Thunderbolts*

In the sprawling and often chaotic landscape of the post-Endgame Marvel universe, Thunderbolts* arrives like a battle-scarred war veteran: limping, bruised, but still driven by a determination that shines through his disheveled exterior. Directed by Jake Schreier, this film is Marvel Studios' 36th feature film and perhaps its most thematically self-aware. It doesn't just bring together a new team of antiheroes, it confronts the emotional and creative void left by the franchise's golden age. But is Thunderbolts* a brave step forward or a failure disguised as introspection? It's a question the film itself struggles to answer.

From the outset, Thunderbolts* displays its melancholy. Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, is a mercenary who is exhausted and disillusioned by her morally ambiguous missions. She opens the film with a voiceover evoking the emptiness that haunts her. The metaphor may be heavy-handed, but it proves relevant. This film is about characters abandoned by their creators, their governments, and often their own narratives. Like the MCU itself in recent years, these are heroes disconnected from a larger meaning. In the opening sequence, where she jumps alone from one of the tallest buildings in the world, Yelena does not fall to her death, but falls back into the same patterns: secret operations, clean-up missions, empty missions dictated by the manipulative Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (a surprisingly cold Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The death of Natasha Romanoff remains an open wound, and director Jake Schreier wisely refuses to cover it up with sarcasm or spectacle.

The plot begins with the usual Marvel logic, both familiar and chaotic: Valentina sends Yelena, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) to the same clandestine complex under false pretenses, each with a mission to kill the others. A dark and comical misunderstanding turns to tragedy until they realize the betrayal. Enter Bob (Lewis Pullman), a seemingly disoriented man dressed in a hospital gown, endowed with divine powers and suffering from amnesia—the latest unstable result of a secret experiment aimed at creating super-soldiers. Also caught up in the fray are Yelena's father, Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour, delightfully perfect and offbeat), and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now a congressman and vigilante in his spare time.

This ensemble is messy, chaotic, and strangely magnetic. If Marvel's Avengers were mythical titans of unity and sacrifice, the Thunderbolts* are soldiers of fortune. That's not necessarily a flaw. In fact, Jake Schreier's film embraces this dysfunction as a strength, weaving a tale of a family reunited that owes more to Guardians of the Galaxy than The Suicide Squad, even if comparisons with both films are inevitable. The difference? Thunderbolts* doesn't try to be cool or badass. It plays on discomfort, featuring characters who are fully aware that they are not frontline heroes, and may never be.

As you might expect, the chemistry between Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Bob (Lewis Pullman) is surprisingly tender. Lewis Pullman, who plays a fractured superhero who becomes both Sentry and Void, delivers the film's most emotionally nuanced performance. His affable awkwardness gradually gives way to despair, culminating in a haunting transformation that materializes his inner depression in the form of a swirling black vortex that engulfs New York—a clumsy metaphor, to be sure, but one that nevertheless resonates.

Yet despite all its emotional ambition, Thunderbolts* falls short in its execution. The film's pacing is uneven, shifting from introspective moments to uneven action sequences bathed in murky lighting and forgettable choreography. Jake Schreier may have indie credibility, but his command of large-scale action scenes is uneven. The few standout moments, such as the elevator scene where the team realizes that none of them can fly, are clever in tone but ultimately disappointing in terms of spectacle. Ironically, the trailer promised more punch than the film delivers. And for a film billed as a realistic action adventure, the action itself is strangely sparse and poorly lit.

Even more disappointing is the character of Taskmaster, who is poorly developed and killed off early in the film, after only five minutes on screen, a narrative choice so baffling that it seems like a concession to creative indecision. Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan, remains criminally underused. For a character who once carried the narrative arc of Captain America, his presence here is largely decorative, with the exception of a gag involving his vibranium arm in a dishwasher. Similarly, Ghost, while visually fascinating, is once again reduced to a supporting role with minimal development.

There are still a few moments of levity. Harbour's Red Guardian provides some welcome comic relief, particularly in his endearing desperation to be part of a team. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Valentina, a Machiavellian bureaucrat disguised as a pragmatic politician, less caricatured than expected, but also less funny. Unlike recent Marvel productions, the dark humor feels natural and unforced, thanks in large part to the screenplay by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, who draw on their experience with series such as The Bear and BoJack Horseman. These characters have a realistic dimension, particularly in their quiet exchanges, such as Yelena's heartfelt confessions to Bob or Ghost's deadpan jabs at John Walker's ego.

What emerges in the final act is a film more interested in metaphysical grief than physical victory. The Void, as the villain, is not a destructive tyrant of the world, but a walking personification of depression, a divine being whose powers are governed by his sadness. The final showdown is less a battle than a group therapy session on the brink of oblivion. While the climax borders on emotional, it's also riddled with rushed twists and a sense of urgency that feels unwarranted, especially given how little development many of the supporting characters receive.

When the credits roll and the inevitable “The Thunderbolts* will return” appears, we are left in a state of moderate ambivalence. This is not a triumphant rebirth for the MCU, nor is it a total failure. It is a sincere detour, often moving and sometimes frustrating. The film's commitment to addressing trauma and mental health is admirable, even groundbreaking for the superhero genre, but it's weighed down by an overly busy structure, tonal inconsistencies, and a lack of visual dynamism. Thunderbolts* is a story of healing, but the film itself is still recovering from Marvel's creative fatigue.

Thunderbolts*
Directed by Jake Schreier
Written by Eric Pearson, Joanna Calo
Story by Eric Pearson
Based on Marvel Comics
Produced by Kevin Feige
Starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Cinematography: Andrew Droz Palermo
Edited by Angela Catanzaro, Harry Yoon
Music by Son Lux
Production company: Marvel Studios
Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release dates: April 22, 2025 (Cineworld Leicester Square), April 30, 2025 (France) May 2, 2025 (United States)
Running time: 126 minutes

Seen on April 24, 2025 at Pathé Beaugrenelle, Dolby Cinema

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