THUNDERBOLTS* - Mark Reviews Movies

Thunderbolts*, Marvel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 1, 2025

The most satisfying part of Thunderbolts* is that it feels unnecessary to the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sure, the characters here only get their own film because they've been established across several movies and/or TV shows. The ending, too, suggests they'll play at least some part in the future of this franchise, although the multiple final scenes (just before, in the middle of, and after the end credits, as per usual) are cheeky enough to also suggest that their roles might not be as significant as they'd like them to be.

The more important point here is that the eponymous team exists in their little world, with their own particular attitude, and with an idea to explore that isn't about how this or that hero will figure into that or this movies-spanning plot. One of the more promising notions of even having a vast and ever-expanding movie universe of superheroes, after all, was that each one of them could do their own thing.

These movies wouldn't always have to be about some larger threat, some world-or-galaxy-destroying plan, or setting up some plot that would play out in a later installment. There could be room for smaller stories, maybe even weirder ones or ones that experiment with limitless sense of imagination that felt possible within the comics the movies are based upon in the first place.

To be clear, this new installment fits a familiar mold, in that it forces various anti-heroes to grudgingly work together for a shared goal. Also, it only becomes imaginative in the third act, when a showdown with yet another anti-hero has little to do with superpowers and a lot to do with dealing with the shame, regrets, and guilt of a couple characters. Just the idea of the film taking these characters and those emotions seriously enough to base an entire climactic battle around them, though, means that this particular installment is doing something quite different than the usual of this franchise.

That should be embraced, especially before—as that post-credit scene pretty much sets up as a guarantee—this franchise starts introducing even more characters, more cross-movie storytelling, and, presumably, some bigger threat that will put the entire planet/galaxy/universe/multiverse in peril. The relatively little stories can matter in these movies, particularly when they treat those stories as a big deal unto themselves.

Such is the case here, as we're reunited with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), one of the Black Widows who was trained since childhood to become a cold, heartless assassin. Yelena, though, does have a heart, which has been broken following all of the death she has caused and witnessed—mostly notably the death of her sister, the now-defunct Avengers' own Black Widow. The killer-for-hire now works off-the-books for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), but Yelena is in the midst of a sense of ennui that sounds quite a bit like depression, as she recites every familiar step of her job with boredom while she shoots and fights people before exploding a whole floor in a skyscraper.

The plot here has Valentina, currently in the middle of an investigation of her activities, betraying all of her off-the-record contractors, sending each of them to kill another at a remote warehouse. Yelena figures that out along with "Ghost" Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), who can phase through solid objects, and John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who was the official Captain America (for "like two seconds," as Yelena puts it) before he publicly murdered someone.

Realizing Valentina's scheme, the three set off to stop her, and they're also aided by Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the former assassin known as Winter Soldier who's now a member of Congress, and Yelena's adoptive father Alexei (David Harbour), a Soviet version of Captain America called Red Guardian. Oh, there's also a guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman), who has an awful past and superpowers he doesn't yet comprehend.

Yes, a good amount of this narrative is setup or reminders of who these characters are, but as that unfolds, the screenplay by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo is light on the actual plotting but heavy on humor and allowing those characters to have personalities. That might not seem like much, but considering just how much this story has to establish or reacquaint the audience with, it's significant.

The focus on humor reminds us why we like these characters (mainly Yelena, Alexei, and Bucky, who already have appeared in a number of movies and/or TV shows), gives us a reason to have some sympathy for the new/newer characters (Bob especially, who can't remember anything and—once he does start recalling his life—might be better off that way, and even Walker, whose term as Captain America wasn't exactly befitting that moniker), or at least shows off some neat powers (Ghost is an obvious outlier within the team for whatever reason). It's entertaining and self-aware enough, and as an added bonus, much of the film's action doesn't rely on an abundance of visual effects.

Thunderbolts*, though, is most intriguing for where it goes, as figurative and literal darkness overtakes Yelena, the rest of the team, Bob, and, eventually, the whole of New York City. One doesn't expect the all-out battle during the climax of a superhero film to serve as a striking metaphor for existential despair or, for that matter, for the way of fighting that threat to be characters bluntly talking about those feelings between heroic rescues and blows. That's what we get here, however, and when a superhero story cares enough about its characters and ideas for that to happen, who needs any diabolical villain, multiversal shenanigans, or interconnected plotting?

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