‘Thunderbolts*’: redemption is possible.

Let’s face it, the MCU has been in a dark place for the last few years.

While far from the dire situation that sensationalized, “MCU is Dead,” articles and video essays portray, the studio has struggled to recapture the immense critical and commercial success of the 2010’s. Granted, such a downturn was inevitable as twenty films of world building and ten years of character development made Avengers: Endgame an unprecedented feat of cinema. Yet the backlash has been so widespread that it seems people take as much joy in criticizing the new movies as they did in watching the old ones.

In all honesty, the studio – and its corporate overlords at Disney – did the audience no favors by overloading the brand with TV spinoffs that don’t match the quality or necessity of most of the earlier films. Nor in that the post-Endgame movies have lacked any sense of identity other than begin the one that introduces a character who will become important later.

Yet, it’s also dishonest to say that the post-Endgame offerings have all failed. Despite the flaws of its action sequences, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a wonderful, personal treatise on grief and the healing process. Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an emotional farewell for its director, cast, and characters, wrapped around a powerful statement against animal cruelty. What’s more, while I understand the general disdain, I still appreciate the art house contemplations of Eternals as well as the sentimentality and theme of worthiness in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Given these, it’s clear that the best of the post-Endgame period are movies with the strongest sense of identity. Where MCU films once excelled at using the superhero genre to tell personal stories, recent offerings either flail at world building (Shang Chi, Quantumania), halt their narrative for nostalgia (Multiverse of Madness, No Way Home, and possibly Deadpool & Wolverine although that’s less an MCU film than closure for Fox), or are so desperate for mass appeal that they’re stripped into incoherence (The Marvels) and re-shot into irrelevance (Brave New World).

All of this is to say that no, Thunderbolts* is not the best MCU film since Avengers: Endgame. But it is the closest the franchise has ever felt to Avengers.

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is in a numbed malaise, sort of like the MCU audience in the years since Endgame. Having lost her sister, Yelena throws herself off buildings, at targets, and into bottles in an attempt to suppress the emptiness at her core. While the opening sequence of her latest mission is exciting – including a practical jump from the world’s second highest building, the actual explosion of a full floor of another building, and an excellent reinterpretation of the now-cliché hallway fight – there is no joy in her work. The same dry, direct wit which made her the standout of 2021’s Black Widow is there, yet her words have no life. She is listless and dull, bored, to use her word, and fulfills only the bare minimum of the task laid out by her boss and nothing more, sort of like MCU films in the years since Endgame. It’s her desire for fulfillment which leads her to completing one last mission for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfuss).

An old superhero cliché is that the heroes always fight each other before teaming up. Thunderbolts*, being the most Avengers-like MCU movie since Avengers, is no exception to this rule. It’s in this opening fight scene however that he get our first real glimpse of the film’s greatest strength. Sure, the fight scene is well staged, including one incident that is obvious for the film yet unusual for the genre, and allows the characters to showcase their powers, but it’s in the way each personality comes through that brings back that old MCU feeling. It helps that the writing is very funny, but it’s more important that we’re almost as familiar with these characters as we were with the original Avengers roster before they joined together way back in 2012. In contrast, however, we don’t have the same affection for this cluster of mercenaries, criminals, and killers, allowing us to look at them the way de Fontaine does. Except, of course, for Yelena, upon whom the film wisely builds itself.

As the former White Widow, and the sister of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Yelena is an established and well liked character within the universe and the perfect point of view for this narrative. She’s connected to previous characters but not overshadowed by them, she’s strong but not invulnerable, and she even has the classic and, at this point, oft-criticized Marvel snark, although in a sharper, more direct, almost macabre way that differentiates her humor from that of other Marvel leads. Better still, Yelena is the exact shade of gray the film requires, the character we know has done bad things but isn’t a bad person. It’s also vital that Pugh has the acting chops needed to demonstrate the gradations in her character while maintaining her wonderfully deadpan delivery. It is a bit odd that she would take the time to apply blue eyeliner before a kill mission, and even odder that the eyeliner never smears for the entire film, but whatever. Maybe it’s Starktech nano-make-up.

Yelena’s drive to fill the emptiness inside her mirrors that of every other character. After becoming despised for his actions in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, John Walker/USAgent (Wyatt Russell) enters the film as perhaps the least sympathetic figure. He’s the walking and mansplaining embodiment of toxic masculinity. If Steve Rogers symbolizes America’s ideals, Walker is symbolizes America’s reality, a topic we’ll touch on more later. Walker further serves as a nice complement to Alexei/Red Guardian (David Harbor). Both want to be good family men and heroes to their country. Both failed. Beyond being comic relief, and providing several of the film’s best exchanges, Alexei demonstrates a culture that doesn’t allow men to show vulnerability. He’s so eager to be seen as strong that it drives him to foolishness. This energy is wonderfully portrayed in his reaction to Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Despite the horrible things he’s done, Bucky serves as a symbol of the redemption they all seek, the hero they wish to be. After so many appearances, it’s genuinely heartwarming to see how far Bucky has come in the MCU. Yet, even with this recognition, Bucky can’t help feeling the same emptiness found in people who have accomplished everything they could ever want. He’s done it all, seen it all, and is still, as Alexei would put it, neither full nor filled. Sadly, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost remains a rather underdeveloped character, offering little more than a cool look and a neat power set. Yet, most interesting in this cast of castoffs is Lewis Pullman as Bob.

One of the initial doubts of Thunderbolts* was that, other than Ghost, the team is composed entirely of characters whose abilities revolve around punch, kick, and shoot. They of course have different fighting styles, some are super soldiers, some can block bullets, but generally the team is pretty much the same. And that’s what makes Sentry so incredible. The MCU is overloaded with super-powered people: people who can fly, people who can move things with their minds, people who can lift mountains, people who are literal gods, and people whose technology makes them a god. After a while the power escalation becomes so great that the ability to summon lightning is ordinary. So seeing a team of punchy-shooty people come face-to-face with a being more powerful than a god is as terrifying as it should be. We’ve seen sequences like this before, mostly in the DCEU where both Superman and Black Adam have been depicted this way, albeit with more super slow motion and epic music. But there’s something about knowing that all this power is stuffed into such a fragile vessel that makes Thunderbolts* feel special. Power itself is dangerous. Power in the hands of a broken man is disastrous.

Let’s face it, the world has been in a dark place for the last few years.

Like Yelena, many of us have fallen into a dull, depressed funk. Between global unrest, loss of human rights, environmental disasters, ongoing genocide, economic collapse – much of it self-imposed, corporate control of every day life, the rise of techno-oligarchs, and the general creep of authoritarianism, every new day seems greeted with a new atrocity. Broken men consumed with their own resentments – resentment that their daughter won’t talk to them, that more successful people make jokes about them, that their crimes may finally be punished – have seized power, hell-bent on making the rest of us suffer for their failings. The deluge of garbage is so overwhelming that we’ve become numb to it. Even a global pandemic has come and gone – along with millions of lives – and we’ve done nothing to prevent it from happening again. Fulfillment, however we define it, is impossible. Instead, the most we can hope for is to not feel empty.

In the film’s most stunning sequence we see how actions from the characters’ lives continue to haunt them. We watch as they live out the emptiness at their core again and again and again, unable to stop it, unable to look away, unable to change. In this, we also see the importance of this line-up of mercenaries, criminals, and killers. These aren’t the paragons, the billionaires, the tech-gods, or the literal gods of old MCU. These are, relatively speaking, ordinary humans. They’ve done some bad things, and had some bad things done to them, but they aren’t bad people. Thunderbolts* reminds us that we are not defined by our past. There is always a chance to change. Even as a shadow spreads across America, there is always a chance to become better.

It isn’t easy. We can’t rely on old securities against new danger. We can’t impeach an aspiring dictator using the same regulations which allowed that dictator to rise. New threats demand new defense. We definitely can’t wait for some outside force to protect us. We have to do it ourselves. There is struggle. There is pain. There is loss. But there is also triumph. And it starts when stop feeling numb, and start fighting back.

Thunderbolts* wants us to remember that redemption – for its characters, for the MCU, for ourselves, for our world – is possible.

Rating: 4 / 5