Thunderbolts* (United States, 2025)

Thunderbolts*, Marvel’s entry into the early summer box office sweepstakes, is a comic book film of a different sort. While most of the expected tropes are present – big battles, costly action sequences, a threat to life on this planet – those things feel secondary to what the movie is trying to do: focus on character-building and recognizing the immense psychological cost that comes with immersing oneself in an existence steeped in death.

The movie has its problems. It spins its wheels during the first act, struggling to put all the moving parts together and figure out a way to get a bunch of individuals who don’t play nice with others to the point where they work together. The film’s villain, the loathsome Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), whose most notable characteristic is her long name, is more irritating than threatening. And there’s a sense that, for those who haven’t done their homework (in other words, immersed themselves in the various MCU series available on Disney+), key pieces of the characters’ backstories might be missing.

But two things more than counterbalance those flaws: the film’s determination to humanize the characters and Florence Pugh’s emotive, emotional performance as Yelena Belova, the sister of the dead Avenger, Black Widow. I remember Pugh as being a great supporting character in the post-pandemic prequel, Black Widow, but nothing about that performance hinted at what we would see here: a deeply depressed woman going through the motions as an assassin while teetering on the brink of what she calls “the void.” Is she suicidal? Perhaps. But there’s a scene between Pugh and David Harbour (who plays her father, Alexie Shostakov/Red Guardian) that’s as wrenching as anything in a traditional drama.

That’s not to say that Thunderbolts* goes Snyder-dark. It retains a sense of humor, with Red Guardian serving as a reliable means for low-key comedy. But the movie is neither jaunty nor overstuffed with superhero moments. The climax subverts expectations, opting for something less ostentatious (some might argue it is anticlimactic, but I didn’t find it so).

This is an origin story for the team that becomes colloquially known as The Thunderbolts, although most of the individual members have previously appeared in an earlier Marvel movie, TV series, or both. With by far the most screen-time, Yelena is the best fleshed-out of the six members, thereby giving Pugh her opportunity to shine. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the team leader, comes to the film with a long history, having debuted in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger before making a dozen subsequent appearances in that role. Harbour’s over-the-top interpretation of Red Guardian seems to have been influenced by WWE icons. The other three are John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the “fake Captain America,” Ghost (Hanna John-Kamen), and the mysterious Bob (Lewis Pullman, whose strong resemblance to his father, Bill, can be distracting), an amnesiac who shows up and sticks around. They go up against Valentina, who is dodging an impeachment investigation while pursuing her goal of creating an “Avengers replacement.”

Thunderbolts* works better than many of the limp, forgettable recent Marvel superhero movies because it has characters worth putting on the screen. Since Avengers: Endgame (with only a few notable exceptions), the umbrella franchise has struggled with storytelling, focusing on uninteresting lead characters and relying on the multiverse crutch in an attempt to recapture the cultural zeitgeist that defined its 2010s output. The “back to basics” feel of Thunderbolts* is therefore fresher than expected. And Jake Schreier, unlike some of the indie auteurs who have preceded him, doesn’t feel the need to put a personal imprint on the end result.

Watching Thunderbolts*, it’s easy to forget this is Marvel. Bringing together the flotsam and jetsam of the MCU and allowing them to have their own adventure (without any major cameos) goes against the grain for a film studio whose mantra seems to be “Always Be Escalating.” That’s not to say the stakes aren’t high here but the movie allows the heroes to be less than super and is willing to inhabit a gray area where the difference isn’t between “good” and “bad” but between “bad” and “worse.” Epic stories are certainly coming – Galactus and Dr. Doom lie in wait – but maybe what the MCU needs to set the stage is something less grandiose. That “something” is Thunderbolts*.

Thunderbolts* (United States, 2025)