In the Disney corner — weighing in at a $180 million production budget, more reshoots than should ever be counted, and an entire franchise’s free-falling reputation — The Harrison Ford Panic Button, The Lad On Your Left: Sam Wilson (aka Captain America) of Captain America: Brave New World!
And in the StudioCanal corner — weighing in at a $50 million production budget, a core cast that has lost no measurable steam, and a questionable Peacock-exclusive release in the U.S. — The Dame of Daft Dalliances, The Doll to End Them All: Bridget Jones of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy!
With one Paddington Brown as our unbiased spectator of these two Valentine’s Day weekend releases, just how does this matchup shake out?
Bridget bodies Cap 11 times out of 10
There’s just no way that Sam stands a chance against Bridget. You could compare any benchmark: point to the respective reception of Brave New World and Mad About the Boy; measure goalposts that either film is endeavoring to cross; or — most importantly —assess the actual quality of the movies themselves, and you would still get the same answer. But Bridget’s advantage in this square-off goes far beyond that.
Bridget Jones, as a character, is the great equalizer. Every victory of hers is marred by a defeat brought on by her own making, be it professional, romantic, or even something as simple as falling into the mud.
The opposite, however, is also true; her attitude and mortal essence prevents any lasting misfortune, and she can therefore count on her next situation being no worse than the last. For Bridget, navigating a Thai prison is no more difficult than navigating a soup recipe, so she should naturally be able to handle Sam Wilson in a showdown, whatever that looks like.
Moreover, Bridget moves through her movie in a way that Sam could only ever purport to. Sam rhymes off what we’re expected to buy as a basis for his emotional arc in Brave New World, but when the time comes to walk to the walk, we just get a faceful of CGI, poorly-developed intrigue, and a desperate Bucky cameo. However well established he was in the past, Sam hardly registers as a character in Brave New World.
Bridget, by contrast, throws herself head-first into the storytelling nuances of Mad About the Boy, fully living in and reckoning with all the changes and challenges that have defined her life up until now. By now, it’s clear that her inability to catch a break was never true failure on her part — it was simply a fact of incompatibility between Bridget’s obsessive and animated way of life, and an indifferent (and, let’s face it, pathologically boring) world of adulthood. Indeed, Bridget inhabits a totally different world than everyone else, which speaks directly to the dramatic irony that the Bridget Jones films employ so heavily.
And that harmonious coalescence between titular character and their own film/story is simply not found between Sam Wilson and Brave New World. Thus, with every meaningful angle examined on this cage match, there is simply no way that Bridget Jones does not come out on top in her fight against Sam Wilson. Go watch Mad About the Boy instead of Brave New World.
