Thunderbolts: The New Avengers | rated PG-13 | starring Florence Pugh, Julia Louis-Dryfus, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Sebastian Stan, Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Olga Kurylenko | directed by Jake Schreier | 2 hr 7 mins | 3 out of 5 |
2025 Sequelfest # 7
{Contains Thematic Spoilers}
When congresswoman Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dryfus) decides to wrap up a few loose ends by luring several rogue super-humans into a death trap, the chance meeting turns them into a reluctant team of misfits that helps a young wayward superhuman struggling with his powers before he falls under the wrong influence.
Marvel’s latest attempt to switch up the formula represents something of a role-reversal. Where DC has spent all of it’s universe-building time chasing what Marvel has done, Thunderbolts represents Marvel chasing something DC has already done (twice). Thunderbolts is Marvel’s Suicide Squad, the origin story for a bunch of expendable, roguish bad guys doing the dirty work the real heroes don’t need to do. The film is smartly anchored by the stand-out from Black Widow, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and fills out the squad with her father, the Russian Captain America (David Harbour), the American knock-off Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ant Man and the Wasp villain Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Black Widow robo-villain Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and of course, the Winter Soldier himself Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).
This is going to seem like a sidetrack, but hang on a second. There is a video that went around of an interview in which actress Sydney Sweeney plays with a spinning toy and jokingly names the toy “Bob”. The video has been used as a case study for beautiful people humor; because their life is supposedly so free of adversity and challenge that they don’t have to develop a cutting sense of humor and lean into “oh so random” humor. Naming a toy “Bob” is random and funny to these people.
That joke, that exact joke, is repeated several times in Thunderbolts.
Our new super-human (Lewis Pullman) that needs the protection of the yet-unnamed Thunderbolts just goes by “Bob” – and the movie and everyone in it thinks this is hilarious. The movie lacks the kind of 4th-wall-breaking that Marvel already did with its rogue mercenary Deadpool, but the characters in this one seem to all think they are in a movie and meta-comment on lazy character creation name. That about sums up the first half of Thunderbolts. Which has the movie version of beautiful people humor. A movie franchise that has had it so easy and been so free from adversity and challenge that it can be lazy enough to turn an “oh so random” Bob joke into a running gag. It’s the usual Marvel stuff with a chase scene built to put in the trailer, the team that reluctantly gets together and bickers about their team name, rinse repeat.
But the third act of this movie is something different indeed, and it also centers around Bob. Once Pullman’s Robert Reynolds gets a make-over, the movie turns him into a Dark Superman or a Marvel Homelander, resulting in a grim final act and the most haunting threat since our heroes turned to dust in Infinity War. Reynolds becomes a solid villain, and the third act takes a turn for the cerebral in a way that echoes Marvel’s best, and least seen, TV series FX’s Legion. I was hoping that Bob would be revealed to be the movie equivalent to David, Professor X’s son with Godlike powers. The movie goes right up to that line and refuses to pull the trigger, but the finale is a uniquely striking set piece in the Marvel universe itself. I’ve often been critical of this franchise hiring indie filmmakers to make big budget action movies out of their wheelhouse, but Thunderbolts is the first and only of these movies to have a scrappy, indie grit that fits director Jeff Schreier’s resume – which includes Robot & Franke, Paper Towns and Netflix mini-series Brand New Cherry Flavor and the overrated Beef. This is the best marriage of story and filmmaker Marvel has made in a hot minute.
Still, the fun of a superhero team-up moving is getting to watch everyone’s different powers work together, and against, each other. When your gimmick is that nobody in the movie really has powers, everyone kind of feels the same. This movie has literally 3 “Not Captain America” characters. This is where a good script would lean on their personalities to differentiate everyone, but in Thunderbolts almost everyone is a washed-up, sad sack burdened by an A24 catalog’s worth of trauma and depression. So, save for Russian Captain America’s jovial team-building and Yelena’s Villanelle-esque attitude toward killing, they all have a similar personality too.