The latest Captain America film, Brave New World, arrives at a delicate juncture for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Since Steve Rogers passed on the shield and mantle to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, the MCU’s output has seen them look to the future as well as the past, and they’ve begun tinkering with the usual superhero formula, with other mediums and styles of storytelling. This phase of experimentation has yielded mixed results, for now…

Brave New World seems to return to the tone that made Captain America’s popularity surge. Like The Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson is embroiled in a political conspiracy plot. His former adversary, Thaddeus Ross, is now the U.S. President, but his enemies want him dead. Wilson destines to expose the culprits behind a plot to frame one of his comrades, but is met with additional opposition when Ross’ efforts to do the same unwittingly transform him into the Red Hulk. Despite the commander-in-chief’s metamorphosis, this entry’s scaled-back attitude appears identical to some of the company’s top-tier ventures. Marvel needs another home run, and the Brave New World creative team look to be choosing all the right calls to complement that scope.

At the film’s global junket, Supanova got to discuss several of said calls with director Julius Onah and producer Nate Moore. We spoke about Harrison Ford succeeding William Hurt, establishing adamantium in their world, and the unforeseen connections to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and contains mild spoilers for the film ‘Captain America: Brave New World’.

With the X-Men slowly integrating into the MCU, this film introduces adamantium, an element famously tied to Wolverine. Could you tell me about the choice to tie it to the Celestial from Eternals?

JULIUS ONAH: “What’s been so great about the MCU is it’s found unique ways to take different elements and story threads from publishing and incorporate them in surprising manners. Adamantium is something that has been around in publishing and is so iconic, certainly as Wolverine’s claws. Yet there are no mutants, there are no X-Men in the MCU yet. So how do you explain how that exists?

“Well, this movie became the opportunity to bring them into the world of the MCU and use it as a geopolitical football in a way that becomes really fun because it’s grounding this element into the world of the film. You get to see how it becomes desirable, especially in a world where so many are already fighting over vibranium. Then, of course, as you said, you get to tease what can be coming down the road with X-Men.

“It’s a little bit of everything, and in some ways, it also leans into our subtitle, Brave New World, which is often about a new technology that has both positive and negative implications to it that are unpredictable. I love that idea of adamantium being part of the Brave New World story and the MCU.”

There has been a lot of chatter about Thaddeus Ross. The role has been recast with Harrison Ford taking over from the late William Hurt. Nate, given you have dealt with similar circumstances formerly in your capacity as producer, why was it the best decision to continue Ross with a new actor?

NATE MOORE: “We sort of had set Ross on this trajectory a while ago. If you remember, in Captain America: Civil War, he was the Secretary of State who passed the Sokovia Accords, so this has been a long time coming. When we were first making the early drafts of this film, Bill Hurt was with us and excited to fill the shoes once more. When he passed, it was a lot of tough conversations, and we certainly weren’t trying to cast a wide net.

“We didn’t really know how to replace him, and I don’t know that you can. But Harrison Ford, surprisingly, really wanted to do this because part of him wanted to celebrate William’s work. He was a fan of Bill’s portrayal of the character through the years and felt like he had a way in that would, again, celebrate what Bill had done but also build on it to show how different or not Thaddeus Ross has been over the years. He wanted to take on that challenge.

“To be honest, I don’t think you ever really believe you’ll get to work with a legend like Harrison Ford because he can do whatever he wants, and what I was so pleasantly surprised to see was how seriously he took this. This wasn’t a paycheck for him. He really threw himself emotionally into the role, not only of Thaddeus Ross but of the Red Hulk. The latter can be an embarrassing thing to try and portray because you’re on a set with tracking markers growling and prowling like the Hulk because we had to base his performance on a real person. And I will say, the lack of ego Harrison showed in those moments was really refreshing and surprising. If the film works, it’s because Harrison really believed in it.”

This isn’t your first experience helming a grand-scale blockbuster, Julius. You previously directed The Cloverfield Paradox. Did your exploits in that space help you in any way in making Brave New World?

ONAH: “Look, every experience helps, whether it’s making a movie like Luce, which I had made right before this, or making a movie like Cloverfield Paradox, where I was making a movie set in a space station, so I had to deal with a lot of visual effects and blue screens and wire work and stuff of that sort. All those things become part of making a movie like this when people fly through the air and Hulks jump around and destroy things.

“This is certainly a much larger scale movie than Cloverfield, but the experience of making it was certainly helpful and gave me a confidence coming into Captain America. It also gave me an openness to learn and lean on all the great technicians that I would have to work with. You have such fantastic teams; Marvel put such great people around me. I had a blast making this movie, and certainly, everything I had done before was something I brought on to bear on it.”

This film has an interesting connection to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Liv Tyler and Tim Blake Nelson reprise their renditions of Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns, respectively. This surprised a sector of your audience because that film is viewed as somewhat forgotten in the wider MCU on account of Edward Norton’s departure. Why was now the occasion to bring that pair back after seventeen years away?

MOORE: “Again, it was born out of the story we knew we wanted to tell about Ross becoming president. His relationship with Betty was strained, to say the least, in the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie, but here’s a man who does have an emotional ache to reunite with his daughter. So a lot of this movie is about him trying to prove to Betty and the world that he is a changed man.

“Now, the question of the movie is whether he has really changed or if this is all performative, and that’s where Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns comes in. He’s obviously a character who was left very much in limbo at the end of that film, and we’d been trying to figure out a way to bring him back that felt organic to the bigger story we were telling, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Samuel Sterns may have a point of view as to whether or not Thaddeus Ross is a changed man.”

A new character this film features is Ruth Bat-Seraph. Marvel fanatics will identify her as Sabra, but you reimagine her quite drastically from her patriotic persona in the comics. What were the changes you made to her?

ONAH: “Just like we reimagine adamantium, just like we reimagine Sam Wilson’s origin story from being from Harlem to being from New Orleans, we reimagine this character. Ruth is now a high-ranking official in the U.S. government. She’s a security advisor for President Ross, and we wanted to take her formidable intellect and training as a former Widow to use as another foil for Sam.

“One of the people that we sort of looked at as a likeness for her character was actually Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, which happens to be a Harrison Ford movie. He’s this dogged investigator who is on the tail of our hero. In this case, she’s a dogged investigator on the tails of Sam. It is fun in the movie seeing how they start off as adversaries. Then, their relationship evolves over the course of the film to a surprising and also satisfying place. It was really great to be able to bring her into the fold in this story, and I think Shira Haas does a phenomenal job bringing her to life.”

We’re looking forward to how it all coalesces. Thank you for your time, gentlemen. 

MOORE: “Thanks for taking the time. Appreciate it.”

ONAH: “Thank you. This was really a pleasure. You’re awesome.”

Captain America: Brave New World is in cinemas now!