Marvel’s mangled heroism humiliates the nation.
That asterisk in the title of Marvel’s Thunderbolts* denotes the filmmakers’ hidden motives. The Marvel Cinematic Universe expects so little of its followers that disrespect for the audience is no longer hidden; it has become an outright in-joke.
As the latest repetition of the Iron Man and Avengers formula, Thunderbolts* markets familiarity as a brand. This time, minor-league superheroes Yelena (Florence Pugh), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and a vagrant civilian, Bob (Lewis Pullman), pick up from where the better-known superheroes from Iron Man to Captain America left the scene in Avengers: Endgame. It’s a relay race of inferiority complexes (past regrets and current distrust), conceived to mirror contemporary crises. The only hope comes from gloomy Americans and forlorn Eastern Europeans in service to a weary national idea.
A comic-book movie based on misery parallels the national humiliation rituals suffered during the Biden regime. (That’s why Yelena insults John Walker as “the dime-store Captain America.”) Humiliation and violence plus sarcasm is a deadly combination, especially when it’s comic book violence that offers no genuine catharsis.
CIA directress Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is nearly satiric when she asks, “Who will keep the American people safe?” She cynically assigns saving the world to the group of “antisocial misfits.” Chief among them, Yelena sulks as she delivers a Deep State speech: “Everyone here has done bad things: shadow ops, robbing government labs, contract kills.” Pride is gone, hope unexpected.
Thunderbolts* was developed in 2021 and filmed during early 2024. At a strangely timely impeachment hearing, a congressman (Wendell Pierce) subjects Yelena’s secretive CIA exploits to official investigation. The pouty, melancholy Pugh characterizes Yelena in brat terms — as a Scarlett Johansen–Brie Larson–Elizabeth Olsson hybrid with some Billie Eilish angst thrown in.
That — plus a surfeit of wisecracks about DoorDash and Wheaties boxes in the mode of Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy — is as hip as things get.
The formulaic chases, explosions, and fight scenes are a lame version of what passes for action-movie punctuation, this time imagined so mechanically by director Jake Schreier that the already-seen aspect of the film’s spectacle is an affront to action cinema. The best one can do is think back to Zack Snyder’s visceral fight scenes or the mastery of Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, the single action-movie masterpiece of the past decade.
Thunderbolts* is so unrelentingly mediocre that it confirms Marvel’s contemptuous refusal to offer anything better. Worse, it depends on the dedication of an audience of cretins. This is implied by Yelena’s backstory explaining the asterisked title as a reference to her childhood failures and disappointments. It clearly indicates that this movie is for Zoomers who were never taught about art, literature, philosophy, or cinema.
It’s no coincidence that the contempt oozing out of Thunderbolts* matches the Biden years of contorted language. That asterisk denotes a corrupt populist movie that tells Zoomers they are freaks and mediocrities, even if they band together. The caucus of third-rate superheroes diminishes the concept of heroism just as the terms “inflation,” “take seriously,” “root causes,” “infrastructure,” and “democracy” were robbed of meaning by the last administration. Yes, Thunderbolts* is an anti-American fantasy. What that asterisk really means is: There’s even less to this movie than you think.