It’s fair to say the MCU has been in a bit of a slump lately, with constant reshoots and rewrites while making “Captain America: Brave New World”, the massive failure of “The Marvels”, and people still go on about the enormous disappointment that was “Thor: Love and Thunder”. All this hasn’t been helped by the original “next big villain” getting his storyline canned (Kang) and the WGA/SGA strike on top of that.
The Thunderbolts in the comics were a pretty original idea for their time: a team of Avengers villains led by Baron Zemo, taking on new Superhero personas and pretending to be the good gouys, while secretly plotting to take over the world (yet discovering it pays to be one of the good guys). I think this is a great concept for the MCU that hasn’t been done before, since the only redemption arcs we’ve had were with Loki and Nebula, not exactly the earthbound members you’d expect out of the Thunderbolts team. It doesn’t help that most MCU villains end up dead by the end of their movie.
Despite the multiple titles implying this movie revolves around a team, it doesn’t. The opening action scene is focused on Yelena. Yelena has the closest connection to the main supporting cast, and the climax mostly revolves around Yelena’s actions. This movie is more “Black Widow 2” than Thunderbolts. At least the first Avengers movie didn’t have Tony appear in the first scene, and most of the Avengers movies allowed the cast to get one good punch in during the climax. Here, it feels like this movie is strictly from Yelena’s point of view. I’m even willing to make the argument that she is the only one whose arc seems to come full circle.
What about the other team member, though? John Walker tries to integrate well into the team, while actor Wyatt Russell tries his best to be a sort of likable clown who has been rejected by society, but aside from a flashback where we see his home life falling apart, it feels like the character started and ended as a pretty blank slate. They don’t even bring up his character’s rage issues, which we saw on display in Falcon and Winter Soldier. While you also have Red Guardian, who could have been a sort of counterpoint to John Walker, of what if he lives in the past for too long, but the character is mainly there for comic relief. I think the Black Widow movie had the right idea to introduce Red Guardian in the second act, because if you’ve seen his What If? episode, you would realize the character does get pretty annoying after a while. Bucky plays his role as almost a secondary antagonist for the first half of the movie, in connection to his role as a Congressman (as was set up in “Captain America: Brave New World”), but that role is never brought up again in the second half, almost making the setup we saw in Brave New World to be completely pointless.
Finally, you have Ghost, the only one on the team without a super soldier boost. Despite this, she is probably the most intangible character because every time her powers could be useful, the villains are able to counter her immediately. It doesn’t help that, compared to Yelena and John Walker, they barely delve into her backstory, not even mentioning the whereabouts of her partner from Ant-Man, Bill Foster.
However, this movie’s saving grace would have to be Bob Reynolds, The Sentry. While being an incredibly complicated character in the comics, the movie tries to mainstream him and his abilities. I’m not too sure if they did a good job, as there did seem to be some confusion about what the Sentry’s “Void” actually was. On the plus side, Lewis Pullman gives an amazing performance for this complicated character who clashes with the main team.
Despite my complaints, I do think Thunderbolts* is a good movie. The performances from the cast were top-notch, and The Sentry’s storyline did make this movie feel a little more refreshing compared to other Marvel movies, by bringing some originality by focusing on such a broken character. That is where I draw the line, though. This is not a team movie like Avengers; despite the title, this is a Black Widow follow-up. If you enjoyed Black Widow and wanted a movie focusing on Yelena, this is a good follow-up on her arc (following her last appearance in the Disney+ “Hawkeye” series), and she is probably the Avenger I am looking forward to the most in Doomsday.
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