Today, I will be doing a spoiler-free review of Thunderbolts*.
I saw this the day it was released in theaters, and I wanted to take some time to reflect on it to make sure it wasn’t recency bias, but the MCU is officially back. I had such a great time with this movie that I haven’t had with a Marvel film in a long time. It also restored my excitement and faith in the franchise for the big upcoming slate of movies over the next two years.
This movie follows an unconventional team of antiheroes who get tricked and put into a death trap together and have to embark on a dangerous mission that forces them to confront the darkest corners of their past. This team includes Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster, and John Walker. All of these characters are trained killers in different ways that also all have dark and serious backgrounds that make their connection really interesting to watch. Yelena has been trained since she was a kid to be a killer in the Red Room, Red Guardian (her father) who was a deadbeat and only cared about his glory, Bucky who was brainwashed by Hydra to be a killer for decades, and John Walker who failed at being the new Captain America and was put through hell by the media because of it.
Admittedly, to me at least Ghost and Taskmaster are the least interesting characters. Ghost is still a good character with good action sequences and was saving the team in a few of the fights, but Taskmaster is insanely unimportant. The other main character in this movie is Bob/Sentry. Bob is a guy who this team found when they were put into this death trap, who they later found out to be way more powerful than they or even he himself knew.
The villain of this movie is a woman named Valentina and also The Void. Valentina is essentially just a very powerful and very manipulative bureaucrat, while The Void is the evil part of Sentry. I’m very happy they nailed the character of Sentry in the way that they did, as he’s one of the most powerful characters in the comics, and they did a great job at showing those powers in this movie. Yelena, Red Guardian, and John Walker were also all fantastic characters. The dynamic between Yelena and Red Guardian was just fantastic as they had multiple great back and forths, and John Walker was his same self from the Captain America and The Winter Soldier show, but they added way more depth and sincerity to his character that really helped with his development. Bucky is also great in this movie, but there isn’t much development done with his character, but he’s also been around in the MCU for 10+ years now so that’s also not surprising. Along with the explosive action scenes and the surprisingly funny comedy, this movie does something that most Marvel movies in recent years have had a hard time doing, and that’s getting serious when it needs to be. This movie has multiple very real and heart-filled discussions about mental health and how that affects some of these characters, and that truly made this movie flourish more. Now, this movie isn’t perfect by any means, as Sentry’s rise felt a little rushed and the pacing could’ve been slightly better, but for the most part I really enjoyed this and I think it’s easily the MCU’s most promising installment in quite some time.
I always rate the Marvel movies and shows, and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are: action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10, and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this movie a 84/100, and the only reason it drops is because of the small pacing issues at times and as a villain Valentina left A LOT to be desired. The Void was absolutely amazing when he was on, but there wasn’t a lot of him. Overall, as I’ve said this is the best MCU project in recent memory, and I am now very excited for this franchise going forward again. Also, make sure to stay for the post-credit scene. It sets up the next few movies in a way I haven’t seen from Marvel in a LONG time.
