B Game: “Thunderbolts*”

Thunderbolts* (2025, Dir. Jake Schreier):

Since Avengers: Endgame, all has not been well with Marvel’s cinematic (and television) multiverses, to the tune of declining box office and fan interest. To be fair, most of Marvel’s wounds have been self-inflicted. Recent films and shows have borne the scars of rushed production, as overall continuity has see-sawed between convoluted and inconsequential, resulting in products that feel more like exercises in brand management than entertainment. The result: oversaturation of the market, with the momentum, emotional engagement and novelty that propelled Marvel’s first few dozen movies all but lost.

Thunderbolts* is the logical end product of a studio that’s suffered the slings and arrows of critics and fans. Rather than take chances with a bold, unorthodox approach—who can forget the disastrous reception to The Eternals?—Thunderbolts* falls back on familiarity. A belated vibe hangs over the enterprise as it runs through the greatest hits that have characterized Marvel movies for nearly two decades now: squabbling superheroes, government conspiracies, baddies that threaten every life on Earth, the tone veering between irreverence and earnestness. But in a canny move, Thunderbolts* acknowledges how far things have fallen since Marvel’s glory days, and that you can’t go home again. We want and need the charismatic Avengers of yore as well as feats of derring-do, and in their place we get messy bursts of action and emotionally damaged screw-ups unworthy of the superhero mantle that’s thrust upon them. And even that conceit is been there-done that, as evidenced by Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad and Deadpool & Wolverine.

So nothing special or new here—check. Yet unlike other recent Marvel movies, Thunderbolts* goes down easy. Sure, you might require a scorecard to remember the backgrounds of all the dramatis personae, from Yelena (Florence Pugh), the late Black Widow’s foster sister, to Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who menaced Ant-Man way back in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, and John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who was a temporary Captain America in 2021’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier mini-series. But in contrast to other recent Marvel entries (i.e., Captain America: Brave New World) that are weighed down by endless references to past events, Thunderbolts* is lean on exposition, and one can catch the general gist of things without needing to read every chapter and verse of the Marvel universe. Better still, Thunderbolts* relies on its actors rather than pyrotechnics and CGI overload to get its points across. Deadpan, sarcastic, her face forever on the verge of either breaking into tears or an impish grin, Pugh is an uncommon mix of wit and gravitas, and her character’s flagging mental health is an accurate reflection of our current morose times. “I thought throwing myself into work was the answer,” she sighs as she cracks a few skulls in the course of her black-bag operator duties. “But I’m not focused and I’m not happy, and I have no purpose.” The rest of Thunderbolts* gives her and her sad-sack colleagues a new purpose, which might not sound like much, but compared to the muddled stakes of other Marvel movies, it makes for a clean dramatic throughline.

In line with these modest ambitions, everything about Thunderbolts* is pointedly déclassé. Our heroes get from point A to point B in a chintzy limo-for-hire, Tony Stark’s Avengers HQ has been repurposed as a government “Watchtower” that has all the personality of a dot-com startup, and the action sequences are limited to close-quarters tussles, with the big finale boiling down to a group hug. The movie takes pains to poke fun at its heroes’ shortcomings at every turn. (“So none of us can fly?” Yelena grouses at one point. “We all just punch and shoot?”) Even the Thunderbolts name is inspired by a girls’ soccer team (“sponsored by Shane’s Tire Shop”) that never won a single game, and the villains of the piece aren’t alien megalomaniacs but uppity middle management types (Julia Louise-Dreyfus’ snarky government operator Valentina) and a confused telekinetic slacker named Bob (Lewis Pullman) who could be a stand-in for your stereotypical pre-incel comic book fanboy. Instead of grand schemes and glittering tech, we get the sight of Bob high on meth and dressed in a chicken outfit, or grim flashbacks to past traumas: alcoholism, abusive relationships, children brainwashed into being assassins. Not that there isn’t stuff that stretches the bounds of credulity, including Bucky Barnes’ new job as a U.S. congressman—an unusual outcome for a man who can list “Soviet assassin” as the primary occupation on his resume (then again, given the U.S. government’s current composition, maybe it’s not so far-fetched, after all).

Less meta than the Deadpool movies and more dour than Guardians of the Galaxy, Thunderbolts* is heavy on second-rate one-liners, with its leads spending most of the film bickering with each other. The exception is David Harbour’s Red Guardian—boisterous, obnoxious, and captivated by the idea of becoming a useful superhero, his indefatigable gung-ho attitude brings much-needed ballast while everyone else is weighed down by depression and self-doubt. But if Thunderbolts* is a bit short on spectacle and wit, its undercurrents of failure and despondency are crucial to the film’s essence. For once, the subtext and the plot are of a piece, as Bob’s inadequacies take the form of an all-negating “Void” that threatens to swallow up all of existence, and the Thunderbolts‘ true bravery emerges as they confront both their inner and outer Voids. If this sounds like Everything Everywhere All At Once, you would be right (like we said, this film doesn’t score points for originality), and while Thunderbolts* doesn’t match the manic anarchy of that film, it attains a similar level of resonance, as Yelena and her comrades wrestle with past traumas and earn some well-deserved catharsis.

Yelena Belova: Bucky, you have the wrong people. We have all done bad things.
Bucky Barnes: Look, I’ve been where you are. The past doesn’t go away. So you can either live with it forever, or do something about it.

Thunderbolts* doesn’t entirely escape the shadow (or Void, if you will) of present-day Marvel: the film doesn’t climax as much as conclude with an advertisement for the next Avengers installment, as we’re reminded that we’re experiencing a minor interlude in the endless symphony that is the MCU (the post-credits scene heralds the arrival of a famous foursome). But if Thunderbolts*‘ motley crew of B-list heroes ends up being shortchanged by their own movie, it’s all in keeping with their underdog status, and their efforts to be decent rather than heroic reminds us of why Marvel movies appealed to audiences in the first place. The franchise still has work to do to get its act back together, but as the most human Marvel movie in ages, Thunderbolts* at least offers hope that the old mojo might yet be rediscovered.  ■