“What’s the point of it all?” That’s the question dogging Yelena Belova, the pint-size assassin played by Florence Pugh in Marvel’s new film, Thunderbolts*, as she bounces from mission to mission—blowing up weapons labs and scrubbing out security guards, all at the behest of shadowy American intelligence. Yelena is an ex-Soviet mercenary à la Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow; after that character shuffled off the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s mortal coil, Yelena stepped into the vacant role. But there’s no longer a team of Avengers for Yelena to join, nor a grand purpose to the whole superhero enterprise. Yelena is posing this inquiry to herself, but she might as well be asking it of this entire, listless cinematic universe.
Thunderbolts*—whose title Marvel stylizes with an asterisk, for a reason that eventually becomes clear—arrives in theaters almost three months after Captain America: Brave New World, which might have been the franchise’s nadir. That sequel followed last year’s sole MCU entry, Deadpool & Wolverine, which spent most of its running time dragging comic-book movies through the dirt. Based on its premise alone, Thunderbolts* doesn’t seem like it will resuscitate the flagging genre. The squad that Yelena ends up getting thrown into features a few supporting cast members from the Black Widow movie, a man who briefly replaced Captain America during a forgotten Disney+ TV show, and a minor character who once caused Ant-Man a bit of trouble. It’s hardly all-star stuff. But that doesn’t really matter: Thunderbolts* might be the most fun I’ve had watching a Marvel film since Avengers: Endgame, the franchise’s peak.
I’m as surprised as any fan—Thunderbolts* did not strike me as a particularly exciting direction for the MCU. The sprawling mega-franchise has been flailing without the central, animating notion of one big superhero team; as the Thunderbolts, Yelena and her new, morally gray comrades are meant to fill in that gap. Swapping out the good guys for antiheroes can be a tricky proposition, especially when the new characters haven’t had much screen time before. Yet the film, directed by Jake Schreier (who’s made a name for himself with non-superhero fare, such as episodes of the show Beef) and co-written by the Marvel stalwart Eric Pearson and The Bear’s Joanna Calo, leans in to the relative anonymity of its ensemble. The misfit crew is navigating a world that’s giving up on the idea of a straightforward bunch of do-gooders, much as audiences have been of late. Yelena’s sad-sack attitude, then, makes thematic sense.
Black Widow did not make much of an impression on me back in 2021, but I recall Pugh being its biggest standout, as she tends to be in most of the movies she makes. Her star presence gives the rest of the Thunderbolts cast a strong core to orbit around, unlike the flimsier Marvel ensemble projects (such as Eternals) that couldn’t choose a main character. But the lesser-known names prove charming too. These include Wyatt Russell as John Walker, a.k.a. the U.S. Agent, a washed-out American super soldier; Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, who can walk through walls; Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, another former Soviet spy; and the Stranger Things star David Harbour, reprising his Black Widow role as Yelena’s surrogate father, Alexei. He once functioned as a Soviet Captain America, but he now operates a rambunctious limo service.
All of these superhumans come together under the furrowed brow of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the original Captain America’s glowering sidekick, who spent a few wayward decades operating as a rogue assassin. American voters apparently learned to forgive and forget, because Bucky is now a congressman (though in Brave New World, the president was the garish Red Hulk, so I can’t entirely speak to the MCU’s impression of the electorate). But he’s bored, similarly striving for a sense of purpose—perhaps because attending subcommittee hearings is duller than punching aliens with his metal arm. Bucky thus allows himself to get sucked into a web of conspiracy that surrounds the returning antagonist Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Last seen in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the evil bureaucrat has since begun using the CIA to fund the creation of her own experimental super team.
The rest of the plot is fairly crisp and streamlined for a comic-book movie: Valentina is bad, Bucky is good, and Yelena and her mercenary pals fall somewhere in the middle, before reluctantly joining up against Valentina and other pressing threats. There’s also a wild card in the form of Bob (Lewis Pullman), the unassuming-looking result of a mad science project who belies a lot of hidden darkness; his arc is the latest example of Marvel wedging an entirely different bit of canon into one of its installments. Impressively, Bob’s tumultuous past fits in nicely, especially alongside Yelena’s. They’re two different, but comparable, misfit toys in a world looking for something shinier.
Our intimate understanding of their shared gloom points to what’s best about Thunderbolts*: how small it is. The action is mostly hand-to-hand combat, and lacks the usual edited-to-death choppiness I associate with the MCU. Unlike in recent superhero films, the stunt work here is actually legible; there are a couple of vehicular flips that reminded me of the kinds of tactile blockbusters that Hollywood used to make far more of. And though the Thunderbolts crew is composed of a lot of Marvel detritus, its story is surprisingly disconnected from the wider universe—well, at least until the usual post-credit scenes. Mostly, Thunderbolts* is just a fun action movie about found family among a bunch of hard-bitten mercenaries. It may not be the most original idea; the first Avengers entry could be boiled down in the same way. But I’ll take an iteration done this competently over a new adventure featuring the Red Hulk.
