Anthony Mackie Says That Captain America … Should Not Represent America

Posted • January 28, 2025: There is nothing that Disney touches that they cannot, sooner or later, set on fire. We've seen it with Star Wars, with Snow White, with sports, and, boy howdy, have we seen it with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). When Marvel Entertainment embarked on developing the MCU in 2005, it was a movie venture previously unprecedented in scale. Like the Marvel comics, Kevin Feige and others envisioned a combined thread of films over several phases that were all intertwined with each other. Disney believed they could pull it off though and purchased Marvel Entertainment in 2009, shortly after the first Iron Man movie was released. And for the first decade, Phases I - III, they DID pull it off. The MCU films were immensely popular through 2019 when Phase III culminated with Avengers: Endgame. The 22 movies in that span grossed more than $22 billion. There were some misses [cough -- Captain Marvel -- cough] but most of the movies were smash hits with old and new fans alike.

Since that time, while the movies in Phases IV and V have made plenty of money, the franchise rapidly declined and it's not difficult to see why. Instead of telling fans stories they wanted to see, Disney started injecting woke politics far more blatantly into each movie. Only one of the movies during this period surpassed $1 billion at the box office (the recent Deadpool and Wolverine) and many others were complete disasters (almost no one even went to see The Marvels). Adding television programs on Disney+ didn't help matters, as many of the shows were irrelevant to a larger story, a complete mess in terms of plot, and -- most importantly -- introducing characters that no fans cared about, like Miss Marvel. One of those shows was Captain America and The Winter Soldier which was Marvel's attempt to pass the torch of the Captain America character from Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie).

There was nothing wrong with giving the Captain America mantle to a new character. About 20 characters, men and women of multiple races, have held the title of Captain America in the comics over the years, including Hawkeye. The problem with the show was that they made the entire theme about how America is a racist country, going so far as to have Mackie's Sam Wilson denounce America in the final episode even as he assumed Captain America's iconic shield. Captain America has fought enemies abroad AND at home Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created him back in 1940 and never shied away from standing up to his own government. But the original character always believed in America, hence his title. We can kiss all of that goodbye now, though. As Mackie prepares for Sam Wilson's feature film debut as Captain America in the soon-to-be-released Captain America: Brave New World, Mackie declared on a recent press junket that Captain America … should not represent America. Wait, what?

“For me Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term ‘America’ should be one of those representations.” - Captain America. -- We actually like some of the things Mackie said in the second part of these comments about preserving the innocence of childhood fantasy. Unfortunately, no one was listening to that part because he started out by denying the very nature of the character he is playing. Ironically, Mackie doesn't seem to notice that he himself destroyed some of that childhood wonder by denying the superhero's origins and history. Plus, it was just plain stupid. His name is literally Captain America. Maybe someone forgot to tell Mackie the title of the movie he just made. Or maybe he thought he was playing Cap in an alternate multiverse where his character is Captain Hydra. More likely, Mackie was probably trying to make sure everyone in China would see his movie. (…)

• More at: Twitchy - HAIL HYDRA: Anthony Mackie Says That Captain America … Should Not Represent America
https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2025/01/28/captain-america-shouldnt-represent-america-n2407440