Directed by: Jake Schreier
Distributed by: Disney
Written by Anna Harrison
75/100
It was the worst of times.
Marvel has, since 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” been on the outs. Sure, there have been some pleasant blips (ha ha) here and there, such as “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3,” but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a sinking ship since its forced march past, well, endgame. The movies look like sludge, the characters fall flat when compared to their predecessors, and the multiverse nonsense has resulted in laziness rather than innovation, so imagine my surprise when “Thunderbolts*”—yes, with an asterisk, and yes, for a reason—turns out to be good, actually. Are… are we so back?
Well, maybe.
In “Thunderbolts*,” the characters populating this superhero movie are sometimes super, but rarely heroes: the movie opens with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) doing the dirty work of current CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, last seen in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and expounding on her depression to one of the henchmen that she’s bound and gagged before blowing up the whole building, scientists and security guards be damned. It’s hard to imagine Captain America—either one—doing anything like this.
Yelena has been drifting from one job to another with a general air of malaise; as she puts it, there is “an emptiness, a void” inside of her. She’s bored, she’s alone, and doing what amounts to mercenary work for Valentina only makes her feel worse. But it turns out she’s not the only one with this problem: when Valentina decides to rid herself of her loose ends, Yelena finds herself face-to-face with the outcast misfits of the MCU, and rather than killing each other like Valentina planned, these antiheroes decide to team up.
Each of these Thunderbolts, named after Yelena’s peewee soccer team, has their own damage to contend with. Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), Yelena’s adoptive father, former Red Guardian, and current alcoholic limo driver, wrestles with his waning relevance and parenting failures. John Walker (Wyatt Russell), introduced in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” is desperately trying to cling to his all-American image even as it unravels in his hands. Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), whom you might remember as the villainous Ghost from “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” has her own set of hurts, and Taskmaster’s (Olga Kurylenko, who must have an incredible agent to get the billing she does here) daddy issues are not for the weak. Throw into this mix Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the MCU’s resident expert on trauma, and the Thunderbolts make even the Hulk look well-adjusted.
If you don’t remember some of these characters, don’t worry—unlike many of Marvel’s recent entries, “Thunderbolts*” gives you a reason to care about them other than, “Oh, they were in such-and-such with so-and-so.” It helps that the cast is more than game; Pugh, in particular, is a standout, her deadpan hiding a deep well of both sorrow and kindness. But it’s MCU newcomer Lewis Pullman as Bob, an unwanted byproduct of Valentina’s shadier business practices, who steals the show.
If you read any of the casting announcement or press releases regarding the movie, you know who Bob is, but for the sake of spoilers, I will only say this: Bob is a bipolar former meth addict. He is also the heart and soul of “Thunderbolts*.”
Valentina, of course, wants to use Bob for her own ends, and he is easy prey. But each of the Thunderbolts have been brutally used and discarded by others before, and so to prevent it from happening to an innocent, they quit their sniping and learn to work together. In trying to help Bob, they see their own bruised psyches reflect back at them, and it’s this acknowledgement of pain and loss that serves as the climax for the movie. The real villain was never some great evil, but rather the dangerous allure of self-isolation.
It’s a more heartfelt and genuine movie than the MCU has seen in years, if not a decade, all because it chooses to focus on humanity rather than gunfights, making its third act the best of any Marvel movie. Oh, sure, there are some fisticuffs, but even then they are subdued and focus on saving civilians rather than cool powers. And the fights—when there are some—manage to look good. Really good, with cinematographer Andrew Droz Palmero (notable collaborator of David Lowery) at the helm. The score, too, is innovative and fresh courtesy of Son Lux. After years of visually indistinguishable fights and generic blaring scores, “Thunderbolts*” sounds and looks like a breath of fresh air.
So, could it be the best of times?
Like I said: well, maybe.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to feel excited about the MCU in 2025. Is that a fair critique of this specific movie? I don’t know. Maybe not. But neither is it fair to look at “Thunderbolts*” in a vacuum, because no matter how much I might want to, it’s simply impossible. It was not made to be in a vacuum. Beholden as it is to the MCU at large, its post-credits scene sets up the next “Avengers” movie, which will be overpopulated by either underdeveloped newcomers or players from Fox’s “X-Men” saga, the latter of whom will be entirely reliant on fans’ tendencies to wear rose-colored glasses about days gone past. It will be so flooded with nostalgia that the Thunderbolts (and the handful of decent newbies like Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi, who hasn’t appeared in a movie since his own in 2021) will be relegated to brief appearances on a shitty green screen.
I would much rather spend time with this group of losers (especially Bob) than rehash “Magneto was right” discourse for the thousandth time, no matter how great Sir Ian McKellen is. I want to watch Yelena and Ava hang out much more than I want to see Chris Evans appear as Hydra Captain America or whatever the hell they’re doing to him now. But, alas—we won’t have room for any of the emotional stakes present in “Thunderbolts*” in “Avengers: Doomsday” because we will be too busy keeping up with the cameos and callbacks to focus on little things like character growth and innovation.
I want to be excited again for the MCU. But looking towards the future, I am almost certain that “Thunderbolts*” will be a bug, not a feature. Soon enough we will be back to multiversal nonsense, bringing back actors and characters merely because Marvel is too frightened to try something new. Hopefully “Thunderbolts*” will spur them in the right direction, but I’m not holding my breath.
“Thunderbolts*” Trailer
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