Brave New World Couldn’t Have Kept Red Hulk Secret

Long before Captain America: Brave New World came out, Marvel made it clear: Red Hulk was coming. Anthony Mackie’s big-screen debut as Cap saw him face off against President Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, eventually rendered red and raging courtesy of a gamma upgrade, this time played by Harrison Ford after the passing of William Hurt. Much of Brave New World’s marketing was focused on that final fight: Sam Wilson, in his winged Cap suit, going up against a full-fury Red Hulk. But given how that was the main thrust of the film’s final act, it left some audiences wondering whether it should have be held back from the trailers.

As director Julius Onah tells Empire, in reality that wouldn’t have been possible. “I don’t think so,” he says. “When you’re making a movie like this, an announcement goes out that Harrison Ford is going to play Thaddeus Ross, and you have a fandom as massive and as passionate as the MCU fandom is, you’re toast at that point, you know? In a perfect-case scenario, it would have been awesome [if ] that [had been] an in-theatre surprise, but I think it would have been very difficult. Somewhere along the way, a toy would have been found, or somebody would have leaked a trailer. It’s just so hard to keep anything secret in today’s day and age.”

Beyond the superheroic smackdowns, Onah spoke about the film resolving on a note of characters working together, despite their oppositions. “You’ve got a movie with a guy flying around with vibranium wings, you’ve got a Red Hulk, I love that stuff. But it only really matters if you care on a dramatic level, and on a thematic level, about the human side of it,” he says. “In thinking about Sam and thinking about what he would represent as a Captain America, and what’s so powerful about the idea of him wearing the Stars And Stripes, is this notion of it representing a kind of progress, and to renew this idea that a group of disparate people can come together and share a vision and sense of hope and possibility. I know that sounds a little Pollyannaish, but if we aren’t believing in a shared vision of a world or nation or community, what are we doing?” Spoken like Captain America himself.

Read Empire’s full interview with Julius Onah – on Captain America: Brave New World, its reception, and final act – in The Fantastic Four: First Steps issue, on sale Thursday 5 June. Pre-order a copy online here. Captain America: Brave New World is streaming now on Disney+.