Thunderbolts*
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for Thunderbolts*. Reader discretion is advised.
It’s time for a Marvel film… again.
Seeing as the past three or four years have been mostly painful when it comes to Marvel’s recent output, I can safely say that Thunderbolts* — while not exactly a game changer — is one of the more interesting and unique Marvel films to come out in quite some time. It is still crippled by the superhero studio’s insistence that audiences much watch five days worth of material in order to fully understand an entire motion picture’s context, as well as a hyper obsession with the same old formula and the “we are family until the end” or “good always triumphs” mentalities that can get tiresome by the third Marvel film, let alone the thirty sixth (!). Let’s get down to brass tacks. Yelena (Florence Pugh) returns after her stint in Black Widow (2021). Here, Yelena finds herself working as an assassin-for-hire for CIA director Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and Thunderbolts* begins with her latest mission. This is quickly shrugged off for the meat and potatoes of the film: Valentina’s impending impeachment. This leads to a new task, where Yelena is sent alongside a group of similar antiheroes, including John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). The only thing is: this is a trap, and they’re not going in together. These antiheroes are sent to eliminate one another. It is at this moment that they come across the crux of Thunderbolts* as a film: a random character named “Bob” (Lewis Pullman). Just Bob. He comes off as just an average Joe until it is eventually revealed that he is actually an untapped superhuman suffering from amnesia who can either be the biggest ally or a ticking time bomb depending on how he is utilized.
Even though some chaos ensues, it is through Bob’s interference that the remaining operatives realize what is going on, and they try to find a way out of this situation. Things only get hairier when Valentina catches wind of what has transpired (especially the survival of Bob, who was already deemed deceased from an earlier “Sentry” trial), leading Yelena and company to band together to stop the inevitable. The main target for Valentina now is the surprisingly alive Bob, and our band of antiheroes vow to both stop her and save him. Once they are aided by Alexei (David Harbour, who was also in Black Widow as a parental-like figure for Yelena) and eventually bump into familiar face Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan, who is heavily featured in the Captain America set of films, amongst other Marvel properties), this posse grows into a more unified and allied unit. Things are sounding a little typical for old Marvel through these plot descriptions, I am sure.
While Thunderbolts* is business as usual for Marvel, it benefits from being special enough to stand out amongst its peers.
I admit that the subterfuge premise is a decently handled one that may feel intriguing even for those who haven’t watched enough Marvel releases to fully understand the motivations and traits of these characters, but where the film shines is not how it begins: it’s how it ends. As Thunderbolts* continues, the focus on operatives being caught in a death trap only goes so far (seeing as this is a Marvel film, and the stakes only get so high). It leads towards fairly different territory for the notoriously-safe studios: a conversation on mental health. Without giving too much away, it appears that the unifying of misfits was to pit these lonely spirits against one another; in attacking like-minded individuals, it’s as if these outcasts are — once again — fighting themselves. The more obvious allegories come later in a climactic sequence that is actually kind of beautiful by Marvel’s standards, albeit obvious enough that it can feel a little simplistic despite being a moment meant to bring depth. What it lacks in subtlety it earns in emotion: a reward that has been alien to Marvel works for quite some time. What I appreciate the most is that the bleakest and darkest moments aren’t quickly sullied by a stupid one-liner as to keep us from careering over a cliff into the pits of despair. Instead, Thunderbolts* allows us to feel the intensity and vulnerability of its strongest moments, even if it’s only for a brief period of time (it’s enough). My biggest issue with Marvel as a studio is how it pretends to partake in different genres and ideologies with each film when, really, it’s just another homogenous Marvel property after all. With Thunderbolts*, I feel like the film is allowed to tackle depression well enough (as if Marvel didn’t beg for director Jake Schreier to tone his themes down, and he got the studio’s permission) to stand apart from its peers (especially the mostly mediocre output of Phase Five Marvel, like The Marvels and Deadpool & Wolverine).
Of course, the film has to quickly align itself with what’s coming up next with Marvel's thorough release lineup, and Thunderbolts* hurries back in position to allow this setup to take place; it’s hardly as intrusive as Marvel’s expositions for other projects gets, and it doesn’t make this film suddenly feel like a two-hour trailer for the upcoming Avengers film. It was apparent how much the action and performances — while expected from Marvel films by this point — felt important to this film, as opposed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. Even though doing the extra homework in watching all Marvel releases would help make the absolute most of Thunderbolts*, I feel like this entry stands on its own two feet well enough to matter. It sets up its characters and narrative nicely enough that this film feels like it has a start, middle, and (somewhat of an) end. There are themes and messages that are spearheaded and don’t feel half-baked (unlike, say, Thor: Love and Thunder’s disastrous take on the rom-com genre and the topic of battling cancer). If you are as tired of the same-old recipe of reliability and low-risk entertainment that Marvel cannot help but keep dishing out, I can at least promise that Thunderbolts* is easily one of the better releases by the studio in quite some time (comparable to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3). If you want to see an action film with commendable performances and combat that doesn’t feel sloppy or rushed, all within the perimeters of a perspective of what one’s internal battles and traumas feel like, you may find yourself as pleasantly surprised as I am.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.