warning spoilers below

seriously, spoilers

you've been warned

well, you're here already. it's not like you care

the movie was shown recently, unfinished VFX for a test audience, here is a plot breakdown/review of the movie:

Movie opens with Sam on a mission going after the Serpent Society, they were supposed to lead Sam and Joaquin to the buyer of "the package" (adamantium)

Giancarlo (Sidewinder) has some nuns hostage and spouts very generic villain dialogue ("secure the package, take no prisoners, etc.")

Sam fights serpent society dude with golden "fang" knives, the guy has super soldier strength but Sam beats him before more soldiers arrive

Sidewinder gets away

Sam takes Joaquin to be trained by Isaiah Bradley, followed by a training montage with Sam and Joaquin and Isiah throwing around punching bags

Sam is invited to the White House, he decides to bring Isaiah and Joaquin and they party in a limo on the way to the White House

They take a picture with President Harrison Ford, Harrison tells Isaiah " I gotta do the trick-and-pony show but stick around I want to get to know you better"

Ross and Sam meet up and he tells him " I need you to lead the avengers" Sam goes " what if we don't see eye to eye" Ross replies " then we will figure that out together"

Ross is almost assassinated by Isaiah Bradley as well as other mind controlled soldiers and security guards in the room

Sam chases Isaiah out into the streets where Isaiah comes to and doesn't know where he is, he is arrested

Sam and Joaquin look at security footage inside the White House and see that Isaiah looks down at his phone and his hypnotized by flashing lights

Later see that the other soldiers and security guards in the room also got the same flashes on their phone lights

Sam and Joaquin decide to get to who is behind all this and come across Tim Blake Nelson as the leader with a weird molded-on brain-shaped rubber cap and slightly green skin

The leader has been visited by Ross many times because Ross was dying and turned to the leader to help him which in turn causes him to Hulk out if his blood pressure raises (Ross has to eat lollipops as a form of medication I think?)

Ruth (Sabra) starts to take Isaiah Bradley into containment after another mind controlled attempted assassination in a prison, he goes " I will not be locked up in a box again!"

Ruth decides to also track down breadcrumbs leading to sterns (the leader) where she comes across and (very briefly) teams up with Sam and Joaquin

They go to Stark technologies where they meet Amadeus Cho who is the smartest engineer there. I don't know where they found this actor but he is not good at all. Sam says something about pepper but we never see her

President Ross is bunkered down away from danger and is trying to get the world leaders to agree on a peace treaty and is having trouble with Japan getting on board after Japan thinks America robbed it of its adamantium (or something along those lines)

This leads to Torres and Wilson meeting up with Ross as American battleships and Japanese battleships fight with each other in a big set piece near the hand of Tiumut in the Indian ocean

Big cgi-filled action scene that ends with Torres falling out of the air into the water but then rescued by a medic

As Torres is in the hospital recovering, Bucky swings by to check on Sam, makes a speech, jokes about how it was written, then says he has a fundraiser to get to and nopes tf outta the movie

Ross finds out he is being set up by Sterns to make Japan and the other world leaders not want to work with him because of reasons (something to do with the serpent Society stealing adamantium or something? Idk it wasn't very clear)

But Ross goes to a press conference at the White House where all of a sudden, the leaders vaguely-portrayed mind-control sounds start playing through the speaker eventually causing Harrison to Hulk out

Sam meets the leader who admits his evil plan and thinks Sam will die bc he's not Steve rogers ( Sam says "I love to prove people wrong")

Sam shows up to the scene with Rulk and the two tear up the White House (very Jan 6 - evoking imagery at times)

They eventually start hashing it out and the fight culminates with Sam stabbing one of his wings into Ross' side which causes him to transform back to Harrison but he's all scratched up (doesn't have the invulnerability that Hulk has)

Ross is locked up in the raft (is told by Sam, "how does it feel to be locked up?" Ross is like well at least I'm safe and they made a point to have sam literally say to the president " thank you for taking accountability for your own actions and turning yourself in voluntarily " where Ross is then met by his daughter Betty (and ho boy does Liv Tyler look botoxed up to HighHell

Sam visits Torres in the hospital. They joke about Torres being from Miami and visiting Wakanda to get new wings

Mid credit scene: Sam visits the leader in the raft, mentions some thing about giving hulk juice to Amadeus Cho , and Sterns goes "something big and bad is comin'" and Sam is like "I'll be ready". That's it. No one else shows up, I don't know if it's referring to Dr. doom or incursions or what; the leader is supposed to be "all-knowing" but they did a weak job portraying that

No pay off for Isaiah's story

No payoff for the supposed "Avengers team" that Sam was supposed to form

Not enough scenes between sam and Joaquin to establish that relationship and make us feel any kind of attachment towards them

The Leader's goals were vague and his methods of doing what he was doing even vaguer. It played across like CW version of dc's brainiac only worse somehow

Actress who played Ruth didn't bring anything to that character, felt like she was only in the movie because they needed a black widow type of character, but ultimately she added nothing

Mackie and Harrison are good but Harrison hulking out was unintentionally hilarious, definitely the highlight of the entire movie

Sam with ONLY Vibranium Cap shield and wings withholds MULTIPLE heavy hits from Red Hulk that would ABSOLUTELY destroy his body, considering his suit was not Vibranium and Sam still ain't got no super soldier serum, he would be a broken bloody pulp after Rulk full force punches him multiple times and not even a cracked rib on Sam's part

Serpent Society was pretty much nonexistent in this movie, maybe total of five - 7 minutes of the film was devoted to them. (Them being big strong dude with golden fang knives and Sidewinder, no other members shown) Sadly Giancarlo Esposito is offered very little to do, he had more to do in Megalopolis which is saying something

Overall, halfway decent movie not bad not good, entertaining for the most part but feels like it is just repeating plot points from both the winter soldier and Civil War making the entire story feel way too safe, predictable and by-the-numbers

Whole thing plays out and feels very much like something that belongs on Disney + (Harrison Ford being the one aspect that makes it belong in cinemas) and some of the action is pretty good

Awkward pacing that could be cleaned up by the time the final version comes out, but the story feels a bit too derivative of other Cap movies (Zemo framing Bucky is like Sterns framing Isiah) (Sam and Joaquin on the run in a truck driving to an underground bunker like Nat and Steve in TWS, Air battle at Tiamat similar to climax in TWS)

Rulk/Cap fight was teased the entire movie only for it to last about five minutes

Only "cameos" were Betty, Bucky, Amadeus Cho

Movie never really showed us why Sam "IS" Captain America or why he should continue to lead the avengers