Amid a climate in which most fans sense that Marvel Studios just isn’t as fun as it used to be and that the most beloved characters in the franchise have been exhausted, the company drops a movie that’s essentially about heroes who struggle to leave the shadows of their more famous counterparts. And it (mostly) works.
“Thunderbolts*” is an odd duck of a superhero flick, one that almost leans into the skid of the MCU, and, by doing so, might actually straighten it out. It can’t quite shake loose of the consistent problems in the MCU’s recent output (turn a light on!). Still, it challenges blockbuster fans in unexpected ways, presenting them with richer acting than we’ve seen in these films in some time and, perhaps most shockingly, a final act that’s emotionally grounded instead of just “CGI things go boom.” It ends on a note that feels like a preview for another movie (or movies), a common problem in the MCU, but this time it’s almost as interesting a final touch narratively as it is driven by marketing. Could the MCU get its groove back with a group of outcasts who defy what it means to be a hero? Maybe it was always the only way they could.
The first act of “Thunderbolts*” is undeniably its weakest. Getting this group together under the thumb of the mediocre villain Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) lacks depth, feeling like little more than blockbuster wheel-spinning. So many of these films feel like contractual obligations more than passion projects; that box-checking casts a cloud on this already under-lit film. Just look at its first few scenes of yawn-inducing congressional investigations and reunions with characters we barely remember.
That’s when we’re reconnected with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), emotionally numbed by the death of her sister, Black Widow, in “Avengers: Endgame.” Yelena works for Valentina as a sort of black-ops Avenger, but she’s ready to move on after her latest job destroying evidence for the CIA. Of course, covert government operations are like the mob: you don’t just retire. So when Yelena is sent on another clean-up mission, she’s startled to find fellow Valentina employees at the same location, a facility about to go up in flames. Valentina, who is under Congressional investigation, is seeking to destroy evidence, and Yelena knows too much to keep around.
She’s not alone. At the remote facility, she runs into John Walker aka U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and the quickly exterminated Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). In classic MCU fashion, it’s one of those scenes in which it feels like you need to have done some homework to really keep up with it in that these three characters were initially defined in “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” “Black Widow,” and the TV show “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” It again feels like you need notes as these movies and shows have gotten too abundant to track.
Yelena, Ghost, and Walker are startled to find someone else at the facility, an ordinary guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman), who ends up being anything but ordinary. Before long, Yelena’s father Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) have joined the crew of burned assets, who unite to take down Valentina, only to learn that their biggest threat may be one of their own.
“Thunderbolts*” leans into the self-serious tone of much of Marvel lately by embedding it in the film’s subject matter and visual language. Even the opening Marvel logo is drained of color, something that’s largely followed by the palette of the film that follows. Red Guardian’s outfit looks closer to brown in a film that’s been so desaturated that when a guy in a yellow chicken outfit shows up late, it’s almost a jump-scare. At times, the drab filmmaking feels thematically resonant. But there are more visually creative ways to do it than the ones employed by the incredible cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (“The Green Knight”), who falls victim to the paint-by-numbers approach to these films (and the only paint colors he has are brown and browner). It doesn’t help that Schreier’s action choreography doesn’t shine, leaving us with too little to hold onto as this film takes off.
Yet it somehow finds a way to reach its destination. By the time the crew is together, following a standout car chase sequence in which Bucky joins the gang, the pieces start falling into place. Of course, it helps a great deal to have multiple Oscar nominees in the cast. The best MCU films are often elevated by actual performances from actors who don’t just meet fan expectations of comic book characters brought to three-dimensional life but exceed them (think Robert Downey Jr. and Chadwick Boseman), and that’s what Pugh does here, using Yelena’s depression as a throughline to find her character’s rhythm instead of just as a crutch. Pullman is also excellent, finding complex notes in a role that could have just been CGI-enhanced gobbledygook. Harbour is having a blast in what is basically the comic relief role, and Russell finds shades of a wannabe leader who knows he hasn’t exactly been on the hero’s journey. Ghost is so woefully underwritten that John-Kamen can’t make much of an impact and Stan looks like he’s grown weary of playing this character, but the ensemble largely works.
And the truth is, sometimes that’s enough. Some of the best movies in the history of the MCU have thrived off bouncing interesting characters and performances off each other in projects like “The Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” I don’t expect “Thunderbolts*” to have the same culture-shaping legacy as those projects. Still, I could easily see it bringing fans back to this universe who felt burned after misfires like “The Marvels,” “Brave New World,” and the truly dismal “Quantumania.” As “Phase Five” of the MCU comes to a close with this film—“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” begins the sixth in July—no one would argue that these movies have the cultural impact they did a decade ago. But “Thunderbolts*” reminded this former comic book reader and fan of much of the early films in the MCU and what these blockbusters could do before they got too reliant on multiverses: Remind you of the humanity in the heroism. Maybe these second-rate Avengers really are the heroes that 2025 needs.
