Just as the moviegoing crowd around the world is closely watching Marvel Studios scramble some good ideas to continue their mega film franchise, the studio has assembled the unlikeliest team as their new counterpart for “Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” in “Thunderbolts*.”
The ensemble, a mix of supporting heroes and villains from past Marvel films, are Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). The group of misfits band together to defeat a powerful presence known as the Void, a black entity that’s consuming New York City.
Contrary to everyone’s expectations in Marvel movie lore, “Thunderbolts*” isn’t a team formed by Thunderbolt Ross, the U.S. President recently played by Harrison Ford in “Captain America: Brave New World”. They are a group of mercenaries hired by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julie Louis-Dreyfus) for secret, illegal missions.
In one scene, Valentina meant to dispose of these people by contracting them to kill one another, to get rid of her ploys from the government. But teamwork gets in the way, and the Thunderbolts rise to the occasion to cover each other’s backs instead.
It’s easy to dismiss “Thunderbolts*” as yet another throwaway Marvel movie, as the titular team’s members have been poorly introduced in previous outings. You can feel the director Jake Schreier puts this lukewarm response to heart by redefining their personalities and providing them with challenges that they can be vulnerable to.
The surprise of “Thunderbolts*” is that while the primary villain is a dangerous presence for the population, the underlying real threat is a man trying to defeat his inner demon. With this, the challenge turns into something that this team can only overcome by getting past their problematic histories, and has made them infinitely more likable than anyone else in Marvel's current roster of superheroes.
I wish this were the only time we get to see the Thunderbolts team, as it will be harder to root for them if they’re facing more catastrophic threats. They are the team that can only do so much. Doctor Doom can easily wipe them off, so I hope they get to reserve them for smaller-scale adventures in future outings.
In the scheme of all the multiversal hijinks in recent Marvel movies, “Thunderbolts*” is the least consequential. On that note, it just became the best film that this studio has been purging for years. They need more human stories that cater to human conflicts, not another alien being beamed from the sky or a Spider-Man villain from another world. This might be as simple as it can get,t and I hope the studio heads realize that being bigger can sometimes be personal.
“Thunderbolts*” is now showing in cinemas.
Featured photos from Marvel Studios.
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