Thunderbolts* (2025)

Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going through some hard times.  However, without question, it deserves it.  Avengers: Endgame may have been an epic and emotional ending to the first major story line, but since that time it seems like there has been some confusion on which way to go.  Through most of the recent phases it's been "multiverse something-or-other," with little to no cohesion.  A decent movie has popped out now and then, but mostly it has been dull fare like Captain America: Brave New World.  

This has left Disney and Marvel thinking of ways of getting their audience back, particularly since James Gunn, responsible for the popular Guardians of the Galaxy films, jumped over to Warner Bros. to reboot their flagging DC Cinematic Universe.  Faced with inflated budgets and having to revamp plans due to off-screen antics by actors and a heavy reliance on streaming series to keep things moving along, things do not look promising.  There was a lot of hope that Thunderbolts* would turn that trend around.  Unfortunately, despite it being one of the better entries in the MCU in a long time, that was not to be. 

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is going through an existential crisis.  She has been recruited by the CIA to do special operations, largely for a company called OXE that was helmed by the current head of the CIA, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).  Yelena decides she wants to end her association with de Fontaine, and it turns out the attitude is mutual.  Since de Fontaine is facing possible impeachment she decides to dump anything that could incriminate her, and that includes Yelena, former Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr (aka Ghost) (Hanna John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).  

De Fontaine's idea is to get them all in one place and dispose of them.  However, she doesn't count on Bob (Lewis Pullman), a disturbed young man who was one of OXE's experiments to create superheroes.  In his case it worked and he manages to help the surviving three agents escape.  After he reveals his powers de Fontaine brings him into the old Avengers building - now dubbed The Watchtower - so that she can use him as a replacement for all superheroes.  However, he quickly realizes that she logically should have no control over him.  When she does exert what little she does have she ends up creating a creature called the Void which threatens all humanity, and which the agents she tried to kill and discredit must join together with now-Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Yelena's father Alexei (David Harbour) to vanquish.

My complaint with Marvel and DC villains is too often they are just the same old, wash-rinse-repeat, supposedly unstoppable creature with some sort of idea of world domination or genocidal ideas.  There are exceptions, and those exceptions have usually resulted in some of the better films.  This is one of them.  De Fontaine is an arrogant, amoral self-absorbed politician, but she's a small concern in comparison to the Void.  In fact, Bob himself is less a villain and more a mentally ill individual trying to come to grips with suddenly being granted powers he shouldn't have.  The mental illness, and overwhelming depression and shame from his childhood, is what the Void is rather than some conquering alien race or megalomaniacal mutant.  It is that little voice in everyone's brain that reminds one of all the bad things they have done whenever a slight bit of happiness may intrude upon their lives. 

Bob could have easily been a copycat of Homelander or Brightburn but, even when he realizes his power, Pullman plays him in a hesitant and unsure manner.  No overacting, even when he becomes the Void, but just someone most people would ignore.  It is just what is needed to get beyond the usual, and Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo are up to the task.

That doesn't mean there aren't some of the usual problems.  The MCU has become convinced that the more political intrigue there is the more interesting the story will be.  That's not so.  While Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes a good bad guy by showing us what Elaine would have been like if given any real power the whole impeachment subplot is pretty useless and is abandoned partway through the movie.  Also, eliminating a top-billed character at the beginning of a major action sequence just because may have worked for Deadpool 2 but doesn't here.  

Still, for a movie that began as, and honestly still is, a glorified sequel to Black Widow this is a surprising return to form.  It still didn't help the MCU's fortunes any, even after early on when it was revealed that the asterisk was to denote that the Thunderbolts were, in fact, the New Avengers.  That fact went over as well in real life as it did in the fictional world, something that director Jack Schreier satirizes in the closing credits.  Thunderbolts* flopped, another victim of superhero fatigue, bad marketing and overinflated budgets.  Seeing a movie in a theater is beyond the reach of many families these days, and wasting that money on what may be another disappointing carbon copy of a movie is not a risk most are willing to take.  It's too bad because this film, for the first time in a long time for the series, decided to finally take a few itself. 

Thunderbolts* (2025)

Time: 127 minutes

Starring: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kaman, Lewis Pullman, Julia Lewis-Dreyfus

Director: Jack Schreier