To call Marvel’sThunderbolts*a highly anticipated project from the studio could be seen as something of an overstatement. Whle the movie is packed with talent, from veterans like Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan to MCU newcomer Lewis Pullman, there’s still a sense that general audiences may be looking at this movie’s marketing and wondering, “who are these people?”
Luckily, there is plenty to like inThunderbolts*for longtime Marvel fans and general audiences alike. It features a story that focuses much more on the internal stakes of being a superhero (don’t be fooled, though, there are definitely external stakes as well). The main cast are uniformly impressive, even if some of them remain somewhat underdeveloped by the movie’s end. This is also a great-looking Marvel movie that does away with most of the garish, bright colors and flat lighting of previous outings, and features a moving score from Son Lux.
The biggest focus inThunderbolts*isYelena Belova, Florence Pugh’s character,who premiered inBlack Widowbefore returning inHawkeye. She’s feeling dissatisfied with her work, which includesa breathtaking leap from the world’s second-tallest building. However, there’s something darker going on with Yelena, as she alludes to in a conversation with her surrogate father, Red Guardian (David Harbour, who is just having so much fun in every scene). She wants more out of her work, to be a public-facing figure, if only to finally bury her past. Meanwhile, Red Guardian is stuck living in the past, watching old footage of his glory days while waiting for a DoorDash order.
The idea of holding onto the past too tightly is a theme that runs throughout the movie and drives pretty much all of the character arcs. John Walker (Wyatt Russell, last seen inCaptain America and the Winter Soldier) is still sour about his disgraceful tenure as the new Cap, while Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is struggling with being another kind of government tool: a freshman congressman. His path crosses with that of CIA directorValentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), who faces impeachment over some supposedly shady things she has done with her private company, O.X.E. Of course, the allegations are entirely true, which means she has some evidence to destroy. This is the impetus for bringing the central characters (all employees of Valentina) together as each one is sent to take out one of the others.
This double-cross strategy is what leads to the discovery of Bob aka Sentry (Lewis Pullman, giving a sympathetic and frightening performancein essentially a dual role). From there, the movie begins a mad dash to its conclusion, sometimes at the cost of letting the characters and their burgeoning partnerships breathe. Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) gets the shortest shrift in terms of development, with only some allusions to her past but nothing deeper. Similarly, John Walker’s own darkness feels truncated and surface-level, with a brief glimpse into his family life feeling more perfunctory than revealing.
Meanwhile, Bucky’s role in the movie feels more like being the adult in the room than developing his character even further. Of course, at this point, what more can be said about Bucky? Even a signature Marvel quip in the third act seems to say “yeah, we know everything about Bucky already, no need to go there again.” Outside of the heroes,Valentina’s assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan)feels almost entirely unnecessary, despite the character being pretty significant in Marvel comics.
What really works inside the rushed storytelling is the action, which is impressively staged by director Jake Schreier. The first fight between the future Thunderbolts inside of Valentina’s vault is shot coherently, with every character getting a chance to show off their particular set of skills and how they work in a four-way brawl. Later on, there’s a truly impressive one-shot sequence where the team does their best to take down the Sentry, only for him to easily overpower them at every opportunity.
Even with the impressive action, though, what Schreier really brings to the movie is a solid understanding of how to build a nightmare-inducing climax that plays differently than what other Marvel movies have done before. There’s definitely a cynical reading that can be applied to how the story eventually resolves, but Schreier and screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo add enough psychological exploration to the movie to make it feel meaningful. They also manage to make this movie feel self-contained, despite it having thesame ‘too much homework’ problemas other recent projects (viewers will need to have seenBlack Widow,Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and oddly enough,Ant-Man and the Waspin order to truly grasp everything).
There’s a real throughline about how wrong things can go without the right support at home, as well as how people or organizations can use someone’s issues to manipulate them. Bob, and later his alternate personality, the Void, are comic-book takes on bipolar disorder. Lewis Pullman’s heartfelt performance shows a character caught between letting his worst impulses unleash horrifying destruction and retreating into himself to keep the darkness pushed down. Ultimately, this is the real strength ofThunderbolts*: rather than just falling intothe tired old evil Superman tropethat so much media has exploited, it instead blows it up, asking what happens when an essentially good but troubled person who has never dealt with their trauma is given God-like power.
Thunderbolts*, much like its central group of heroes, is not without its flaws. However, also like that central group of heroes, it ultimately does more good things than bad. It’s a much-needed solid outing for Marvel, and one that helps to build toward the franchise’s future movies in unexpected ways. It may not feature Iron Man, Thor, or (the real) Captain America, butThunderbolts*introduces a band of lesser characters that are clearly meant for bigger things. It is most akin toGuardians of the Galaxy, another story about a lesser-known team of Marvel characters that nonetheless went on to great fame. It remains to be seen ifThunderbolts*can be the hit Marvel needs it to be, but it’s at least something different from the gargantuan but struggling Marvel Studios, and it’s a win they definitely need right now.
