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What's missing from the new Captain America: Brave New World trailer, and why it matters

The new trailer for 2025's big Marvel comeback movie is telling you what to expect even if you don't realize it

Features by Graeme McMillan, Editor

Published on Mon Nov 11 2024

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There’s something missing in the new trailer for Captain America: Brave New World. Did you notice it? Here, take a look again and see if it’s more obvious.

See it yet? There’s no Marvel Studios logo at the start. The logo that has been at the opening of every Marvel trailer in some form of another since the very start of Marvel Studios — there’s an animated Marvel logo in the first trailer for Iron Man back in 2008! — is entirely absent, replaced by dramatic, sans serif white-on-black text that echoes the sober political thrillers of the 1960s and ‘70s… a fact that is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental, given the vibe of the trailer itself. It’s another sign that, in many ways, 2025’s first Marvel release will signal a new era for the studio, one that fans and executives have been looking for, for some time.

Thanks to delays in production and release caused by the 2023 strikes, Captain America: Brave New World will arrive as the first Marvel movie set inside the main MCU universe (the Sacred Timeline, if you will) in more than a year. When it hits theaters February 14, 2025, it’ll have been 15 months since a main timeline Marvel movie will have been in theaters — Deadpool and Wolverine, Marvel’s only theatrical release of 2024, was very obviously a multiverse romp — and, thanks to Marvel’s reduced release schedule on Disney+ this year, both of the series that did see the light of day in 2024 in the main timeline (January’s Echo, and the just-completed Agatha All Along) were purposefully removed from the main action, so to speak.

That means that it’s been awhile since there’s been a full-scale, all-out Marvel production for fans to enjoy, and Captain America: Brave New World seems purpose-built to take advantage of that hunger: not only do we get to see Cap in action again for the first time since 2021’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but we also get to see the debut of the Red Hulk, and get even more groundwork laid for the future of the MCU, as those lucky enough to see the San Diego Comic-Con exclusive footage that explicitly referenced the formation of a new Avengers team already knows.

In some ways, it’s a sign that Marvel is getting back to basics in a way that fans have been anticipating for years — we’ve not seen any of the original Avengers onscreen since 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder, as surreal as that might seem, and while neither the current Captain America or (Red) Hulk are OG Avengers, they’re as close as we can get right now — but the lack of Marvel Studios logo on the trailer is a subtle, but meaningful signifier that this isn’t a straight return to what used to be, but nostalgia with a twist… just like the new Cap and Hulk are, for that matter.

This might be the theme for Marvel for the next few years, as we head towards Avengers: Secret Wars: “what fans want, but not exactly.” The return of Captain America and Hulk, but in different flavors. The return of the Avengers, but with a different line-up. The return, for that matter, of Robert Downey Jr. but in a new role. The same-but-different appeal of a multiverse, but in the core MCU timeline.

And it’s all summed up, right there, in a trailer that forgoes the familiar logo right up until the very end.

Captain America: Brave New World opens in theaters February 14.

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.