Marvel has struggled as of late with putting decent movies and series together. Some audience superhero fatigue as well as poorly written and produced sequels and shows have left a bad taste in the mouths of moviegoers. Thunderbolts isn’t the magical solution to all of the MCU’s problems, but it is a solid entertaining entry into the catalog, and one of the stronger Marvel movies of the current “phase.”
Yelena Belova is a former Black Widow, and the younger sister of Natasha Romanov. John Walker is the disgraced former Captain America, holding the title only briefly after Steve Rogers. Ava Starr, better known as Ghost, is a thief and assassin who can harness quantum energy to vanish or walk through walls. Antonia Dreykov, the Taskmaster, is the daughter of deceased head of the Black Widow program. Each of them has been sent to the same mysterious underground bunker with orders to eliminate one of the others. Unbeknownst to any of them, their employer, Valentina de Fontaine, is actually tying up the loose ends of her criminal enterprise and the point of the mission is to trap them all so they can be eliminated. As they try to figure out how to escape certain death, they run into Bob. Bob is seemingly harmless and confused, with no idea how he came to be in the bunker, but his inexplicable presence soon turns deadly. This rag tag group of failed heroes and criminals, joined by Bucky Barnes and the Red Guardian, soon discover Valentina’s extensive scheme, and are forced to work together to save the world from a danger more powerful than even the Avengers.
Thunderbolts isn’t hugely original. It’s a plot we’ve seen before, many times. A misfit collection of losers has to discover their value and learn to work as a team to save the day. It’s Guardians of the Galaxy, or Suicide Squad, or any number of other similar stories. The “moral” of the story is delivered in a fairly heavy handed way, which isn’t entirely unexpected in this kind of movie. The main weakness of the film is that it rushes the third act, which probably missed some opportunities for character development, and made the final “showdown” seem like it was over kind of quickly.
On the positive side, however, this movie is actually reasonably well executed. The cast mostly brings their characters to life in engaging ways, and there’s a good balance of personalities that don’t all strike the same tone. Florence Pugh as Yelena is the real star, but everyone does a good job at the expected Marvel level of performance. The action and humor are all within the left & right boundaries of MCU expectation, and probably on the stronger side than several other recent films. Notably, the movie mostly avoids all of the multi-verse nonsense that has mired down the MCU across a number of movies, and makes little attempt to force connections to all the other Marvel content, outside of the characters themselves and a handful of small quips or references.
Overall, Thunderbolts isn’t going to displace of any of the best handful of favorites atop the rankings of MCU films, but it’s miles better than some of the absolute crap that has been pushed out by the studio over the past couple of years, and sits solidly in the top half of the MCU. It’s a fun action-packed hero team-up popcorn movie. There is some swearing and violence, all at normal Marvel levels (rated PG-13). There is a mid-credits scene and a post credits scene, for those interested in hanging out to watch.
