After cast members were entirely cut from the film and rewrites led to new ones being added during production, it's understandable (and quite clearly present) why reshoots took place in the final version of Captain America: Brave New World. For director Julius Onah, however, the reports of how much appear to have been blown out to super-sized proportion.
Speaking to Brandon Davis on Phase Hero, the filmmaker who was carrying on Sam Wilson's story following the events of Falcon and the Winter Soldier explained, "We only did one period of additional photography, which is the same on all of these movies, and it's just part of the filmmaking at this scale. When you think about so many movies that you love, I was mentioning this before from Star Wars to Jaws to Lord of the Rings, to you know, all those movies, this is a part of the process."
It's not the first time an MCU installment got reworked. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was reportedly inspired by Spider-Man: No Way Home and Loki to get reshoots to play around with the multiverse just a little more. "Just because when you're making something of this scale, there are so many variables an AP [additonal photography] becomes essential with a thing that we know audiences will love," added Onah. "And it's really as a benefit to the audience to make this the best movie it can be."
It's not the first time Onah has been criticized for choices made behind the scenes for Brave New World. A notable absence from the film was WWE star Seth Rollins, who was cut from the film entirely. The rest of the Serpent Society, initially set to be a prominent threat in the movie, dwindled down to Giancarlo Esposito's Sidewinder. Speaking to ComicBook.com about the alteration, Onah confessed, "When you’re taking characters like Serpent Society from publishing, who, as you know, are individuals dressed up as snakes and have snake-adjacent powers, you’re always iterating and trying to figure out the version that totally works best in a movie like this."
It was a tough call to make for Onah, as comes with helming such a big title. "I love Seth, Seth’s incredible. But as we were evolving, we knew we had an additional photography period, just one that we did early on in the process that’s planned."
You can see Captain America: Brave New World in theaters before the Thunderbolts keep the Marvel movie action going on May 2. You can read all about that ragtag group of heroes in our guide here.
