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Even as it earned a decent opening weekend box office, critics haven’t been overly kind to Captain America: Brave New World. The latest entry in the sprawling MCU has taken a lot of flack for feeling too familiar to audiences who have had more than 15 years of Marvel movies to compare it to. However, I think the biggest problem with the movie isn’t anything that we see in the movie itself – it’s that Marvel spoiled the big third-act reveal by slapping Red Hulk onto every bit of promotional material they could.

This is a complaint you hear a lot about trailers – giving away too much of the plot before we even see the movie. However, this instance feels especially egregious because it undermines everything about Captain America: Brave New World. Anthony Mackie’s first outing as Captain America is meant to be a political thriller just like The Winter Soldier. For the most part, it succeeds here. The action is solid and there are some really good performances all around, but there is a trick to every great political thriller; they need a third-act twist. A moment that turns everything the hero thinks they know about the world on its head.

In Winter Soldier, that moment is when Steve Rogers realizes that Hydra didn’t just survive the Red Skull’s death – it thrived within S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades only to rear its many heads in the modern era. It makes him question who to trust and even how much he’s willing to sacrifice to save the world. It creates the tension that carries the movie into its third act as we find out just how deep the corruption goes.

In Brave New World, Sam’s realization that The Leader plans to turn Ross into the very monster he spent his career hunting is meant to have that same impact. It sets Sterns up as the evil genius that he promised us he was while giving some emotional weight to seeing Ross struggle with his anger the whole movie. It puts Sam’s role as Captain America, who is sworn to protect people, at odds with his role as counselor, who wants to help people help themselves.

It was a solid reveal that had been set up well throughout. It works even if you know that Ross becomes Red Hulk in the comics because we’ve seen him in multiple movies not hulking out. All this could be setting up something, possibly for the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie. The writers set up Ross’ downfall as a tragic moment of weakness from a man legitimately trying to be a better person. Captain America: Brave New World centers on Ross not as a man driven by anger or fear but by a genuine attempt to redeem himself, a struggle that means nothing if you know he’s going to fail because you see it in the trailers and posters.

Imagine if they had shown a bunch of Hydra agents in The Winter Soldier and think about how much worse it would have made that movie. That's what happened here and it is so frustrating.

Is this the best movie in the MCU? Absolutely not. It borrows too much from Winter Soldier’s plot to feel fresh in a way that Marvel needs right now and doesn’t commit enough to a political statement to give its dramatic moments real weight. Still, if we had been able to see it in isolation, without the marketing spoiling the big reveal at the end, I don’t doubt that Captain America: Brave New World would have been received better by critics and fans. By putting Red Hulk in the trailers, Marvel inadvertently undermined everything they were trying to say and reduced a decent movie to a predictable and sadly forgettable one.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters