Film Review: Thunderbolts*
Film
Thunderbolts*
Director: Jake Schreier
Marvel Studios
In Theaters: 05.02.2025
It’s easy these days to forget that there was a point in time when the name “Marvel Studios” not only guaranteed gargantuan ticket sales, but also made sure that few people who paid for that ticket were going to leave the theater feeling disappointed. Thunderbolts* isn’t quite enough to make anyone forget the string of dismal disappointments and bombs in the past few years and shout “Marvel is back!” but it’s a big step in the right direction.
After the events of Captain America: Brave New World (including the arrest of the President of the United States for running massive illegal covert operations and turning into a giant Red Hulk that attacked Washington, DC), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seinfeld, Veep), the morally and ethically challenged director of the CIA, finds herself facing serious scrutiny. The threat of impeachment for her many unsanctioned operations is looming, and Val instructs her aide, Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan, Drive Away Dolls, You’re Cordially Invited), to dispose of any incriminating evidence by luring a group of super-powered operatives — Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh, Oppenheimer, We Live in Time), John Walker (Wyatt Russell, Under the Banner of Heaven), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen, Ready Player One) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko, Quantum of Solace) — to a remote facility to eliminate them and erase her past. But the trap backfires when the group joins forces with a timid amnesiac test subject named Bob (Lewis Pullman, Top Gun: Maverick). The team is soon joined by Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice) and Yelena’s adoptive father, Red Guardian (David Harbour, Stranger Things, Violent Night). As secrets unravel and past traumas resurface, the misfit team must decide whether to destroy one another or become something greater. Facing betrayal, political fallout and a growing threat tied to Valentina’s experiments, they rally under the name “Thunderbolts” — a name derived from Yelena’s childhood soccer team — and launch a last-ditch mission to bring down their former handler before her power becomes unstoppable.
Director Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank) does a capable job with the action, though his real strengths are his work with the ensemble cast and his sense of pacing. The screenplay by Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow) and Joanna Calo (Hacks, The Bear) is well-structured and flush with the kind of humor and repartee that has been missing or badly botched in far too many of Marvel’s most recent efforts. The basic setup of a group of former villains coming together to form a band of unlikely heroes isn’t new; it’s highly reminiscent of DC’s Suicide Squad, with the major difference being that this is infinitely more fun than the first of those films, and it’s a lot less uneven, crass and obnoxiously in your face than the second. Thunderbolts* invokes the same reluctant-team-turned-family dynamic of Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, and while it’s quite up there with both at their height, it has a sense of fun and momentum that Marvel desperately needed to recapture. It also actually manages to bring a sense of forward momentum to the MCU as a whole, finally choosing a direction after it became necessary to hit the reset button after ditching Jonathan Majors and the character of Kang the Conqueror. There’s nothing truly momentous here, but after the doldrums of the past few films, something simply fun and interesting feels very exciting.
The ensemble makes the movie, with Pugh’s Yelena anchoring the film, and she brings a star quality to her performance that’s strong enough that I didn’t miss any of the Avengers. Stan’s Bucky Barnes fills any need for having a long-term MCU favorite in the mix, and both Russell and John-Kamen are very engaging and funny. It should come as no surprise Harbour provides most of the comedic highlights, but people may be surprised to see that Pullman proves to be such a dynamic actor with true star potential. Those of us who have seen some of his smaller inde work already knew that he was something special, but his work in Thunderbolts* is going to be a revelation to mainstream audiences. Louis-Dreyfus finally gets the chance to be funny, and the always delightful Viswanathan (who called me “a legend” to my face at Sundance, which I fully intend to mention in reviews of every movie she makes until the end of time) perfectly matches her charm and energy.
Thunderbolts* is not a truly great film, but it didn’t need to be. It just needed to give us some signs that Marvel still had some gas in the tank, especially as a star vehicle for Pugh, and it gets a lot of mileage to the gallon. As a vocal detractor who didn’t even like Deadpool & Wolverine, I left this one feeling a sense of hope for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a desire to do something that I didn’t even do with Spider-Man: No Way Home: see it a second time. —Patrick Gibbs
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