![Red Hulk (a digitally altered Harrison Ford) gets angry. [Photo: Disney]](https://www.loevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Captain-America-Brave-New-World-1024x576.jpeg)
[Photo: ©Disney]
WARNING: Contains spoilers for Captain America: Brave New World (though the trailer spoils a great deal of the film anyway.)
Captain America, Falcon, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are back! This time Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson carries the shield as Captain America, with Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres taking off as the new Falcon. Alongside them stars Harrison Ford (taking over late William Hurt’s role) as the newly-elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. As a MCU fan, I go into each film wanting to see cool action scenes and connections to other stories that make me excited for the heroes to return in future projects. Sam’s vibranium suit in his previous appearance certainly had me excited for this film, and I can happily say that Marvel captured my excitement again. I also appreciate that the film shines a light on the long-lasting trauma experienced by people, like Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley, who were wrongfully incarcerated or placed in solitary confinement, which is the reality for many of Loevy & Loevy’s clients.
Between those marvelous moments though are too many exposition dumps, scenes that are clearly from reshoots, unsurprising reveals, and eerie similarities to our real-world present day. At 82 years old, Harrison Ford co-stars as a president of the United States who has for many years been a controversial public figure, and who now turns into a red monster when he’s angry. Captain America serves as a special employee of the president who has unfettered access to POTUS, but it’s not clear which of the two is actually in charge at times.
President Ross, however, is pursuing a noble goal: he wants to sign an international treaty to share the newly-discovered, magical-metal adamantium. He has no nefarious purpose. President Ross genuinely wants to do a good thing for the world in the hope that his estranged daughter will speak to him again. Unfortunately for President Ross, he also broke his promise to pardon Samuel “The Leader” Sterns, despite Sterns taking the fall for one of Ross’s previous controversies, and then uses Sterns’ incarceration to advance his political career. So Stern masterminds the President’s downfall by sabotaging treaty negotiations, escalating military conflict, and ultimately turning Ross into a red hulk that destroys the White House and surrounding Washington, D.C. Captain America, of course, saves the day, and—despite Ross hulking out—the treaty gets signed. Ross commendably resigns as president, and his daughter starts to speak to him again.
All of this made for a fun narrative and a compelling character arc for President Ross. But the film completely falls apart in the final minutes by ending with Ross in prison.
I could not believe my eyes. I enjoyed the film overall up to that point, but it is far too unrealistic for a president to be in prison for exercising his constitutional powers. Marvel films are supposed to be a reflection of our society with cool superhero fights that bend the laws of physics. I can get behind Cap’s flying vibranium suit storing and reflecting kinetic energy, and his vibranium shield perfectly hitting each mark. But it is critical for my superhero films to follow the U.S. Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land (to the extent the story takes place in the U.S. and/or involves U.S. public officials).
As the President of the United States, Ross is supposed to be immune from prosecution for any crimes committed when he hulked out because he was acting in furtherance of his constitutional power to make treaties.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that the President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercising his core constitutional powers and has presumptive immunity for his official acts.1 The Court derived its holding from our constitutional structure of separated powers and enshrined the necessity of the President being able to “execute the duties of his office fearlessly and fairly” from potential prosecution.2 This is how the Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump to enjoy immunity for his exercise of constitutional powers and official acts on January 6, 2021.
By that logic, if Trump is immune for inciting an insurrection, President Ross should be immune for hulking out and decimating Washington, D.C. As the Supreme Court even acknowledged in its ruling, the Constitution, under Section 2 of Article 2, provides the president with the conclusive and preclusive power to make treaties.3 Throughout the entire film, President Ross exercises that exact constitutional power. Ross turned into the Red Hulk during a press conference about finalizing his treaty. Was it the best idea to tear up the Rose Garden, fight Secret Service agents, throw Captain America through the White House, use an American flag as a weapon to attack Captain America and capitol police, kill multiple helicopter pilots, and destroy the Washington monument? Maybe not, but who are we to judge? After Ross did all of that, the final holdout to the treaty signed on. That means President Ross successfully and fearlessly made a treaty, just as the founding fathers intended.
I struggle to find any excuse for this glaringly unrealistic plot hole. Perhaps the filmmakers did not want to make a mockery of the USA in a Captain America movie. After all, the three dissenting justices stated that granting the President absolute immunity makes “a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”4 But, as Justice Thomas so cleanly stated, the President’s immunity from prosecution “is the law.”5 Removing this bedrock principle of our democracy from the MCU undermines any confidence I have in future Marvel films following the law. And it begs an even greater question about the MCU: does the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exist?
While the Supreme Court’s ruling may have initially benefited Donald Trump in halting one of the four criminal cases brought against him, it also opened him up more to more scrutiny under FOIA.
Recently, a U.S. District Court judge stated as such in a ruling for a FOIA case we filed against the FBI for records about Trump flushing Presidential Records down the toilet. Our client, Jason Leopold, submitted a FOIA request to the FBI seeking information related to “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were allegedly flushed down the toilet.” The FBI issued a Glomar response refusing to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records because no investigation into the mishandling of presidential records had been officially acknowledged and disclosure could interfere with a reasonably anticipated law enforcement proceeding.6
However, the Court agreed with us that, because of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, no future law enforcement proceedings are reasonably anticipated against Trump for flushing his records down the toilet. Leopold at 16. In reaching its ruling that the FBI must disclose whether these documents exist, the Court reiterated the importance of FOIA: “With the far dampened possibility of any criminal investigation to gather evidence about a president’s conduct and of any public enforcement proceeding against a president, the majority’s decision in Trump, 603 U.S. 593 has left a FOIA request as a critical tool for the American public to keep apprised of a president’s conduct, accomplishing FOIA’s goal to allow the citizenry to ‘know what its government is up to.’”7
Rather than put President Ross in prison, maybe Disney should have included a scene where a Daily Bugle reporter submits a FOIA request about Ross turning into the Red Hulk. I would even settle for that being a post-credits scene. Maybe we will see that happen in the upcoming Thunderbolts* film. But don’t get your hopes up too much: we had to wait over three years for the MCU to address a dead space god sticking out of the Indian Ocean, and over 16 years to find out what Sterns’s head looks like now.
Setting my “mockery” aside, I wish we actually lived in a world, like the MCU, where the President of the United States is held accountable and takes responsibility for his crimes. At least we do not have to worry about Thanos snapping away half of all life. Captain America: Brave New World is ranked #24 for me among the 35 MCU films. I am excited to see Cap return in Avengers: Doomsday next year! 3.5/5 Stars.
Merrick Wayne is an attorney with Loevy & Loevy. He works on the Freedom of Information Act & Government Transparency Team, where he primarily focuses his practice on federal FOIA litigation, along with state-level FOIA, Open Meetings Act, First Amendment, and election matters.
