With a focus on grounded emotional stakes without sacrificing action-adventure thrills, Thunderbolts* takes its Marvel B-team to heights not seen in a while from the MCU.
With every new Marvel Studios release it’s often difficult to gage what “phase” or “multiverse” is presented. Not watching the streaming programs (and who really has time to watch those?) also means missing out on new character introductions and essential storylines. Yes, swimming in the MCU ocean is murky business, especially for those uninitiated with its changing tides.
Thunderbolts*, the latest MCU entry, is thankfully wise to this. Directed by Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank), Thunderbolts* expertly uses character exposition to deliver a superhero movie where the suspense in the drama is just as thrilling as the action scenes. It’s a balancing act that Schreier pulls off with the help of a fine cast of character actors who have successfully ushered in a new generation of MCU heroes worth investing in.
Lead among them is Yelena (Florence Pugh), sister of the late Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), who has found herself in a repetitive rut of killer-for-hire assignments and alcohol fuelled isolation. When Yelena is hired by corrupt CIA boss Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) for a top-secret mission, she is instead double-crossed and joins forces with other super-mercenaries – Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Red Guardian (David Harbour) – to exact revenge against de Fontaine and solve the mystery of potentially dangerous newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman.)
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Thunderbolts* has many of the MCU calling cards of stylish fight sequences and subversive humour, sometimes to the point of cut-and-paste routine. Where Thunderbolts* excels is in the presentation of its superheroes as fully realised, complex characters who all share deeply rooted feelings of abandonment and expendable exploitation; a group of Frankenstein monsters wallowing in the torture of their misdeeds.
As a result, Thunderbolts* is a superhero movie where the main supervillain isn’t a monstrous external force but rather the demons within. The character of Bob – who Lewis Pullman plays with effective twitchy sensitivity – is especially strong in the representation of what happens when a damaged mind is given the powers of a god.
Thunderbolts* is not all doom and gloom; Schreier has delivered quite the fun and often charming superhero movie that while not as cool as Guardians of the Galaxy is an improvement on more recent MCU fare that lost a certain spark. A post-credits twist does suggest that history will repeat itself, but for now Thunderbolts* is a cracker of a superhero movie.
