At this point, watching products in the Marvel Cinematic Universe feels a bit like reading modern philosophy. I know. Hold on. Don’t start typing yet. I’m going somewhere with this. What I mean is that modern philosophy books are rarely standalone products. They are the products of decades and even centuries of discourse. People from one school of thought are responding to those in another camp. Frantz Fanon will dedicate a chapter of his book to summarizing and refuting Octave Mannoni’s views on the psychology of colonized peoples, and Lord help you if you haven’t read the latter. Whenever one sits down to read a modern philosophy book, one is, in effect, entering a yearslong dialogue mid-conversation. It is easy to get lost in the footnotes, and one never feels like they’ve spent enough time reading the background information necessary to feel like one is keeping up.
In a far less intellectually rewarding way, this is kind of what it feels like to prepare to watch the MCU’s 36th film, Thunderbolts*. Indeed, there are 10 MCU projects you can watch just to be fully abreast of what is happening. If we (very conservatively) assume that each of those projects took two hours to complete, that’s nearly a day’s worth of content in order to understand a film that clocks in at two hours and six minutes. But, the question is this: Is it worth it?
The answer, overall, is yes.
The basic story is this: Florence Pugh (Black Widow, Dune: Part Two) reprises her role as Yelena Belova. Yelena has been mourning the death of her sister, Natasha Romanoff, who is left unnamed. More on that later. This sense of mourning has left her feeling listless and bored. In a stunningly shot opening scene, she more or less sleepwalks through a fight with henchmen while seeking to recover — or destroy — some research on behalf of shady CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When Yelena asks Valentina for more of a front-facing role, one that allows her a sense of visibility and ends the monotony of covert black ops, Valentina promises she will get that after One Last Job.
On the OLJ, Yelena quickly realizes that she has been duped. Valentina, in an effort to clear her name and evade impeachment from her CIA role, has opted to have every assassin she has ever contracted kill one another and have the last person standing die in an evidence-destroying incineration. The problem is Yelena isn’t the only one to realize she’s been had. Ava Starr, aka Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp (Hannah John-Kamen) and John Walker, aka the failed Captain America from Falcon and the Winter Soldier, also realize that they have been double-crossed. Worse, they have awoken a seemingly harmless, largely aloof young man named Bob (Lewis Pullman) and must now protect him from Valentina’s traps.
From here, the story becomes a revenge mission. These misfits, along with the Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and the Winter Soldier — and freshman congressman — Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), must find a way to stop Valentina before she can unleash a power held within Bob that threatens the young man and everyone around him.
It is here that I should make a full disclaimer: This film is certainly the most interesting Marvel has been in a while, but it is still very “Marvel,” much to the chagrin of anyone who has tired of that entire film subgenre. To its credit, the film makes good use of lesser-known characters and allows audiences to see origin stories other than Uncle Ben (or Aunt May) dying for the umpteenth time so that Peter Parker can truly comprehend that with great power comes great blah blah blah. While the movie largely elides the back stories of everyone besides Yelena, it is interesting to see how it deals with darker themes related to guilt, shame, and a sense of lacking real purpose. The film, a bit too literally, depicts how one can get trapped in one’s shame, in the part of the brain that, rather than saying “You did a bad thing,” declares “You are a bad thing.” It is here where the film shines.
Florence Pugh is, as always, a breath of fresh air, elevating would might otherwise be senselessly dismissed as a Suicide Squad ripoff. The pathos Pugh brings to Yelena is by far the main reason to see this film. Yelena is a mess, and messes recognize, empathize, and connect with fellow messes. Her scenes with Pullman and Harbour anchor the film with an emotional weight that allows the audience to connect with stakes other than “Will our heroes be able to fend off these decently rendered CGI effects?”
That’s the good of the film. The bad, as I said, is that this is still a Marvel film, with all the hallmarks attendant to that. In other words, if you need actual stakes or a sense that someone or something might actually be lost in a meaningful sense, go watch Sinners. If you’re not a fan of the quippy brand of Marvel comedy, run for your life. This movie has never seen an emotional moment it didn’t want to undercut with a silly line in order to prevent the audience from having to sit with any negative emotion for too long.
To be fair, most of the lines come from Harbour, who is having so much fun that you’d have to be heartless to begrudge his joy. But, still, what about our joy? Or, more importantly, our sadness? Our ability to recognize in a character the loneliness that wanders in and out of everyone’s lives from time to time. Marvel, we’ve been watching your movies for the past 17 years. We’ve grown up with you. We are big kids now. We can sit with an uncomfortable emotion without needing assurance that there’s a joke around the corner.
Still, there are signs that Marvel is growing with us. It understands that new fans may not know who Natasha Romanoff is, so they omit her name so the audience can focus on Yelena’s loss rather than have to recap a series of films starting in 2012. The main antagonist is more at war with himself than anything else, and we are thankfully denied a sky beam in the climax. This is the best Marvel film in years, but sometimes I wonder if that means much to people other than its core audience.
To be sure, this film is conversing with past and future Marvel. As a viewer, you’ll be able to pick up the flow of conversation pretty quickly, but unless you are fully invested in all three interlocutors, you might lose interest in their reminiscing and predictions. Indeed, you may just decide your time was better spent trying to finally decipher Fanon.
Thunderbolts* premieres in theaters May 2, 2025.
