Thunderbolts* Zeroes In On The Human Beneath The Hero

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After Captain America: Brave New World promised to jolt the Marvel Cinematic Universe out of its post-Endgame torpor and delivered a compromised mess instead, here comes Thunderbolts* with the jumper cables. Directed by Beef co-helmer Jake Schreier, this livelier and funnier Marvel movie (#36 in the saga) is familiar in execution—it resembles a less potent fusion of Guardians of the Galaxy and The Winter Soldier—but deviates from MCU formula enough to make it feel, if not unique, then at least fresh. It’s an energizing clubhouse fracas that resolves lingering continuity business without letting fussy details curtail its fun, laying fresh track before Fantastic Four pulls into the station later this summer to assert its marquee dominance over a franchise still in desperate need of a leader. Thunderbolts* won’t save the MCU, but it reminds us why we cared about it in the first place.

Its premise is familiar, too, and oddly reminiscent of a movie from Marvel’s Distinguished Competition. Recall David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, where a government suit (coincidentally played by Thunderbolts‘ David Harbour) articulates the film’s central dilemma: “What if Superman went rogue—who would stop him?” This question raised another for the audience: What could a group of hapless scuzzballs with little more than guns and attitude possibly achieve against an invincible target? Thunderbolts* offers a satisfying answer to this setup, pitting its ensemble of quasi-heroes against the superhuman Sentry, aka Bob (Lewis Pullman), in ways that mindfully veer away from the previsualized mayhem of more conventional Marvel fare. More on Bob in a bit.

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The Thunderbolts (so named for a pee-wee softball team) are filled out by former sidekicks, also-rans, and one-off heavies: there’s Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), stifling profound Endgame grief with defensive snark; her vodka-pickled father figure Red Guardian (Harbour); disgraced Captain America and hostile prick John Walker (Wyatt Russell); Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), who share a penchant for generic helmets and blending in with the scenery; and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), the Winter Soldier, who has wandered into American politics as an elected Congressman despite his history as a Hydra assassin. (As ever, geopolitics in the MCU remains a nebulous, ridiculous thing.) Together, they form a predictable found-family unit, though credit Schreier and his screenwriters, Eric Pearson (Black Widow) and Joanna Calo (The Bear), for adding a modicum of friction to their assembly.

Thunderbolts* begins with these moody mercs dispatched to eliminate one another by their mutual CIA handler, the shady-chic Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in rare form). The subsequent showdown unfolds deep inside a top-secret lab that houses another of Val’s liabilities, Bob, whom we later discover has been granted abilities far beyond those of mortal men that have exacerbated an inner demon ominously referred to as “the Void.” Once Bob enters the fray, Yelena, John, Ghost, and Taskmaster shift their enmity toward their true enemy: Val, whose desire for a remote-controlled hero in a world without Avengers soon looks less like risk mitigation than megalomania. “Righteousness without power is just an opinion,” she tells her put-upon subordinate, Mel (Drive-Away Dolls‘ Geraldine Viswanathan). Veep on a Marvel budget is a scary thing.

A thirst for revenge is a serviceable motivator for any team-up, but the main thing that unites this motley crew is that each member has spiritually and narratively bottomed out. They’re nobodies stranded in the wake of Marvel’s recent Phases, bearing scars from lesser entries (Black Widow, Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) that left them emotionally unresolved and, in some cases, functionally irrelevant. “Do you feel fulfilled?” Yelena asks Guardian early on. “Oh yeah,” he replies. “So fulfilled.” Harbour’s eyes suggest otherwise.

Thunderbolts*, which traffics in themes of depression and mental health, initially allows its characters to suppress their deep-rooted shame and disappointments. They maintain a stoic front during much of their action-driven misadventure—”I’m fine” is the model refrain—and the film thrillingly responds by digging up the ugly truth behind the facade. Bob’s eventual spiral into darkness literalizes these psychological stakes, acting as powerful shorthand for the characters’ inner turmoil and a catalyst for their mutual growth. As the Void, Bob is an enemy-as-metaphor whose shadow powers transform the screaming Manhattan citizenry into atomic black smears, setting up a finale that paradoxically retreats from the typical Marvel CG bombast for something more ruminative and satisfying.

The cast mostly sells it. Pugh, easily one of the most emotionally agile performers in the MCU, utilizes her memefied sad-frown to establish vulnerability while also embracing her inner Tom Cruise by leaping from the Merdeka 118, the second-tallest building on the planet, in tactical depression jammies. Russell, too, reveals something brittle and desperate beneath John Walker’s machismo, hinting at an interior emptiness that suggests an intriguing future for the character and Russell as a lead. However, although the film’s compressed timeline—unfolding largely in a single day—lends it a propulsive rhythm, it also narrows the emotional aperture. John-Kamen and Kurylenko, for example, end up stuck in the periphery, their arcs left notably unmanaged in a film interested in damage and repair. Harbour is a boisterous, wearying presence, delivering the film’s biggest groaners along with an equally labored speech designed to bridge the gap between Guardian and his estranged would-be daughter. Stan enters the film like a saucy Terminator and, for the most part, remains in that gear by the end of the film.

It might be too busy for its own good, but Thunderbolts* still manages to zero in on something few recent Marvel entries have had the capacity to convey: the human beneath the hero. It’s tempting to overpraise Schreier’s film simply for feeling like it was made by people instead of algorithms, and, sure, maybe it benefits from lowered expectations. Marvel’s recent track record—a string of expansive multiversal cul-de-sacs that have led to nowhere in particular—has perhaps made me more amenable to Thunderbolts‘ otherwise serviceable character work. I argue that its sincerity makes it effective; the movie doesn’t just gesture at depth but wades into it, getting its boots dirty with as much emotional viscera as its PG-13 rating allows. It’s hardly revolutionary, and it doesn’t fully reverse the MCU’s continued entropy, but Thunderbolts* insists that Marvel characters matter. And for the first time in a hot minute, its audience might agree.

Director: Jake Schreier
Writers: Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo.
Stars: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Release date: May 2, 2025

Jarrod Jones is a freelance critic based in Chicago, with bylines at The A.V. Club, IGN, and any place that will take him, really. For more of his mindless thoughts on genre trash, cartoons, and comics, follow him on Twitter (@jarrodjones_) or check out his blog, DoomRocket.