Marvel’s Thunderbolts* Review: Florence Pugh Shines in a Marvel Mixed Bag

Marvel’s Thunderbolts* starts in a unique place, one that seems to be tapping into an interesting meta conversation about the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova is in a cloudy state of malaise; she’s going through the motions in life because that’s what she’s been doing. She gets an assignment, she finishes it, and then she waits for her next one. It’s what she was built for, even if her heart isn’t in it anymore, even if she doesn’t care, even if there’s something at her core that is holding her back. For a few minutes, it feels like Marvel is using Yelena as a vessel to talk to the audience, to say, “We get it. We haven’t been giving you our best. We’re going to try again here.” They find something of note in fits and spurts, but Thunderbolts* is still the ultimate MCU mixed bag.

The latest Marvel film is an interesting piece in the overall tapestry, with a group that hardly resembles any of the classic iterations of the team and a title asterisk that has become a funny marketing plot. It’s also a place for, no offense, Marvel’s B-plots to get their place in the spotlight. Despite the radiating charisma of Pugh in Black Widow, which she delivers in this movie as well, her last MCU appearance was in the Disney+ Hawkeye series. Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, aka US Agent, makes his feature film debut in this, having previously been confined to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, while Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr, aka Ghost, hasn’t had an MCU appearance since 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Even Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine arrives as a reminder that she had a subplot in both Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Hawkeye. Sebastian Stan, one of the biggest fan-favorites of Marvel’s first three phases, is now present as a continuation for his one scene appearance in Captain America: Brave New World. Though David Harbour’s Red Guardian clearly fits into the same mold as the others here (having only appeared in 2020’s Black Widow so far), his boundless joy as the character does make him feel distinct from the dour demeanor of most of his cohorts. The asterisk in Thunderbolts* may have a real meaning in the MCU, but it could very well stand for a footnote that reads “*tying up loose ends.”

As noted, Thunderbolts* is about a rag-tag collection of characters from across the MCU who are brought together through surprising circumstances. The way the team is paired up is one of its more clever ideas, as they’re all positioned to take each other out, only to realize they’re all being manipulated. The only way out is to stick together, despite their clear uninterest in being a team. At the center of it all is Lewis Pullman as Bob, who may very well be more powerful than he seems.

Where Thunderbolts* excels is in the moments when it allows Pugh to take the spotlight. The dry wit that she is able to casually deliver, along with just being an actual presence that is felt on screen, gives any moment with her immediate weight. There’s a noticeable dip in the movie’s ability to maintain the viewer’s attention any time it cuts away from Yelena, especially since that usually means the movie is moving to Valentina doing the most tedious and tiresome exposition dump (something that happens countless times in the film, but most egregiously in its opening act). The same praise can be given for Harbour, though, who bounces off Pugh in a phenomenal way, but also makes Red Guardian feel distinct and fun. Even Pullman, who is tasked with playing a confused and morose figure on the whole, brings real gravitas to Bob that makes him a unique wild card in the grander MCU.

Russell, John-Kamen, and Stan, however, seem to be, like Yelena’s opening scene, going through the motions. Marvel needed them here to keep pieces moving on the board before the next big crossover event, and the film needed to figure out how to address lingering subplots from TV shows and sequels that came and went for most of the audience. None of them are bad, per se, but they fail to leave an impression; in fact, the word “wasted” is an accurate description of Stan’s role in the film. The MCU hasn’t had the best track record with how it utilizes Bucky Barnes anyway, but this feels especially notable given his many appearances.

Much of Thunderbolts* feels uninspired, assembled from pieces of other shows and stories tied together in a way that makes sense but often breezes by too quickly for you to really think about. Like almost every other Marvel movie, there is serviceable action that is balanced with funny banter from the charming cast (coupled with some stunts that are choreographed in a room filled with smoke, making it nearly impossible to see), but that can only get you so far in a post-Avengers: Endgame world.

It’s not until the third act of Thunderbolts* rolls around that the film actually does something interesting and unique, and director Jake Schreier delivers a sequence that stands out from almost anything else in the MCU. A joke about this team is made early on that they’re mostly just characters who can punch things, and the final section of the movie takes this head-on by forcing them to abandon that “power” and confront the desolate part of their souls. It’s a sequence that is visually arresting and feels purely comic book, the kind of thing that one might read on the page and think, “They could never pull this off in a movie.” By default, it’s more interesting than the “splash page” moments of Captain America: Civil War with teams of heroes running at each other, because it feels like the form we love has come to life, not a drab imitation of its memory.

But that’s the hump that exists when it comes to engaging with Thunderbolts* as a movie. At first, it does very little to really keep you engaged, pulling out of entertaining action beats in favor of bottle-feeding information that slows the pace to a glacial crawl. By the time the team has assembled and the story is approaching its final moments, it seems like it’s going to just keep doing what you expect, which makes its big surprise third act feel so special and engaging. If you can stomach the lesser parts that make up the majority of the movie, Thunderbolts* has a rewarding core at the end. The wait for that, however, is almost excruciating.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Thunderbolts* lands in theaters on May 2nd.