Well, this was a surprise - Thunderbolts*

I generally steer away from reviews of films I’m going to see unless I really don’t care about them or have much of a stake in them. Most of the MCU releases have been like that and it’s 50/50 split on whether I’ll like them or not. Loved - really did - Marvels. Didn’t care for, at all, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Actually., rather liked Eternals, really didn’t like Thor : Love and Thunder. And while it was bloated, there was much that was admirable and near-great in Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I feel like I”m forgetting some, but I can’t be bothered to comb my memory.

Captain America: Brave New World was middling. I didn’t dislike it as much as many, but if it was titled The Incredible Hulk 2, I wouldn’t have blinked.

Thunderbolts*? Really enjoyed it. I’m a mark for Florence Pugh and Yelena Belova is one of the more interesting characters to come out of Marvel post-Endgame. Thunderbolts* is her move, despite a strong ensemble, but Yelena’s the glue in the way her older “sister” Natasha Romanov should have been (or was, actually, by the time we get to Endgame). In some ways, I feel like Pugh has gotten to do a lot of the things Johannsson should have been given. 

Yelena’s arc, from Black Widow through Hawkeye to here is as constant and I think better realized than, say, almost everyone’s who isn’t Tom Holland or Robert Downey, Jr. Plus, the actress portraying her is a staggering talent (not that there aren’t other examples in the Marvel universe, but I find it heartening to see that her character has grown steadily and subtly, and hasn’t been freighted with character changes to fit whatever the plot is at any given point.

I won’t give anything away about the plot, except to say, that this is a more grounded version set-up of DC’s The Suicide Squad and there was a part of me that wondered how James Gunn would have handled this, but frankly, between the Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad, I think we know. 

Also, Jake Schreier does something here that Marvel just hasn’t been very good with lately. Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo delivered a script that, while quippy and bantery in the patented Marvel house style, zeroes in on the real villain of the film: a trifecta of PTSD, depression, and trauma. That the people who are dealing with this three-for-one are the “heroes” of the story is an admittedly ballsy move for the superhero genre. 

To be sure, one could argue that almost ALL superheroes are dealing with these issues, but it’s rare that the existential void at the heart of existence finds as compelling a visual metaphor as comes along in this. film. The only other works in the Marvel movie/TV canon that work as intimately with mental illness are Moon Knight and WandaVision. Wanda’s treatment in Dr. Strange: the. Multiverse of Madness was hardly worthy of the character as she’d been developed in her series. No shade to Raimi, but it is the idea that a character has to become this to fulfill the needs of the plot that very often weakens compelling characters and their stories.

Anyway, I don’t want to make Thunderbolts* out to be dour. It isn’t and it reminded me, favorably, of the flick that started it all. It’s arguable that the Winter Soldier isn’t a second-tier superhero anymore, but just about everyone else in the flick is. I don’t think anyone was clamoring for a U.S. Agent film or a Red Guardian feature or a story centered on Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp. I doubt if there was any idea for giving Yelena or Bucky much thought post-Hawkeye or post-Falcon and the Winter Soldier or at best, maybe just using them in supporting capacities downstream.

Here they all get their moments and it is to the acting ensemble’s credit that no one comes off as a mere sketch or a loose rendering of a character. You do get a sense of structure, though.

If the movie is mostly Yelena’s, Bucky (now Congressman Barnes) grounds the group with his customary gravitas. David Harbor’s Alexi Shostokov/Red Guardian is less comic relief here (though he mostly is) than a kind of big lug with an optimistic outlook. Harbour is given  more to work with here than in Black Widow and his relationship with Pugh/Yelena is moree central and genuine. In some ways, I almost want to write that Yelena and Alexi are a weird parallel to Hopper and Eleven in Stranger Things, another trauma centric work, but it’s less in terms of similarity of the characters (there really is none) than the kind of paternal energy Harbor brings to both roles. 

Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent is certainly still very much a dick from the outset, but we discover more about him that renders him more relatable. He was a noticeable annoyance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, and he is still very much that here for three-fourths of the movie, but the script does a credible job of softening edges without making him change into a nice guy overnight. 

If Sebastian Stan doesn’t quite have as much to do except exude stoicism and act as a kind of guest star, Hannah John-Kamen is given even less. She manages to do what she can with limited screen time, but it’s understandable; as I keep saying (sorry), this is more Yelena-focused and it makes sense as we go along. In some ways, Yelena’s arc in the film is used as a prism through which everyone else’s is refracted. Again, the script structure is pretty clever.

I mentioned Suicide Squad above but there are significant differences. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (don’t forget the “de” when addressing her) is under threat of impeachment as a CIA director for her ties to the O.X.E. Group, particularly its Sentry Project, which is yet another “super soldier” testing ground. She tasks our antiheroes with cleaning up all traces of the Group to eliminate the evidence and the Suicide Squad parallel is that they are brought together with the idea that they will assassinate each other and get fried as the secret headquarters is consumed by a self-destruct conflagration. Taskmaster/Olga Kuryalenko. Is dispatched in the showdown with a bullet to the head. And we are introduced to Bob/Lewis Pullman who becomes as central to the plot as Yelena. 

Without giving away more than I bet I already have, she and Bob form a bond, assuredly non-romantic - and he has his own world of pain he’s dealing with. You can surmise that everyone escapes, eventually the Red Guardian shows up and they head to NYC to confront Valentina and bring the whole charade to an end.

In the meantime, Congressman Gary (no last name…that really bugs me), the great Wendell Holmes, is on track to bring the team in as proof of De Fontaine’s activities as para-CIA operatives. That doesn’t happen, but what happens in New York is. intriguing.

I’ll say this in the hope of not spoiling anything, but if this team is sort of the “anti-Avengers”, what takes  place in the city is also the opposite of the Battle For New York in the first Avengers film. All I’ll say is that it is more “interior” than I ever would have thought a film like this would be, and that, again, there are resonances  with WandaVision.

Much of this in the writing. Pearson and Calo’s pedigrees are impressive. You see how Carlo’s work on BoJack Horsemen, Beef, and The Bear inform the psychological themes and Pearson’s familiarity with the MCU through Thor: Ragnorak, Agent Carter, and of course, Black Widow fill out the broader work that goes into the film. 

Andrew Droz Palermo, as cinematographer worked on Moon Knight and also on one of my favorite films from 2021, The Green Knight. His work on A Ghost Story and going back to V/H/S puts us in good hands. His sense of composition, scale, and space is better than we often find in movies like this and the second unit work uses establishing shots that both keep the action clear and use the fights as distinct character qualities instead of merely “looking cool.”

As an aside, Pearson is one of the scriptwriters on Fantastic Four: First Steps along with Peter Cameron from WandaVision. There is a connection here with that film, but I’ll leave that as just a tease.

One of my favorite actors shows up as Valentina’s assistant and is now slotted in with Kat Dennings as the sidekick who really deserves more respect. Geraldine Viswaanathan is just a joy to watch. She does not have much to do (actually less than Dennings), but c’mon, after Miracle Workers and Drive Away Dolls (and Poker Face, and yes, Blockers dammit!, I’m happy to see her get a check from Marvel.

I can’t really go into the Pugh-Pullman work, but suffice it to say, he turns in good work. In what could have been one of those ham-handed roles where the character’s issues only server to advance the plot or are just there to act as excuses for bad behavior, he brings a genuine vulnerability to the work.

In a lot of ways, I think this might be the real reboot the MCU needs. Instead of throwing lore at us, any references are given context such that anyone could get a reference or where missing a reference wouldn’t be a big deal. Thunderbolts* is  remarkably self-contained. It’s also entertaining and I suspect is even more fun the second time around. I’ll be finding out soon enough.

This being a Marvel flick, there are what I’ve come to think of as the “corporate elements” that don’t always serve the story at hand. While the references are contextualized, in some cases they do feel like product placement and while the action pieces are solid and don’t go on forever, some are just there to show off and kind of distract from the themes the writers are working with. But these quibbles.

Thunderbolts* is the strongest MCU flick in a good while. It points to a direction that I hope Marvel’s show runners follow as we go into the next phase.