Whether or not you’re a Marvel fan, you’ve surely noticed that the title for Captain America 4, previously known as Captain America: New World Order, has been changed to Captain America: Brave New World. What you might not know, however, is the reason behind Marvel’s decision to implement this change. It’s a rather significant alteration and not as subtle as changing one word, so there must have been some serious issue with the old title, right? Correct, there was.
Although we’re still an entire year away from the fourth Captain America, Marvel Studios has spontaneously changed the title, seemingly with no prior warning. Well, for those who didn’t know, the ‘New World Order’ is actually a conspiracy theory — a rather famous one at that — that implies “a shadowy elite force is trying to implement a totalitarian world government.” So that’s already a big no-no, especially if you don’t want to support one half of the political spectrum and offend the other. In line with the conspiracy theory, some theorists call out the COVID-19 pandemic as the work of the New World Order, viewing it as a man-made attempt to exert undue control over civilians.
As if one spanner in the works weren’t bad enough, there’s another. Not only did the old title refer to the conspiracy theory above, but it also references the political agendas of Russia and China’s political parties. Essentially, Russia and China are attempting to overthrow the international order laid out by the United States in the aftermath of World War II, so there’s a lot of mess to clean there.
We actually wrote an article recently about an April Fool’s prank that convinced Twitter of Captain America 4‘s title change being ‘World War Hulks’ rather than ‘Brave New World’ or the like. And honesty, that would have been much better than ‘Brave New World,’ especially considering that Harrison Ford is portraying General Thunderbolt, the Red Hulk himself. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as nicely when saying ‘Captain America: Brave New World,’ does it? Although Disney owns Marvel and there’s some irony here, the fourth Captain America movie does sound like a Disney movie — the animated ones.
But if it weren’t for the change, Marvel definitely would have found itself under fire sooner or later. It’s probably for the best, even if the new title isn’t exactly as fetching as the old one.