THUNDERBOLTS* Review: The Rumors of the MCU's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Over less than two decades, Disney Studios has released 35 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), for an average of more than two films a year, redefining and dominating pop culture along the way.

 

Of course, that doesn’t include the various straight-to-streaming series, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki (among another dozen others). Just on those numbers and the substantial time and labor investment alone, the MCU requires a level of concentration and dedication unmatched by contemporary pop culture offerings in any media. 

 

The exhaustion, boredom, and indifference that followed (aka “superhero fatigue”), unsurprisingly led to shrinking box-office returns and increasing criticism of the MCU’s top-down management by uber-producer Kevin Feige and his braintrust. Minus the excitement, novelty, or originality typical of the MCU’s earlier phases, expectations were understandably low for the Jake Schreier-directed Thunderbolts*, the MCU’s 36th film in a series that began with Iron Man seventeen years ago.

 

It’s all the more shocking then that Thunderbolts* not only stands out in comparison to more recent underwhelming offerings, but stands up on its own as a thoughtful, provocative, resonant piece of superhero entertainment, a sign perhaps of better things to come in the future on big and small screens. 

 

Fatigue, not to mention boredom or its French cousin, ennui, underlies both Thunderbolts* central theme of reconciling yourself to failure and its central character, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). The survivor of the Soviet-era Red Room, an assassin training program, and the loss of her adoptive sister, Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Yelena has tried to find a semblance of meaning and self-worth as a spy-for-hire for the U.S. government.

 

Working under the current CIA director, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).,Yelena completes super-secret, unsanctioned missions equal to her skillset and moral compass. Despite her level-best efforts, Yelena can’t shake the depression that’s turned over op, regardless of its globe-trotting nature or even the physical danger involved, into tedious, enervating routine. 

 

Ready for a career change, hopefully in a public-facing role, Yelena reluctantly agrees to one last, seemingly straightforward clean-up mission for Valentina. (Insert Admiral Akbar's infamous line, "It's a trap!", here.) Once at the super-secret, underground facility, Yelena discovers not only is she not alone, she’s the target for John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the disgraced onetime Captain America 2.0.

 

Like Yelena and two other surprise guests at the facility, Ava Star / Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Walker discovers he’s a target for permanent deletion, part of Valentina’s plan to eradicate any trace of the super-secret experiments she created and managed without Congressional oversight or approval. 

 

Onetime antiheroes, minor villains, and castoffs, the unnamed, inadvertent “team” come across a survivor of Valentina’s experiments, Robert “Bob” Reynolds (Lewis Pullman). Afflicted with a minor case of amnesia, a shy, introverted demeanor, and seemingly useless, Bob initially proves a hindrance, the proverbial third wheel who can’t get out of his own way or the “team’s.” In classic MCU fashion, though, it takes team work to make the dream (of escaping the booby-trapped facility) work.

 

While there’s far more to Bob’s story than will be revealed here, he plays an essential role in Yelena’s emotional arc, though it’s far from one-sided. Yelena’s willingness to show Bob, a self-effacing character beset by a history of mental health issues, some similar to Yelena’s, proves pivotal to the resolution of the larger conflict involving Valentina’s “power for power’s sake” aspirations, an ultra-powerful, dangerously unstable experiment, and the MCU’s equivalent of real-world “talk therapy,” albeit with a fantastical, science-fiction-inspired bent. 

 

The team doesn’t become an actual team until Bucky Barnes / The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), a first-term Congressman from New York, and Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena’s adoptive father and de facto comic relief, join Yelena and the others. Even then, they have a slight problem naming themselves. (No spoilers, as its one of the funnier running gags in the film.) Although he plays a disappointingly secondary role, Barnes connects Valentina, her obsession to guarantee national security by any means necessary, Congressional impeachment hearings, and the plan to eliminate Yelena and the others. 

 

Ultimately, however, Thunderbolts* turns less on the usual spandex-related superheroics than a much-needed heart-to-heart led by Yelena, setting aside feats of strength for empathetic listening that helps to satisfactorily resolve the central dilemma. It’s more than talking through depression; it’s also acknowledging, however difficulty, that you might be a (super) hero in your own mind, but not in others, that whatever dreams you had for yourself, including exterior markers and signifiers of success, aren’t just unlikely, they’re practically impossible. 

 

And that’s where Thunderbolts*, centered as it is on the MCU’s third- and fourth-rate characters (“losers” or “also-rans” if we follow one uncharitable take), really stands out from its most recent predecessors: It’s not about overcoming failure and disappointment by beating your opponents into submission and saving the world, but in learning to live with and accept failure and disappointment regardless of costumed superheroics.

 

It certainly doesn’t hurt, of course, that Marvel’s casting remains one of its not-so-secret weapons. Casting Oscar nominees in Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, along with the bigger-than-life David Harbour and future A-lister Lewis Pullman, isn’t based on appearances alone. A top-flight cast helps to elevate Eric Pearson (The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Transformers One, Black Widow) and Joanna Calo’s (Beef, Lost Ollie, The Bear) multi-layered screenplay above and beyond what's on the page. Pugh and Pullman especially add depth and nuance as Yelena and Bob, respectively, to already well-written roles.