It’s fair to say that with the terrible state the world finds itself now, it could do with a superhero.

But a good superhero is hard to find, and as far as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is concerned, the same can be said of a good superhero flick.

The last time we saw Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America and leader of the Avengers, was in 2019’s Avengers: End Game, which also just so happens to be the most successful entry in the MCU to date, with a whopping box office taking of over two and a half billion worldwide.

He passed his iconic shield over to Sam Wilson AKA the Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie, who makes his big screen debut (after appearing as him in the Disney+ show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Captain America here.

There’s a new president in the White House, and it’s the familiar face of Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford). He’s invited Sam Wilson (Mackie), his Falcon protégé Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and original super soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) to the White House, where he is hosting a summit.

But it doesn’t quite go to plan when a number of White House security – and Bradley – start to attack the president.

Bradley is quickly imprisoned for his actions, but knowing he wasn’t in his right mind, Sam decides to investigate further, which leads him down a path that can have consequences for the entire planet.

This film continues Marvel’s worrying trend for giving relatively inexperienced directors a ‘go’ at directing a superhero film. This is only the fourth film for Nigerian-American Julias Onah to direct, and certainly the biggest in terms of budget he’s made.

It’s curious that Marvel, and no doubt Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, are happy for fairly green directors to take the reins of one of the biggest film franchises of all time. Certainly their inexperience shows, with what is an uneven and inconsistent title.

A major clue to its choppiness is clearly down to the number of writers involved, with five getting screenplay credits; whenever you see so many writers on board you know the film is in trouble and likely to struggle with a clear identity, as this one proves.

It doesn’t help that a baddie is so forgettable; even the most avid Marvel fan is unlikely to know who Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) is, and that isn’t resolved by the end of the film.

And then you have a treaty that the president is trying to push through, which just slows the film down even further. Add to that some disappointing action sequences, which are the dullest Marvel have conjured up in some time, and you have yourself a truly tepid superhero experience.

It’s a shame as there’s a nugget of interest in there, with Sam Wilson often questioning why he is Captain America, which would make for a far more interesting bed to base the rest of the film on.

Perhaps Marvel are just keen on hiring puppets to ultimately do their bidding, which it feels like here, as you don’t get any sense of Onah having any control over proceedings, certainly none that works at any rate.

Feige is clearly aware of the audiences losing interest in the franchise, which is why he’s returning to the big guns of the Avengers in two forthcoming entries - Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars to literally save the day for Marvel.

On the back of this, you certainly feel that both Sam Wilson and Anthony Mackie deserved better than this, and that this New World offered here is one that that Marvel can keep, thank you very much, as it holds little to no interest whatsoever.

Which begs the question, where’s a decent superhero film when you need one?