May 20th, 2025

It’s always nice to see old friends come around. I can’t say I felt that way about many of the characters of Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts*, but the energy of the movie had a familiar feeling we really haven’t seen since Joss Whedon’s Avengers. A story of humanity, of fighting against the darkness, and uniting to save others. These have not traditionally been what the bloated boulder of CGI goop that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is made of traditionally bothers itself with of late.

But with Florence Pugh at center stage, the story of Thunderbolts* focuses itself on loss and depression. We can all relate to going through the motions amidst a world that feels every day like it’s slowly slipping away. Even her goal in this is relatable, as initially all she wants is for her to work to matter, to get out of the grind and do something that means something. It’s on this quest that she finds herself locked in a box with other similarly broody anti heroes, US Agent (Wyatt Russell) , Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) , Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and their new friend Bob (Lewis Pullman).

Realizing they have been betrayed, the unlikely team works together to escape their prison and get back on the right track. As they do we aren’t greeted with effects heavy purple aliens, or mystical wizards. But instead part of their penance seems to be navigating through their own traumas, as each becomes isolated in a mental prison that’s all too familiar at various points. It’s a smart way to both tell a human centered story, and fill in the blanks for the audience members that didn’t deign to check in on Falcon and Winter Soldier, or Ant-Man and the Wasp. Part of what makes Thunderbolts* so cohesive is a decision to make it watchable without having all the prior knowledge one had to accrue over the course of the last seventeen years of Marvel movies.

I don’t want to toot its horn too much. It is after all, simply a palatable, good looking action movie. If you hire good actors and give them legible scripts, often times a good movie is the result! Being nice to this movie often feels like I’m talking down to it, but the past 5 years of MCU movies have driven me to this point.

To be completely transparent, I love comic books, and I loved the “Infinity Saga” of the MCU. Do I want it to be back to what it was? Probably not, that time has passed. But it’s nice to see it experiencing even mild success after what was a long rough period. Kind of like seeing an ex after a gnarly break up, you just hope they figure it out eventually, and it’s nice to see them back on track.

3.5/5