Time for another group hug. Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* is heading back inside the Void, the setting of the movie’s climactic third act and the battle between Bob Reynolds’ (Lewis Pullman) light and dark sides. When shadowy CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has the mentally ill meth addict step out as the Sentry — the “Golden Guardian of Good” and the sole surviving test subject of Project Sentry — Bob handily defeats the titular group of “disposable delinquents” accidentally assembled by Val.
Videos by ComicBook.com
As Bob’s alter-ego, the villainous Void, turns New York’s citizens into shadows, the so-called Thunderbolts — Yelena Belova/Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) — band together outside the Watchtower (formerly Avengers Tower). They’re not alone anymore.
RELATED: Thunderbolts* / *The New Avengers: Alternate Fantastic Four Post-Credits Scene Revealed
When Yelena follows Bob inside the Void, she finds herself in a maze of her most shameful memories, including her role in the death of her childhood friend Anya (Alexa Swinton). As she helps Bob process his traumatic memories, Bucky, Alexei, Ava, and John follow them into the Void, confront their own pasts, and overcome Bob’s dark side with a therapeutic group hug.
“You can’t stop it. You can’t contain it all by yourself. Nobody can,” Yelena tells Bob. “We have to let it out. We have to spend time together. And even if it doesn’t make the void go away, I promise you it will feel lighter.”
“It’s an interesting thing to try and explain the Void,” Pullman says in a new behind-the-scenes video. “It’s this thing that Bob doesn’t have control over, and once he loses control over it, it becomes this all-powerful, kind of wormhole-esque thing. And when you get taken into it, it’s essentially an interwebed series of endless rooms, of places that you’ve experienced the most shame or grief in your life.”
Adds production designer Grace Yun, “We wanted the spaces to feel realistic. So when you first see it, you’re not quite sure if it’s a flashback or you’re trapped in a memory, and later on you discover it’s the Void spaces. It’s a deliberate design to make it feel boxed in, as if they’re trapped. Each character is trapped in their trauma memory.”
Pullman likened the Void spaces to an amalgamation of Michel Gondry’s psychological drama Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind and the surreal, Charlie Kaufman-directed psycho-drama Synecdoche, New York, with director Jake Schreier citing another influence in 1999’s Being John Malkovich.
Schreier wanted to “do something different, like [filmmakers] Spike Jonze and Jonathan Glazer.” Referencing Glazer’s 2002 “Odyssey” commercial for Levi’s jeans (which you can watch above), Schreier took inspiration from “them bursting through walls, and there’s explosions as they do that, and then the sequence from Being John Malkovich of going into John Malkovich’s subconscious.”
Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* — AKA *The New Avengers — is now playing only in theaters.
Most Viewed
-
20th Television Animation
