at the continued dominance of Harry Potter in the fan-fiction space. But the relatively muted cultural response to newer Marvel titles also reflects just how much fan culture has changed in the past decade. Transformative fandom is far, far larger than it was at the start of the MCU, but compared to the early Captain America era, fans are more disparate, spreading their interests across a much wider range of source material.
Many fans also spend less time in one place, cycling through a fandom for a few months, even weeks, before moving on. The deep, sustained interest in a world that fueled so much Captain America fic in its heyday is harder to find now, especially at scale. With so much content across film and television, fans barely have time to latch on to anything—or to spin up their own versions of the characters and their worlds in the gaps.
Early box-office projections suggest Brave New World will do well for Marvel, potentially putting it on track with the opening performance of Winter Soldier. Like all entertainment corporations, money is the key metric for Marvel and its parent company, Disney. Whether they’re creating space for fan creativity doesn’t particularly matter if the numbers are still there. But for fans, the return of Captain America to the big screen is a moment to reflect on past eras and see just how much has changed. They’ll have to do it quickly—there are only 10 weeks until the next MCU title, Thunderbolts*, hits theaters in May.
