THUNDERBOLTS* – Review by Cortland Jacoby
Misfits. Assemble. After multiple movies and projects where they were supporting characters, Marvel has finally brought its most dysfunctional antiheroes together in Thunderbolts*. They’re here to kick butt and take names – or at least try to.
As we’ve seen in Black Widow and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, corrupt Contessa and current CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has approached numerous assassins and field agents to join what we thought was a league of antiheroes. This included the late Natasha Romanoff’s adopted sister, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who is extremely depressed and borderline suicidal at the beginning of Thunderbolts*. Instead, de Fontaine has recruited individual agents Antonia “Taskmaster” Dreykov (Black Widow, Olga Kurylenko), rejected former Captain America John “U.S. Agent” Walker (Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell), and Ava “Ghost” Starr (Ant-Man and the Wasp, Hannah John-Kamen) to clean up her illegal messes all over the world. Each, fed up with being a pawn, approaches her with the idea of one last gig. Embroiled in an impeachment hearing, she takes them up on their offer with the intent of taking them out. When her plan goes wrong and a dormant, mysterious, deeply depressed man, Bob (Lewis Pullman), wakes up, the group — plus Yelena’s adoptive father and former Russian super soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour, Black Widow) — suddenly finds themselves on the run from the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, newly elected congressman Bucky Barnes has been tracking de Fontaine’s movements and kanoodling with her young staffer (Geraldine Viswanathan) to try to get her to turn her boss. Fresh off of his historic awards campaign for two very different roles, (where he won the Golden Globe for his performance in A Different Man) this should be a showcase of everything Sebastian Stan has brought to the MCU for the last fifteen years. Ultimately, he fades into the background in the film’s second half, and his relationships with the rest of the team do not have a true payoff. Stan is completely underutilized here in a way he shouldn’t have been given his talent and recent accomplishments. They do hint at a larger upcoming role in one of the infamous end credit sequences but we will have to see if that actually happens. They’ve been promising that for a while.
The same utilization problem could be said for Hannah John–Kamen’s Ghost, whose personal stakes couldn’t be lower. Most of the biased and bro-y tendencies that plagued Russell’s Wyatt have morphed into one tragic backstory of his wife and son leaving him. Their moments are great for what they are — kicking ass and cracking jokes but there’s not much else. David Harbour is given more todo and really acts as the glue to pull the team together.
Despite other characters falling slightly back, Pugh and Pullman shine together as two depressed and broken people. They runaway with Thunderbolts*. Pullman brings a sweetness to his character that is one of the best parts of the film. One could argue that Marvel made a movie about the male loneliness epidemic. While I don’t necessarily agree with the film’s depiction of a woman trying to fix him, I do believe that a lot of young men will relate to Bob. There’s a lot more to the bumbling self-depricating weirdo than anyone could imagine and his chemistry with Pugh will launch a thousand fanfics. In Yelena, Pugh is a blockbuster superstar. She’s funny, doing all her own stunts and fight choreography, and still gives a grounded performance. She tires the entire film together.
The behind-the-scenes talent is just as impressive. Director Jake Schreier and co-writer Joanna Calo hail from the critically acclaimed miniseries Beef, which swept the Emmys a few years ago. The latter also collaborated on some of the most celebrated dramedies over the last decade, including Bojack Horseman, Hacks, and The Bear. You can feel those influences in Calo’s contribution to the script, which blends comedy and tragedy together seamlessly. Should there be more jokes? Always, but Calo never pushes into the insincere or schmaltzy.
The other co-writer, Eric Pearson, has a long history with the MCU, handling rewrites for every script since 2017 and receiving co-writing credits for Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow, and the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps. Whether Marvel means to do this or not, Thunderbolts* benefits by having two cowriters, one handling the continuity and how this storyline impacts the larger MCU, and another handling the outcomes and emotionality of this particular story. Thunderbolts* feels specific in a way that other recent MCU films, like Captain America: Brave New World, didn’t.
There’s a lot that Thunderbolts* gets right and despite its weaknesses, I would watch multiple sequels of just that team. All will reunite on Avengers: Doomsday, but these characters are at their best when they get more than five minutes of screen time. Here’s hoping Marvel and Disney know that too.
