There’s jingoism, there’s jocularity, and there’s Captain America, a living embodiment of capitalistic American ventures in a manner that is po-faced and unironic. The titular character personifies the comic book aesthete: grandstanding gestures that indicate the alleged virtuous nature of the United States. And in Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World (2025), we witness the eponymous hero chumming up with the newly elected President Thaddeus (Harrison Ford, constantly delivering hammy one-liners as “They said lose the moustache or lose the election,”) in an effort to fight for the free market. That’s sheer propaganda. And bad propaganda. Even if compared to propagandistic classics such as The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). I will return to that in a minute.

Captain America: Brave New World features Ruth Bat-Seraph, an Israeli warrior serving the whims of the US President. It doesn’t take a masters in global politics to realise that Onah is seeking to celebrate the ties between one powerful nation and its favourite nation in the world. The inclusion of superheroine Sabra (Shira Haas, pictured below), who shares her name with the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias in 1982, has led activists to place the film on the BDS list. Tellingly, Ms.Marvel – the franchise’s one and only Muslim heroine – does not feature anywhere in the story, stripping the feature of nuance. Indeed, some animals are more equal than others.

If this sounds Orwellian, then it shouldn’t be, because Onah has conveniently named his work Brave New World; the same title Alduous Huxley used for his treatise on human genetics. He probably hasn’t read the book, as this Captain America is a Huxleyian nightmare: a celebration of army tactics delivered by mega humans. Thaddeus’ transformation into the Red Hulk – a physical uber-mensch capable of tearing through whole buildings in seconds – showcases the might of the United States military, as if warning potential armies about the ramifications that await them if they choose to face this nation in combat. It’s all terribly colonialist in thinking, suggesting that civilisation has not evolved beyond the primal instinct to fight, destroy and conquer. Veni vidi vici.

The Red Hulk is a grotesque creation: a hideous beast towering in height, a chest made of gamma radiation and a general appetite for chaos. Rather than terminate the aberration, the eponymous hero simply tames him, restoring the creature back to the altruistic president he started off as. Does the Captain intend to see the good in all enemies? This isn’t the Bhavagad Gita, as the central figure is quick to his particular feet. This is a display American and Zionist superiority. Or perhaps even a warning of what the two countries are capable of before cynically demonstrating mercy on their terms..

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A real-life villain

This article is being written at a time when real life President Donald Trump plans to clear out Gaza and erect a riviera for his billionaire friends. “He is talking as if the Palestinians are cattle, you can move them from one place to another. They have no agency, they have no say”, ascertains Munir Nuseibah. professor of international law at Jerusalem’s Al-Quds University. In a chilling confessional, Trump outlined a future where Ukraine “may be Russian someday.” At a time of great unrest, art – even if it is a comic book adaptation – should challenge their leaders, rather than celebrate them as unstoppable forces of motion.

At least The Dark Knight allowed viewers to empathise with George Bush by virtue of a masked vigilante who was even more crooked than the clown he was hoping to defeat. The only way Batman defeats The Joker in that picture is by acting with immoral conviction; using a sonar device that spies on an entire city without consent. In that sense, Nolan is saying Bush might be an evil, but he’s a necessary one. What Onah is stating in Captain America: Brave New World is that the United States stands as the most rational, the most moral and the most gallant intellectual superpower in this world. That reasoning is not only misguided, it’s patently fascistic.

In many ways, this follows a master race theory, draped in the colours of the American flag, Captain America exhibits the flavours, theories and characteristics of a creature dripping in confidence. It’s as if the Captain was shouting, “We are the superior species!”. Which is a philosophy that can be traced from Ancient Rome to Nazi Germany; is this tract of land, one that defeated the British Royal Family in warfare, the next continuation of said theorem?

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The words of the Dictator

It is at times like these that Charlie Chaplin’s words from The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) ring truest. As a tramp costumed as the dictator of his fictitious country, the man states: “Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost”.

In this world decorated by Israeli attacks on Gaza, Russian tanks destroying Ukrainian cities, and an America keenly interested in creating havoc across this rock known as earth, kindness is a virtue too easily overlooked. It is up to the poets, the artists, and the filmmakers to bring out the empathy from their audience. And in that regard, Captain America: Brave New World is a complete miss and total mess, making a mockery of everything great stands for. Instead, what has been unveiled is commercial, cowardly nonsense that doesn’t serve to help the comic book industry flourish, but stagnate.

Where Chaplin tackled politicians head on with comedy, and Nolan subverted audience expectations by showing their leader’s true ghastly face, Onah merely exhibits one side to his audience. It’s as if he was saying: “recognise the greatness of the new Empire, or be left behind!”.