‘Thunderbolts*’ does what the MCU should have done long ago
A Marvel movie that remembers that characters matter.
It’s been a hard time to be a Marvel fan.
The eleven-year period between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame isn’t exactly a high-water mark for cinema, but it was a great run for those who like their summer movies to feel like roller coasters. The early Marvel films put their characters first while building an interconnected universe that paid off narratively and emotionally in the two-part run of Infinity War and Endgame. It might not have been high art, but you could depend on it for likable characters, decent set pieces and a breezy vibe.
And then the wheels came off.
I haven’t disliked everything in Phase 4 and Phase 5. Spider-Man: No Way Home was a lot of fun, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness had some clever horror-adjacent sequences, and James Gunn predictably brought the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy in for a smooth landing1. But increasingly, the Marvel projects have been sunk by a constant need to go bigger instead of deeper, to bombard us with shoddy special effects instead of actual characters, and serve as two-hour previews for coming attractions instead of coherent and contained stories.
Thunderbolts* initially seemed like it might be the worst offender. An ensemble composed of C-tier characters from some of the MCU’s most forgettable projects, it looked less like a reward for sitting through all 30-plus films and more like Temu Suicide Squad. After walking away extremely sour from Captain America: Brave New World, I was tempted to wait for streaming. But my son and I have a tradition of seeing all the new Marvel movies opening weekend if we haven’t done a screening, which is how I found myself at the theater last Friday night.
And I walked away very pleasantly surprised. Thunderbolts* is one of the few high points of the post-Endgame MCU, a fun and thoughtful superhero movie that actually has something on its mind.
Thunderbolts* is an ensemble piece, but its main character is Yelena (Florence Pugh), the sister of Natasha Romanov and former member of the Black Widow program. After her sister’s death, Yelena has become a mercenary, taking jobs from the mysterious Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). In a departure from the usually sunny – and overly smarmy – tone of the Marvel universe, Thunderbolts* opens with Yelena musing about the emptiness she feels in her life. Yes, she then plunges into an action sequence, but it’s a more existential start than these movies get.
Yelena is ready to quit working for Valentina – much to the surprise of her estranged father, the former Soviet superhero Red Guardian (David Harbour). He’s also feeling unmoored and can’t imagine why his daughter gets no happiness serving her country. Yelena takes one last job from Valentina, but of course, we all know that there’s no such thing in the movies. She arrives at a remote base to find that she’s not alone. Disgraced former Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) has been sent to kill her; just a few seconds later, they learn that former Black Widow recruit Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) has been dispatched to neutralize him; but don’t worry, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) – the villain last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp – will finish the job.
After a fun four-way brawl, the quartet realizes they’ve been set up by Valentina, who is being investigated by Congress, led by new Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Valentina plans to incinerate all evidence of her wrongdoing – including these four mercenaries, as well as the living subject of mysterious medical experiments, Bob (Lewis Pullman), whose mental instability doesn’t react well to the Soldier Serum that’s been given to him. Joined by Red Guardian, the group begrudgingly teams up to take down Valentina.
There’s absolutely nothing in that description that could have persuaded me that Thunderbolts* would be a surprisingly compelling addition to the sprawling megaseries. Its characters were the least memorable in their respective franchises or part of subpar Disney+ series and it could easily just be another Easter Egg-pelting quip machine designed to set up whatever’s next.
But that’s the point of Thunderbolts* – both from a narrative and meta perspective. The MCU has grown bloated and directionless. Early on, Valentina tells Congress that she does what she needs to because “the Avengers aren’t coming to save us,” and it’s almost an acknowledgement of the saga’s own wheel-spinning and aimlessness in trying to figure out how to move forward without Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth or Robert Downey Jr.2 For nearly a decade, the MCU movies were often the highlights of my film year. But in recent years, I’ve found myself asking “why am I still showing up for this?” The deck is stacked against the Thunderbolts, just as it’s stacked against Thunderbolts*.
Had Marvel just made it a meta twist, this could easily be another eye-rolling franchise extension. But the script by Eric Pearson, Joanna Callo and Kurt Busiek does a solid job giving each of the characters their own turmoil. The Thunderbolts are failures who have morally compromised themselves. Yelena is still haunted by memories of the people she killed; John Walker was a public failure as Captain America whose wife abandoned him; Ghost just wants to survive but has put others at risk; and Bob, so milquetoast and kind most of the time, has his own demons threatening to erupt.
Director Jake Schreier walks a fine line with the tone. Despite its heavy themes and focus on mental health, Thunderbolts* never goes grimdark or mopey. It’s funny and fast, and I like that the action is largely small-scale, hand-to-hand combat. It’s the most coherent and energetic action we’ve seen in the MCU in awhile. And while Shreier keeps the film funny, he never undercuts the seriousness with a joke, a problem that plagues too many Marvel movies. The humor is more gallows-centric and deadpan; Harbour’s Red Guardian is probably the most cartoony of the characters, with his gung-ho excitement, but the film lets him have a real emotional grounding.
Marvel Comics set themselves from DC by giving their characters human foibles instead of being untouchable gods (even their gods had issues). The Fantastic Four is a bickering family; the X-Men could serve as an allegory for racism or LGBTQ struggles; Tony Stark battled alcoholism; and who is Bruce Banner but proof that some men would rather turn into a giant green Hulk than go to therapy? Thunderbolts* ignores the Easter Eggs and multiverses and focuses on its characters. In the process it tells a thoughtful and compelling story about the healing power of community and the necessity of self-confrontation. I’m not going to pretend it’s deep; viewers looking for another the next Sinners will be disappointed. But it’s a Marvel movie that’s about something more than getting the thingy or setting up the next film3, and it works.
Kevin Fiege famously does not like to give up on franchises, and there’s a sense that as the MCU gets closer to a soft reboot after the next two Avengers movies, he’s trying to close things up. Avengers: Endgame found a use for the slog of Thor: The Dark World. Last year, Deadpool and Wolverine provided a worthy sendoff for many of the characters from less-beloved Fox films. Thunderbolts* redeems one-note characters who deserved better than the dregs of streaming or to be relegated to the side in favor of slamming multiverses together.
And that means that we finally get to see some good actors deliver on the promise they showed when they were cast. Chief among these is Pugh, who had to play second-fiddle to Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow. Pugh gives Yelena a world-weariness and dark humor; she’s not a quip-machine but a real character seeking an opportunity to be a hero, and Pugh is really good at holding down this movie. Harbour is funny and more heartfelt than in Black Widow. Russell was wasted in Captain America and the Winter Soldier, and while he’s initially played as a hot-heated douchebag here, the film softens the character and shows the shame public failure has saddled him with. Pullman is really good as Bob, the film’s chief threat, and he’s both fearsome and sympathetic. And while the MCU has utterly wasted Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the past, she’s finally able to be wonderfully acidic as Valentina, a manipulative, scheming and self-aggrandizing schemer, and Louis-Dreyfus crackles every time she’s on the screen.
I also have to applaud Schreier for making the rare Marvel movie to veer away from the bombastic climax and instead spin its final sequences into something more intimate. The film’s final chase through Bob’s subconscious is a scary, trippy sequence that’s (slightly) more Charlie Kaufman than Michael Bay, and just when I thought the movie might give into its worse impulses and give us the obligatory smackdown with the villain, it took a different turn to end things on a more emotional note. Again, I don’t want to suggest that Thunderbolts* is Marvel’s art film, but it has hints of a more grown-up approach than this franchise usually allows.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Marvel movie if this didn’t make nods to the larger universe. And while Thunderbolts* is largely self-contained, its final moments set up a new status quo for the MCU that I’m actually excited to see play out (and yes, it explains the asterisk in the title — and it’s worth the reveal). I wouldn’t say this quite ranks up there with the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, the first Captain America or maybe even the Spider-Man films, but Thunderbolts* is the first Marvel movie in a long time that I both enjoyed in the moment and that made me curious to see what happens next.
I also had fun with last year’s Deadpool and Wolverine and the Disney+ animated series X-Men ‘97, but those are all more closely in tune with the Fox series, despite their nods to the MCU.
That last one is apparently something they don’t really have to worry about yet, as Downey is suiting up – this time as Doctor Doom – for next year’s Avengers: Doomsday.
But, of course, there is a post-credit scene that sets up the next big team-up for the MCU.