Ever since “Avengers: Endgame” rocked cinema screens back in 2019, it has felt like Marvel Studios has been fumbling around with what to do with itself, landing a few good hits but ultimately releasing a slew of terrible superhero films that feel more like cinematic fillers rather than movies. Take the confusing and terrible CGI of 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” the easily forgotten 2023 film “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the disappointing “Thor: Love and Thunder” from 2022 and the biggest flop, 2023’s “The Marvels,” which has now taken the spot of the lowest grossing Marvel film of all time. As an avid Marvel fan, I find it disheartening, to say the least.
When raving reviews started appearing over Marvel’s newest film, “Thunderbolts*,” I was suspicious. After getting my hopes up so many times, I did not think I could sit in a theater for two hours to watch another disappointment of a superhero film. Color me surprised when, after leaving the theater, I discovered that “Thunderbolts*” is actually pretty damn good. While certainly not perfect, “Thunderbolts*” still feels like a breath of fresh air and a step back into the better era of Marvel.
The film follows a ragtag group of antiheroes called the Thunderbolts, headed by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, sister of the now-deceased Black Widow. The rest of the group consists of Captain America rip-off John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a phase-shifting assassin known as Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), the long-forgotten Russian super soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour), just a regular guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman) and fan favorite Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).
The film adheres to typical Marvel staples, like big cinematic group fight scenes, snappy dialogue and a desperation to connect to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Still, these staples feel fun and not as overused in this film as in some others, harkening back to the original “Avengers” films rather than feeling like the newer, cringeworthy flops. “Thunderbolts*” also puts more emphasis on its characters rather than the plot, something I feel recent Marvel movies have lacked. In recent years, Marvel films have put so much into connecting all their films together and creating jaw-dropping CGI fight scenes that they seem to forget to make their characters interesting at all. “Thunderbolts*” does the opposite, creating a truly character-driven film that actually makes you care about the protagonists. The acting reflects this, with stellar performances from all the cast, especially lead Florence Pugh. Using Yelena’s dry humor and sarcastic wit to her advantage, she makes the emotional moments all the more heartbreaking when her mask breaks down.
The narrative of the film is compelling as well, with the “Thunderbolts*” seeking revenge after they find out they were all sent to kill each other by their boss, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). It is fun, quick-paced and while slightly cliché, still feels fresh. The larger theme within this film relates to mental health and the dangerous nature of loneliness and keeping trauma bottled up inside. While a good message, this metaphor is incredibly heavy-handed. As in, slap you in the face with it ‘heavy-handed’. Even so, I found it sweet and heartwarming, if at times over the top.
While “Thunderbolts*” may not rise into the ranks of my favorite Marvel movies, it is certainly a step in the right direction for the studio. The characters feel compelling and three-dimensional, the humor feels like the good old times and the cliffhanger ending actually makes me excited about the next film on the docket, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which is set to release in 2025. I am already getting my hopes up and hopefully, this time, they will be put in the right place, too.
