Thunderbolts*: Marvel's Old Habits Try To Build Something New - Review

Since stepping out of the theater on Saturday afternoon, my brain has been a jumble of ideas and thoughts about Marvel’s latest film, Thunderbolts*. There’s not a lot of outright negative on the film, but most of the praise is anywhere from faint to “best Marvel since Avengers: Endgame!” . That latter exclamation doesn’t mean much considering it basically admits that the MCU has been floundering since then. It’s mostly that reviewer’s big opportunity to stake in the ground that Marvel has finally turned a corner. Considering the trajectory of their films for the last several years, eventually-- hopefully one will be better than what came before.

Given the last half-decade, it’s not been great for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They’ve yet to get anywhere near that Endgame apex, and in the intervening years they’ve seen a downslide culminating in the nadir of Captain America: Brave New World.

Now, though, it’s a bright new tomorrow. As this movie proclaims at the end, we finally have a new Avengers team. Out of nowhere. These guys. Avengers. And no, that’s not a spoiler because as Monday morning (around the time the final box office numbers came in), Marvel made a concerted effort to update their official marketing let everyone know what the asterisk really stood for. As if those who were paying attention didn’t already know1 or suspect. Didn’t want to know? Suck it up, nerds. Real Marvel Fans see the movies opening weekend!

Really, though, for all that this movie hits the benchmark of “don’t screw it up”, it really does highlight just how far Marvel has gotten from the strengths that made it such a powerhouse for so long. This movie’s marketing promised big voice and an avant-garde style like we were getting another Guardians or even the trailer to Suicide Squad: a lovable band of misfits all coming together to build a team.

For all that it’s a passable movie, it’s a concern that Marvel is struggling to make a solid base hit. In this case, it’s like them hitting for a double. They get on base and in scoring position, but we’re not sure how well the next batters are going to do.

Phases definitely mean something

Thunderbolts* is the official end of what Marvel calls Phase Five, which has been somewhat of a disaster for Marvel Studios. The entire Phase can be summed up by Marvel’s 2023:

• Ant-Man & The Wasp Quantumania - a poorly received film that’s now the poster child for everyone finally being unable to admit that the Emperor didn’t actually have any new clothes. Also pushed the chips all-in on Jonathan Majors as new Big Bad Saga Villain Kang the Conquerer in a real way (see below).
• Guardians 3 was a success, but mostly a victory lap for a bunch of talent Marvel will never get back. Not exactly replicable.
• The Marvels was their first undeniable box office failure.
• And then the end of 2023 saw the Jonathan Majors convictions in a court of law on counts of assault. Considering Marvel seemed to have gone all in on Majors (even naming an upcoming Avengers movie The Kang Dynasty), having to separate themselves from him was the right choice but undeniably crippling to their plans.

The other films were Deadpool & Wolverine, a big smash last year, but also the only MCU in the calendar year 2024 and a movie drafting off of two decades of Fox’s Marvel films, led by a character who hadn’t been in the MCU until that moment.

Compare that to Phase Six, which is currently just gonna be their long-heralded Fantastic Four reboot and two Avengers movies with an obligatory Spider-man movie thrown in to keep the Tom Holland run alive. It’ll be the shortest Phase in Marvel’s history, a furious burn of flash paper to try to limp out of this Multiverse Saga with some level of momentum.

As such, Thunderbolts* is the closest thing Marvel Studios has had to a reboot in their entire history, and you can practically see the sweat dripping off this movie as Kevin Feige and his team give whatever they can to will this into something that can make it feel like Marvel is on the upswing. They’ve already spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get RDJ and the Russos back. This is too big to fail.

The new Marvel metric

This makes it sound like I hated Thunderbolts*, and that’s not… true. As I walked out of the theater I reflected on the very low I’ve set for my MCU expectations, which basically amount to:

• Get me into the theater opening weekend, ideally in a way that’s exciting and not obligatory.
• Be entertaining enough that I feel like you’re not wasting my time.
• Let me leave the theater looking forward to whatever Marvel movie is next. Building the team

By that metric, Thunderbolts* is a success. By the time Marvel’s usual “_____ will return” appeared, based on where the movie left off, the prospect of seeing everyone again excited me for the future. Despite the cynicism of the branding, this being a team of quasi-officially-sanctioned Avengers does carry an amount of weight moving forward. The post-credits scene also hints at tensions between the different Avengers teams (Sam has his own Avengers team apparently; cool), and while I’m not totally sold on this team as one worth following, I do love drama.

Given this and the final moments of the film, where Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s press conference establishes this *New Avengers paradigm, Marvel is rapidly accelerating their plans. And what’s frustrating is that this film is a tacit admission that the MCU hasn’t been working towards anything for quite some time. Look back at the 11 most-recent Marvel movies and you’ll see barely any reference to building this team.

Yelena previously appeared in both Black Widow and as a guest star on Hawkeye, but that was truly a dozen films ago. This movie puts its entire narrative back on her shoulders. Thank god Florence Pugh is good enough to carry a movie.

It doesn’t, though, account for Wyatt Russell playing John Walker/U.S. Agent, an antagonist in a random Disney+ show that few watched and even less remember. Outside of a cameo in the most recent Captain America, Bucky’s been out of the picture for that long as well. The same is true for David Harbour as Red Guardian (who only appeared in Black Widow). It’s an even worse situation for a character like Ghost, whose only MCU appearance prior to this was as a main nemesis in an Ant-Man movie from pre-Endgame times. Valentina has had a handful of glorified cameos. Bob, obviously, is new.

To help with this, the movie locks a bunch of these characters in a room and forces them to solve the problem of escaping from Valentina’s underground bunker. The movie spends so much time here. It should. This is when it’s laying the foundation of this team and establishing their rapport or… whatever. But it just goes on for so long… Given that we were in the middle of a watching-the-team-come-together movie, my mind drifted, and I started really appreciating Marvel’s own previous record with these sorts of films.

The Avengers’ economy

To pick a random example, here’s a rough break down of how The Avengers divides its runtime:

• 0:00-0:12 - The opening New Mexico sequence featuring Loki’s arrival and subsequent escape. Big exciting action to kickoff the movie.
• 0:12-0:37 - Establish the first round of Avengers (Black Widow, Iron Man, Cap, and Hulk), culminating in Bruce & Cap on the Helicarrier.
• 0:37-0:50 - Big action sequence in which Cap, then Tony, then Thor all work together to get Loki back to the Helicarrier; includes the fight in Stugartt and then the big Cap/Iron Man/Thor fight in the woods.
• 0:50-1:12 - Back on the Helicarrier, The Avengers ping off each other now that Loki is in custody.
• 1:12-1:29 - The Helicarrier action sequence, where Hulk hulks out on Black Widow, Thor fights Hulk, Cap & Iron Man try to get the turbine up and running, Nat fights Hawkeye, and Loki escapes after murdering Coulson.
• 1:29-1:38 - The Avengers at their lowest, picking up the pieces after the Helicarrier sequence.
• 1:38-2:09 - The Battle of New York gigantic third act rollicking set piece. It rules.
• 2:09-2:12 - Ending montage.

Breaking it down, it is astonishing what Joss Whedon accomplishes over the course of two hours and twelve minutes. The Avengers is a remarkably dense film, bouncing from set piece to set piece without ever feeling overstuffed. He repeats this trick in Age of Ultron, though anyone who had seen Serenity could have told you how good he was at packing what felt like relentless action into his movies without shortchanging any characters.

The reason why people valorized (and despite the controversy still do, honestly) Whedon is because of his focus on that character development. In Avengers he’s balancing nearly a dozen characters with ruthless efficiency and making it look easy. Every scene gives every character something to do, a line of dialogue where every word is honed specifically for them. There’s not an ounce of fat on the movie. It’s remarkable.

(If you think it’s unfair for me to compare this to The Avengers, my response is 1) Marvel’s already established this precedent and 2) go watch the first Guardians movie and see that it works basically the same way. It’s also super dense without ever feeling it.)

By contrast, how long do the Thunderbolts* spend trying to get out of Valentina’s secret underground bunker?

For that matter, what is the breakdown of Thunderbolts*? I can’t get so granular (it’s not on Disney+, but give it a few weeks), but the basic movements are…

• Establish Yelena as lost and adrift. This includes the opening action set piece at the lab in Malaysia and her visiting Red Guardians; also Bucky as a Congressman slash Valentina in front of the Congressional Committee.
• The entire setpiece involving Valentina’s underground bunker. Which is like… the action fight sequence of them trying to kill each other, the many facets of their escape, the introduction of Bob, Bob voiding Yelena and Walker, the military folk trying to take them out… God this went on for so long…
• Reunion with the Red Guardian, Bucky finally joining the team by using his cool magnetic mines, and the phone call that takes them to Bob. Also Valentina corrupting Bob.
• The Thunderbolts* confront Valentina and then Bob. They get their asses kicked. They break up.
• Minutes later, the Thunderbolts* then see the arrival of the Void and fight to save the day because they’re heroes. They then all get sucked into the Void and help Bob tamp down the manic depression.
• Press Conference. Credits.

The only reason I bring all this up is because it feels… slight. What character work is here is oblique and slipshod. And it’s not… the writers’ fault. Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo are working to get character work in here as much as they can. Walker’s interaction with the Void says a lot about what he’s given up (and is super relatable about phone addiction during depression) and the movie works overtime to bring us into Yelena’s headspace and the malaise she feels.

But what about… Red Guardian? They give David Harbour a big emotional moment with Yelena right before the final sequence that helps them reconcile a bit. Outside of that he’s just… a bit sad and lonely and wants to be on a Wheaties box. Oh and he’s “Loud”. And “Russian”.

And… Bucky? Bucky’s a sitting Congressman, and thank god he doesn’t like it(?) because his heart is really not in it and by the end of this he’s going to be on a New Avengers team2. Mostly Sebastian Stan looks a bit mopey all throughout. Unsure if this is the point of his character at this point in time but like… come on, man. Give us anything. And, no, him spilling pizza (or whatever) on his shirt is not character development.

And Ghost? I mean… she has literally nothing to do in this movie except phase through things when they need her to. There’s literally no character development for her. Like… no moments. Everything comes back to her character’s premise. There’s nothing beyond that.

Bob gets some stuff, but he’s also the antagonist and they spend a lot of time with him because his depression is a major factor of the ending.

That said, is Marvel trying for something different in assembling this team? I mean, maybe. The Avengers haven’t quite been randomly slotted together like this before. But also, like… who is the standout in this movie? Remember The Avengers when people were like “No but Hulk, though” or Guardians when everyone was talking about how terrific Groot was. The best of these movies know that the most difficult characters need the big standout punchy moments to make even the side characters resonate with the audiences. This barely manages to make Yelena interesting. Ghost doesn’t stand a chance.

Mental illness in a Marvel blockbuster

The problem with Yelena, though, is that it’s a fairly superficial exploration of mental illness. Now. Props. Seriously. Tackling mental illness is something that stories have done more and more, and making a movie that basically ends in some grand “everyone just needs a hug” moment is a bold and welcome move for what’s Marvel’s marquee superhero film this year. Hashtag normalize talking about mental health issues.

But… well… it’s all so surface level. This doesn’t need to be some Kaufmanseque experience traveling into the human psyche, but Yelena’s basic trait is “malaise”. That sort of apathy is extremely hard to dramatize in a way that’s engaging. Bob’s depression is fairly generic and manifests as pure emptiness. Again, it’s good to show, but the narrative ties these into Bob at a very superficial level, only vaguely gesturing at his family life growing up. None of it explains how these are all symptoms that feed into his larger mental illness profile, the one that makes Bob such a danger to himself and those around him.

There’s a lot of room for more depth here, but the movie can’t seem to find the time to get this done. And like… yes you need explosions. But it’s frustrating because I really don’t know what this movie does with the rest of its runtime. Ideally, this would get more than the lip service it feels here.

Again, props to Marvel for doing this as it does. And setting your big climax in a dreamscape of characters’ darkest moments is a great idea. Having the threat be fairly confined to just Manhattan is pretty rad too. But like… no Ghost vision? Really? No Red Guardian one? No Bucky? Just the Walker one we got from when they were climbing out of that elevator shaft an hour ago?

Superficial superheroes

In the wake of the latest Captain America movie, I went to former podcast haunts to see what they were saying about it. On one I used to listen to, there was an extended discussion between the hosts (who liked it) and the producers (who didn’t) about Sam’s earning the shield and selling himself to the world as Captain America. As one host put it:

So you don't think that in the aftermath of this, “that guy beat a hulk” isn't the resume builder for Sam for when they do eventually put the Avengers together?

Going into that movie, I wasn’t really sure why they went with a Hulk as the movie’s Big Bad. An irony for President Ross, perhaps, given his background. But when I heard that, it struck a chord.

Without relitigating a movie that’s well in the rearview, it’s a prime example of Marvel’s single biggest problem given that we’re like three dozen movies into this series. In that movie, instead of spending the two-hour run time on real character work, testing Sam, developing who he is and what he believes, it finds a shortcut by putting him in a situation where he manages to fight and defeat a Hulk. We’ve seen what the Hulk can do in plenty of other situation. This is a defining moment and a crowning achievement for Sam as a guy who can Do Things. But does that really matter if the movie isn’t actually helping to build his character? “Defeating a Hulk” only matters to Marvel fans, not the populace at large.

By the post-credits sequence of this, set 14 months after the press conference of the final scene, the New Avengers reference that they’re in tension with Sam and his Avengers over proper branding. And yet… is any of that set up in Brave New World? President Ross mentions it as a thing he wants to do, but that’s as far as that movie goes.

That sort of narrative shortcutting is all over this movie. We are so, so far from “that’s my secret cap: I’m always angry.”

Compare this to what Marvel used to do. Marvel wasn’t better because we nostalgically romanticize the Pre-Endgame times. Marvel was better because they had to actually work to make a general audience care. Was a time when no one cared about Iron Man or Captain America. Or Ant-Man. Or the Guardians. Or Captain Marvel. Or Nick Fury. Or Bucky. Or Black Panther. Or on and on and on. Marvel had to actually work to earn audience affection for these characters. There were paths they could take that would act as scaffolding for the empathy needed to get audiences to connect, but that was all in the name of solidifying foundations from which they could build these characters into something that appealed to the audiences who didn’t read the comics. Nowadays Marvel is just building rickety scaffolding to get us over to the next scaffolding.

When I say Marvel is off the mark, this is what I mean. Thunderbolts* should matter because it’s this group of weird misfits coming together and bonding over how much life sucks and they just want to make it better for people (including each other). It shouldn’t matter because Valentina (in a moment of desperation to not get her ass beat on national television) throws out the big A-word and then we get a big title reveal in the credits saying “Surprise, bitches! It’s a New Avengers movie!”

A *New Avengers movie only matters to people who care about a new team of Avengers. This is it? Really? This movie that feels slight is their origin story? What happened to consequence? What happened to big risks and chances? Maybe the big Hydra reveal of Winter Soldier didn’t have a huge effect on the world moving forward, but it sure felt big. This movie has… Bob? And like… yeah The Sentry is one of the most powerful characters in the history of Marvel (and major graphic warning here, but this series of pages is burned into my brain). The Thunderbolts* getting their ass beat in one big flashy oner shot is their version of the [pick any of the four oners Joss Whedon used in his two Avengers movies] shot. It was a nice subversion of that moment, but it was such a rare instance of seeing something engaging or specific. Remember when these movies used to feel like they came from directors with voices?

The craziest thing…

I did like this movie. I did. If I’m hard on it it’s because I know that Marvel can do better. This is a step in the right direction. It’s not nearly as loaded with personality as its marketing (or it, itself, really) would have you believe. This is a movie where finally, Marvel is working towards something after ten disjointed films that feel like wandering through the wilderness. It at least feels intentional and I was reasonably well-entertained for two hours.

And I’m excited for the future, or at the very least looking forward to it. I’m quite looking forward to Fantastic Four, and given where this ends with the two Avengers teams in tension, knowing we’re going to get a big influx of all these characters smashing into each other next summer… I can’t help but get weirdly excited for it.

I’m not in the camp of saying Marvel is back, but everyone seems to agree is definitely a step in the right direction. I concur. That’s good enough for now.