Thunderbolts doesn’t quite bring the Thunder.
It’s a great movie, don’t get me wrong. It is objectively well paced, well shot, well animated, amazingly acted, and wraps up perfectly with a bow just frayed enough to have you anticipating the sequel. It’s everything they did from Iron Man to Endgame, the Marvel formula to a T…but with none of the emotional connection to the new cast of characters.
Let’s get into it.
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Thunderbolts* yet, save this article and come back once you have, and let me know what you think in the comments!
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I want to start with the beautiful performances put on the cast. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova is hilarious and heartwarming as ever, with her father, David Harbour’s Red Guardian’s own optimistic, emotional performance amplified in their scenes together. That “Daddy, I’m so alone” scene? Tears. Sebastian Stan is a classic heartthrob superhero and the character I feel the most connection to, probably because we’ve been watching his character evolve for years. He easily holds the moral compass, anti-hero past aside, which makes him a great, hope-inspiring leader to the band of New Avengers behind him looking to turn a new page. Julia Louis Dreyfus played Valentina Allegra de Fontaine very similarly to her role in Veep, and nailed it. I love Julia, but boy, does she play the hell out of a hater. Everyone was amazing, and Sarah Halley Finn Casting nailed it once again.
Now back to my main point.
This is an objectively good movie. If you go see it, and you like superhero movies, you’ll enjoy it. The emotional storyline about loneliness is current and relevant, every fight scene is a classic, and the protagonists are set up to be liked through ups and downs. But without the years of character development and emotional connection built between the audience and years of individual hero movies, it just doesn’t quite feel the same.
Take Captain Marvel for example. That movie felt like a throw away to clear up plot holes before Endgame came out. Even though they set up The Marvels to follow, the Captain Marvel movie was not about Captain Marvel; so, no one cared about her, or the other leads, when The Marvels came out. Same thing with Ms. Marvel. Straight to streaming with a low-budget feel, like it wasn’t given the care the other heroes received. Now, of course there’s misogyny at play here—they could have made an undeniably great movie from the undeniable powerful character that is Captain Marvel to help pass on the torch to the next set of heroes. Instead, we ended up with the Thunderbolts*—just another flavor of remake coming from Disney.
Now look at Infinity War and Endgame. I have never seen a theater gasp so loudly as when Hawkeye’s family disappeared, or cheer as loudly when those heroes appeared from the portal. Our hearts soared with and sank with Tony’s passing because we cared. Because Marvel spent years making sure we cared. When they put in the effort, they receive their investment back many times over, as seen by their decade of record-breaking box office numbers. So why don’t they care if we care anymore?
Maybe it’s unfair of me to expect years of investment in individual movies before bringing them together for The Avengers. I wouldn’t necessarily judge a new DC Comics character this way, but Marvel has set a standard for itself that DC has never reached, or even been held to, honestly. Or maybe it’s more unfair to set loyalty and box office expectations of your fans without putting in the work, the creativity, and the originality that brought you your decade of success with the MCU in the first place. But who am I to say?
To wrap this up, I give Thunderbolts* 4 out of 5 stars, because while it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck…it’s a goose.
