As someone long-distanced from the MCU and anything that’s happened since Endgame, and who had no interest in watching Thunderbolts*, I was surprised to find I quite enjoyed it. Its big Disney bucks and tight Marvel formula allow it to play around with a high quality cast and crew, but also hamper it by keeping it safe, predictable, and ultimately unable to really cut loose and do something truly memorable with its material. Better than I thought it would be, but not quite as good as it could have been.
Thunderbolts*’ themes are far from subtle, explicitly expressed right from the jump – the literal jump – that Florence Pugh’s Yelena takes off the top of a building on her way to work. She’s an operative-for-hire and she’s tired of it all. Her life has lost its meaning, and she yearns for something that matters, something she begins to find in the messy band of misfit assassin-operative-soldier-spies forced together after each being betrayed by their boss, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the director of the CIA. Each of them are further united by their shared range of traumas and deep emotional scars, which for Yelena are rooted in her abusive childhood training as a Black Widow. The most overt physical manifestation of these wounds is found in Bob (Lewis Pullman), the sole surviving volunteer of a secret project to engineer a superhuman replacement for the Avengers that de Fontaine, its head, has been attempting to cover up. When Bob’s powers are awakened, he alternates between the shining golden Sentry and the black empty Void, in an effective representation of his severe emotional highs and lows. It is clear that director Jack Schreier, and many of his team from the excellent show Beef, were trying to make something with a little more weight here than the usual Marvel fare, and to a certain degree, they succeeded. There are some touching and poignant moments that quite sweetly address the heavy burden of grief and depression that the main characters face, especially with the smart and creative choice for the final battle to take place within the characters’ psyches, requiring an emotional confrontation and resolution rather than a physical one. As with much of the film, however, it is impossible not to feel the firm corporate boardroom hand, strictly tailoring and managing the product to ensure it isn’t challenging or complex – just a little spice, but not too much. It felt as though the team had just enough studio-mandated wiggle room to try something fresh and impactful, but not enough to really make it into something great. It was interesting to learn that one of the writers of the film, Joanna Calo, also worked on Bojack Horseman (one of the most moving and profound examinations of depression ever put to screen), and sadly, unlike that show, I found that Thunderbolts* did little, if anything, to really leave a mark on me.
There are plenty of things Thunderbolts* does well that are more in line with what would be expected from a good Marvel film. The cast are all great, for the most part – Yelena is charming, Red Guardian (David Harbour) is funny, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) is… there, and I especially liked Wyatt Russell’s John Walker/U.S. Agent – a sullen and bitter Captain America washout who also has a wonderful screen presence and a subtle vulnerability that makes him endearing and fun to watch. The cast really do a lot of the heavy lifting, especially throughout scenes and with dialogue that might otherwise have been flat or corny. On a personal note, it was great to see Wendell Pierce and Chris Bauer from The Wire in guest roles (though also as another reminder of other, much better, stories). While the cinematography and score are fairly bland, the film moves along at an entertaining pace, and has a few particularly stunning set-pieces – Void’s appearance was especially striking, as was the effect of his powers. Overall, Thunderbolts* strikes a smooth balance between intimate character-focused scenes and big moments of spectacle, albeit with an ending that felt weirdly jarring and rushed in which it ushers us to get excited for the upcoming Fantastic Four film, almost erasing the last two hours of narrative. I almost wanted to stay with it longer – but although there was plenty to like about Thunderbolts*, it is still a film that can be very easily forgotten and that I have no strong feelings about. I wonder what it could have achieved had it not been so restricted.
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