Captain America: Brave New World

Musically, I was surprised a few times in the recent Captain America: Brave New World Official Trailer. Dipping into electronic music and even free jazz, this action film trailer is characteristically tense, minimalist, and it sports a healthy blend of barren and bombastic sound textures.

We open in a prison cell, as the new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), talks to veteran super soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). Is this a micro-teaser? No music yet, just the ominous hum of machinery, then at 0:08—as we see the Marvel title—choir-like vocals enter, singing a single sustained chord.

When we cut to a flashback of an event at the White House, we hear a high pitched electronic whine, from 0:14, which gets increasingly distorted, and is joined by a repeating pair of pulsing accents from a static white noise tone.

It’s as though this memory is starting to glitch out. At 0:25 we hear the sound of a finger snap and we cut back to the prison cell and silence. But only for a moment.

A gnarly descending note on a synthesizer at 0:26 heralds a cut back to the White House, where a terrorist attack is underway. Now all the high end of the sound mix has been removed, sounding like we are underwater. From 0:26-0:32 there’s a lot of loud activity on screen, all kinds of glass breaking - but we hear none of it. All we hear here is the rhythm of a slow pounding bass drum, and a growing whirring sound which ends at 0:32 with another finger snap. Back to the prison cell, and then the release date.

The next 30 seconds focus on describing the mystery of the terrorist attack we’ve just seen, and introducing us to the US President Ross (Harrison Ford). Meanwhile the music here is understated. From 0:38 steady accents from a metallic-sounding drum give us a pulse to lock onto, leading to various key points in the narrative.

To keep us on our toes, we have occasional sudden loud accents: screeching tires at 0:43 and blasting missiles at 0:48. At 0:56 we cut to silence as President Ross tells Sam “You’re not Steve Rogers.”

At 1:10, Sam lands in a courtyard and his sonic boom knocks out a crew of masked gunmen. This sets in motion some pulsing bass sounds, accents from the drums, and a vocal cry that is somewhere between a BRAAAM and Loire Cotler’s vocals in Dune. These musical elements continue and grow during a sequence of shots of military planes, missiles, and a military burial, with a siren-like sound, up until 1:25. At 1:34, as Sam is in the air trying to stop missiles from fighter jets, there’s a pulsing bass rhythm from a synthesizer, and several explosions are synched to the beat of the music.

The plot goes sideways at 1:42 when Sam is arrested, and to elevate the sense of confusion, we have some atonal free jazz-like improvising in the background. Then at 1:55, there are pulsing layers of breathy voices in a steady rhythm which feels like an electronically processed hyperventilating mob, even as we see the full-screen credits for Mackie and Ford. Tastefully unsettling for sure!

But, surprise! The President turns into a red Hulk at 2:10. This of course necessitates a final showdown between Captain America and the new Hulk President, so we conclude musically with big drums, risers, lots of bass synthesizer, and some static white noise to close out.

This trailer covers a lot of musical ground, but throughout, it is tasteful, effective, and–in the case of the free jazz–pleasantly surprising. Rare for a trailer these days!

Captain America: Brave New World is in theatres Valentines Day 2025.

— Jack Hui Litster