Captain America 4’s Anthony Mackie Knows the Marvel Heroes He Wants on His Avengers

It’s always a big deal when Captain America says, “Avengers Assemble.” It took four Avengers movies before Steve Rogers said it at the end of Endgame, and who knows how long it will be before his successor Sam Wilson gets to utter the famous line, given that he’s just now getting his own film with this month’s Captain America: Brave New World. But Anthony Mackie knows exactly who he wants coming up on his left when his Captain America calls the Avengers together again.

“It has to be the Hulk,” Mackie tells Den of Geek of his first pick for the team. “You can’t beat the Hulk, you can only hope to contain him.” But for his next choices, Mackie goes outside the usual stock of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to Marvel’s Merry Mutants, the X-Men.

“I’ve always been a Nightcrawler fan since I was a kid,” says Mackie, naming the fuzzy blue German teleporter, before picking another mutant, one seen more recently on screen. “My favorite character in all the MCU would probably be Gambit,” Mackie declares with a smile. “He’s from [Mackie’s home state] Louisiana, and he just looks so cool with that jacket. After seeing Channing [Tatum] play Gambit, I would just want to hang out with him all day, talking like him.”

Without question, Mackie’s thinking outside of the box for his Avengers. But that’s in keeping with his character. Sam Wilson isn’t Steve Rogers, and he’s not going to be the same Captain America as his predecessor.

“When we first met Sam, he was a counselor. He was a humanitarian,” Mackie says, diving into the backstory that drives his character. “He was a member of the 58th airborne, a squadron of parachuters. When you’re stuck behind enemy lines, they jump into harm’s way and bring you out. There’s a certain level of humanity that comes with being someone who is willing to put themselves aside to help their fellow man at all costs. And that’s Sam Wilson.”

Yet, as heroic as Sam is, Mackie doesn’t see him as a superhero like Steve Rogers, who gained his strength and endurance via the experimental super-soldier serum in World War II. “A serum’s not his superpower. His superpower is his humanity, and the beauty of the fact that him being the best version of all of us.”

That humane aspect allows Mackie and director Julius Onah—working off a story by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, and Dalan Musson—to create a grounded, classical adventure for Brave New World.

“Captain America movies are always steeped in tradition and reality,” Mackie observes. “They always had more of an espionage feel, which made them more realistic. And this is a true Captain America movie because has the same vocabulary those movies established.”

We can see that classic Captain America vocabulary in the plot of Brave New World, which finds Cap teaming with the new Falcon Joaquín Torres (Danny Ramirez) and former Black Widow Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) to protect President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, stepping in for the late William Hurt) against a secret plot by the Serpent Society’s Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) and The Incredible Hulk villain Samuel Sterns aka the Leader (Tim Blake Nelson).

We’ll also see it in the way that Sam performs the most famous Captain America action: throwing his mighty shield. Yet, even that aspect Mackie approaches from a character-first perspective.

“There were certain things that I wanted to keep in line with Chris Evans. I would watch old videos of him throwing the shield, because I feel at some point, Sam would have to learn to throw the shield, so he would learn from Captain America. It just didn’t make sense for me to come out and start throwing the shield some crazy way when we knew how the shield had been working for the entire course of all these movies. So there were certain little tidbits that I took to make sure that Captain America stayed Captain America.”

As these descriptions suggest, Sam’s devoted to carrying on the tradition of Captain America by staying true to himself. The same is true of Mackie as the lead of a blockbuster movie, something made a bit easier by an interaction between him and his co-star Harrison Ford.

“First day on set, Harrison comes up to me, he shakes my hand, and he goes, ‘Congratulations, kid.’ Harrison and I did [Hollywood Homicide] 21 years ago, and from there to now has been a huge growth for me in this business, role-wise and human-wise. I know now, after the amount of work that I’ve done, I know that I’m ready to stand on stage and be the lead of a movie opposite Harrison Ford. And Harrison Ford recognized that and told me that when he congratulated me, and it really meant a lot.”

Between throwing the shield and Harrison Ford’s approval, it’s clear that Mackie is a blockbuster star and that Sam Wilson has truly become Captain America. Now, we just need for him to assemble his kooky quartet for some all-new and all-different Avengers action.

Captain America: Brave New World premieres in theaters worldwide on Feb. 14.

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