Does Thunderbolts* Work?

Is the MCU "back" or nah?

General spoiler warning for the film Thunderbolts*, I will NOT be warning you again. If you care about being spoiled: look away now!!!

I have a bit of a history with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It started in 2016, when Brie Larson was announced to be starring in the role of Carol Danvers, also known as thee Captain Marvel. This was a game-changer for me. Short Term 12 is one of my favorite films of all time. This announcement was also quite fresh off of her Best Actress win. My attention was caught.

Still, it wasn’t until the first trailer for Captain Marvel dropped that I started seriously considering tapping in.

18-year-old me was very compelled by this trailer. Alongside the fact that it was the first time a woman was headlining an MCU film, I naturally became semi-invested.

Beforehand, I had not seen a single film in this famed Cinematic Universe. My first real exposure to the growing cultural phenomenon was the hype around Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. It was a true “must-see” in its time. I was 14 and far too edgy to give into the cultural hype at the time, though. I was busy streaming Break Free!

Anyways, throughout all of the disturbing misogyny and unjust hate thrown at Brie Larson, I still choose to reflect on 2019 focused on the positive hype around Captain Marvel, both the character and the film itself. Her first solo film was released a month before Endgame, I remember the constant speculation about how she’ll end up being key in the plan to defeat Thanos. She was being launched as the strongest superhero introduced in the universe to date. I heard this and decided… this is my time. My time to binge every single film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I thought, surely all of these storylines will converge into what Endgame will be, right? So, I spent the last few months of 2018 and the first 3 months of 2019 binging every single one… besides The Incredible Hulk, which I just do not count whatsoever. That’s literally not my business.

None of what I just said has anything to do with Thunderbolts*. It does, however, contextualize my relationship with the franchise as a whole. I am a fan… perhaps with an asterisk. After Endgame, I became more selective with the films I kept up with. I’m still a known Black Widow enthusiast (more on this later), Angelina Jolie was in Eternals so that was essential viewing, I still consider Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to be a major highlight… then I saw The Marvels. A film I had been anticipating for as long as it had been announced. I adore Nia DaCosta as a filmmaker, I was a vocal lover of Ms. Marvel as a project, Teyonah Parris is one of the most gifted humans to ever grace the screen, and as I just said, Captain Marvel is what made me watch these films to begin with. Unfortunately, The Marvels left me a tad bit disappointed. Since then, I’ve mostly tuned out of the MCU entirely. That is NOT to say The Marvels killed the franchise. Don’t piss me off. The quality of film has been inconsistent from the very conception of the MCU, but the trajectory has been aiming downward for some time by this point. Let me also emphasize, there are so many projects I dislike more than The Marvels, both from the peak Marvel era, and the post-Endgame era. The Marvels is different solely because it was the one project that I was genuinely really excited for, and it didn’t hit for me the way I was hoping.

From my perspective, the current era of the MCU is where the audiences have become… less enthusiastic about the projects being given to them. There are outliers: Spider-Man will always attract a passionate audience; the final Guardians movie became another spike in cultural popularity. Black Panther and Deadpool have major fanfare surrounding them. The pendulum just seems to be swinging away from every single film being a guaranteed success, is all I mean. You can’t bet on the Marvel brand alone to boost a film into making billions anymore.

On a personal level, I do have a lot of nostalgia attached to late 2018 and early 2019. A lot of these films hold very positive connotations in my personal life, as they have become immediately associated with a more lighthearted era of my existence. Being said, I don’t really engage with them on a particularly serious level, either. I don’t like saying, “I turn my brain off,” nor do I mean to imply I think people shouldn’t be critical. Don’t confuse that for me saying I don’t think any of them are “good” in their own right, either. My problem is, especially with some of the more recent releases, I often see them more as an extension of a brand rather than concerned with storytelling or even filmmaking. I don’t care to go in more detail on that because I’ve already gotten so far off-track. All of this is just meant to contextualize why I went into Thunderbolts* needing to be convinced on something for this film. I wasn’t going in particularly optimistic, but I was very open-minded to loving it. I loved Black Widow, and despite any insistence otherwise, this is the most direct follow up to Black Widow you could possibly get without just calling it Black Widow 2.

Let’s start actually discussing the film itself now. Starting with, I liked it! I actually think this ranks amongst Marvel at its best. I have only seen it once. I didn’t plan on going into Thunderbolts* to write any type of issue about it. This entire issue is based on my foggy memory alone. Let’s think of this entire thing as if we are leaving the cinema together and we started casually chatting about what we have just witnessed.

The very first scene features an action sequence that kind of gave me everything I wanted Black Widow to utilize more of. As I previously implied, I do regard Black Widow very highly within the Marvel canon, but I always felt a sense of the action choreography to be under-utilized considering the appeal of a character such as Natasha in the Avengers. Her power is entirely choreographed rather than magical, yet she was still just as capable as the other Avengers in her own right. Very quickly, Thunderbolts* was delivering upon what was promised there. I’m much more interested in this type of action sequencing because it feels more stunt based rather than CGI, though - in fairness - this film (as well as Black Widow) does incorporate plenty of visual effects as well.

This film follows a group of anti-heroes who start out working for Julia Louis Dreyfus as assassins of sorts. They’re all quite dangerous and unpredictable, so Julia eventually decides to tie up the loose ends by assigning each of them to kill one of the others in a specific location at the same time, then - for good measure - the room would burn up to kill whoever was left remaining. They were set up in a death trap scenario, essentially. They do eventually catch on before they can murder each other, though. Put a pin in this bit, I’ve got a bone to pick here.

There’s a mysterious Lewis Pullman in the room with them, who wasn’t sent in there on a mission, he’s seemingly just living in That Room with very little memory of how he got there. When you touch him - Bob is him name in the film - you relive your greatest traumas and regrets. Ick! Anyways, now they’re mad as hell at Julia Louis Dreyfus and have to find a way to break out of this room. Eventually, they escape and Julia Louis Dreyfus is on the hunt for them. They link up with Bucky Barnes, Lewis Pullman ends up being a shadow monster, Alexei and Yelena repair their estrangement, and they all become The New Avengers. The end. I saw some people upset that the marketing has spoiled their team-name, as before the film released in theaters, they made such a point to have the asterisk in the title as some sort of mystery… honestly, I could not possibly care any less about that. We’ve known they’re coming back for the next Avengers movie since March. It kind of seems just observational, to me at least, that this would end up being the implication.

Very quickly, though, I do have something to complain about. The pin I was talking about earlier. The Taskmaster situation. If you weren’t locked into Black Widow era, you might have missed the micro-discourse over genderbending the character of Taskmaster. The film just generally changed the character completely from the comic counterpart into Antonia Drekov. That all has nothing to do with me, as I have never read a comic a day in my life, but after seeing her treatment in Thunderbolts*, I must question all of the intentions at play here. In Black Widow, Antonia was an agent of the Red Room, brainwashed by her father to work as his robo-assassin. She had no control over her own body throughout the film and has mastered the skill of mimicking anybody she is fighting against. There’s a lot to be said about the symbolic storytelling. The film itself is allegorically about human trafficking, systemic abuse against young women. In the end, Natasha frees Antonia, and so many other women and girls. Granting Antonia autonomy for the first time in almost her entire life. It was actually quite effective storytelling to me… so cut to Thunderbolts*....

There is no better way to put it. The first time Antonia is seen since the ending of Black Widow, she gets shot in the fucking face. If I remember correctly, she has one line of dialogue. We only see the actress in one frame of the film. The rest of the scene (she's in a singular scene, by the way) she has her helmet on. I don’t know why most of the marketing includes her as if she was going to be part of the team. Furthermore, I just don’t know why they brought back a returning character for such a thankless role to begin with. Yelena acknowledged her, but it’s not as though they had much of a relationship outside of just shared trauma. Yelena barely reacts to her murder, either. She has one line around the sentiments of, “that’s unfortunate, she had a real rough go at it.” And then she’s never even mentioned again. Narratively, yes, Julia Louis Dreyfus wanted to take out these assassins who’ve worked for her before, but are generally wild cards who could do further damage, and it makes sense why Antonia would be included in that bunch… but I kind of think it would’ve been just as alright to cast an extra for such a nothing role. It doesn’t even have to be a character from the comics. Just get someone off the street to wear a ski mask and carry around an alien-esque looking gun. They don’t even need a name; they don’t need to even speak before getting shot in the face by Ava. Nobody would question why the murder in the third scene of the film isn’t somebody we know. It isn’t even, like, shocking or anything. It’s quite anti-climactic, honestly. It just happens.

I’m aware I’m the only person who actually cares that Antonia got shot in the face… but I’m still someone… and this is my newsletter! Even if I didn’t care, I’d still think it’s an odd choice. Not necessarily her murder, though I don’t think it needed to happen for them to realize it was all a set-up but that’s aside the point, entirely. My real question is about the marketing. She’s literally on the posters… for what reason? She’s not really a fan favorite that would drive people to see the movie just for her involvement. Now that I think about it, she only had one line in Black Widow, too! Most of the conversation surrounding her role in Black Widow was the aforementioned discourse about changing the character so completely from the comics, so from a marketing perspective, as well… I just have questions.

Admittedly, I got sidetracked... again. I’m just letting my ADHD control the conversation, here. And suddenly, I don’t have many more extensive thoughts left.

I enjoyed this group dynamic. Similar concepts have been done before, and probably more times than that in the comic-sphere. Both Suicide Squad films come to mind, even Birds of Prey. Banding together a team of misfits who aren’t heroes but share a common goal or motivation that happens to be at odds with worse people, thus making them heroic... a tried-and-true formula. These characters start out as people who have been villains in other projects prior to this, or have some type of blood on their hands, and then they end the movie as Avengers. I enjoy that type of trope, but what makes it all really work is the cast. These actors have really good chemistry. I enjoy seeing them on screen together.

If I’m being honest, Bucky is kind of the exception to that rule to me. I know he was a major draw to everybody else, but… come on! Even if you are his biggest fan, I want you to answer honestly… is this your favorite showcase of Bucky? I have not seen Bucky since Endgame, and throughout the entire first half of this film, it felt as though the story would pause the story to a halt and cut away from what was going on with the actual leads… solely to catch up with whatever he was up to, and never once did I give a fuck, because he was never up to anything interesting. I get the sense that he is part of the team to represent the Old School Avengers, you know… clickbait, kind of. I just don’t particularly appreciate it. On a positive note, now that he’s formally a member of The New Avengers, his involvement will probably feel less jarring. Before his motorcycle scene, though, it felt as though he was in the wrong film entirely.

I get the sense that people don’t really care for Julia Louis Dreyfus’ role in any of these projects. I remember people really weren’t feeling her in Wakanda Forever, at least, I don’t know what the consensus is now… I enjoyed her well enough in this one, likely because she actually was key to the plot this time around. I enjoy her as a secondary antagonist who keeps merely scraping by in the end. She’s like if Scrat from Ice Age was evil, in a sense. I also love seeing Geraldine Viswanathan. Just in anything, she’s always such a delight! I don’t really have anything else to add about either of them, though. I thought Valentina’s stunt at the end of this film was very fun to see play out. She had to come up with something FAST!

Florence Pugh is fantastic in this film. I don’t just mean by MCU standards, I mean quite simply. There is not a single scene in Thunderbolts* where it felt as though she wasted her time being on this set, watching her arc play out felt very fulfilling. She brought something to the character that many wouldn’t have been able to. Yelena’s action sequences and stunt work were also the best to watch. As established, I just love how the Widows do fight scenes more than any of the other characters in this universe, but also her Tom Cruising the cold open... she’s soooo cool. I know there’s something to be said about what Alexei (her father figure) put Yelena through in the first Black Widow movie, but their dynamic is one of the more emotionally resonant in this film. One of their last scenes together, I think it might have actually been thee last scene of just the two of them interacting individually, either way… I did sob. I can’t tell you what the dialogue was, or the full context, but… I remember how it made me feel. Truthfully, Melina (Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz) was missed. Her absence was very felt, but I’m sure she’s got plenty of other things to do right now.

Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr… I could cry. I never thought I’d see my sister on the screen again. And now she’s an Avenger. You don’t understand how special that is to me. She was literally the only thing I liked about either of the two Ant-Man movies I’ve seen. She’s been on my mind rent-free since 2018… and she’s back. Being said, I found her to be the most underutilized character in this film. A scene-stealer, nonetheless, as well as my favorite character. Plus, her powers were slightly more unique than the rest (barring Bob) on the count of her actually having powers that weren’t just kicking and punching, so… even though I wish she got more of a storyline, she did make her own print on this film.

Truthfully, I really don’t have a lot of love for Walker as a character. Everything about him is so derivative, and nothing is really moving me yet. Though, Goldie Hawn’s son did a fine job, performance wise. He held his own and worked well with this particular cast. There’s a world where this film would be absolutely unwatchable if this role was acted worse.

This is actually the performance that radicalized me to get on board the Lewis Pullman train. I liked him well enough before, but now I’d call myself an enjoyer of his work. Yelena was the beating heart of this film, but Bob was the bones.

Being said, in the third act… we got a little shaky. Bob’s powers are some of the more conceptual in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When we first see them, he touches Yelena once, which brings her back to her childhood where she causes the death of her friend as a part of the Widow training. He then is grabbed by Walker, which takes Walker to a memory of how he treated his wife and kid whom he’s estranged from now. The things that torment both of them the most. We get some context as to how Bob came to be, he was an experiment. He doesn’t actually know he has the powers he possesses. He blacks out every time he does anything. We come to learn he’s essentially indestructible as well. He was created to be stronger than every Avenger. The trauma dump power is just added stunt.

Eventually, Bob gets kidnapped by Julia Louis Dreyfus, and she starts radicalizing him against his fellow Thunderbolts*, she wants him to be her weapon and hers alone. At first this works for her, but eventually he’s, like… “I’m literally a God, why would I work for you?” When Geraldine Viswanathan turns the “Power Off” button on Bob, he just enters into his Void mode. Void!Bob can stare at someone and just obliterate them from this plane of existence. Furthermore, he starts turning the whole city into darkness. Nobody dies when this happens, though, rather they get consumed by the darkness and enter their shadow realm where they just relive their most traumatic memory on a loop. Tortured. The Thunderbolts start feeling very defeated because what the fuck are they supposed to do about this? They can’t kick and punch him into submission. But Yelena remembers what happened when he touched her earlier and she walks right into the darkness. Once she enters her memory, she tries breaking the system a little bit so she can find Bob. Eventually she does, and he reveals he’s basically not in control of anything anymore. Void!Bob is. The rest of the Thunderbolts stumble in as well, and they realize they have to confront each of Bob’s traumas, entering new “rooms” basically, until they defeat the Final Boss of Trauma. Which is Void!Bob. Eventually, each of the Thunderbolts rally behind him and embrace him, which frees them all from The Void. The throughline of the movie being a mental health battle present within each of the characters (particularly Yelena and Bob) is appreciated, by the way. My issue is mostly a structural thing. I’ve only seen the film once, but the sequencing just feels rushed, sloppy, not always sharply executed. I also don’t find Bob’s relationships with Ava, Walker, Bucky or Alexei established enough for the scene to be effective in context, which is kind of important in a group project film, no? With all of that being said, the third act just does not entirely land for me. Maybe that part has to grow on me, I don’t know. I appreciate it on paper, but not entirely in context.

That’s kind of the extent of my thoughts. There are nits I could bring myself to pick. Certain jokes that didn’t land for me (the entire “your name’s… Bob?” scene was… whatever) but if you ask me if I thought Thunderbolts* was a step in a promising direction for Marvel, I’d say yes! If they are the core group in the next Avengers movie, as we are being led to believe by that ending, that’s a good base to build from.

I’m just going to end this here. I’d probably give this film a solid 7/10, but with an enthusiastic heart emoji to go alongside it.