What is that little asterisk doing at the end of Thunderbolts*? Yes, that one there. By the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 36th adventure all has been revealed. Or maybe not.
Thunderbolts is both a sequel and an origin story tonally harking back to the MCU when Joss Whedon had a hand in it. It’s not quite as quippy and doesn’t reference popular culture as much as Whedon would, but it’s on his spectrum, and the film is full of actors who do that sort of thing well. Like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Harbour and Geraldine Viswanathan (underused, word of her upstaging superpower obviously having got out).
Florence Pugh, though, Florence Pugh. She keeps it between the rails of the sober and impressive, her thick semi-Russian accent reminding us that this is partly the sequel to Black Widow, where she played the little sister of Scarlett Johansson’s titular superhero.
Misfit superheroes, maybe anti-heroes, with mental health issues, that’s the other big idea here, flogged almost to death as Pugh’s depressed and lonely Yelena Belova almost by accident gathers a bunch of like-minded outsiders around her to fight Dreyfus’s dastardly CIA boss-gone-rogue Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
The throughline is that they’re doing it as individuals, not as a team, though ultimately a group of people united in the same purpose turns out to be so close to a group of people united by the same purpose as makes no difference.
The guys themselves turn out to be answers to tricky questions in a Marvel quiz. Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) was in Ant-Man and the Wasp. John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) turned up in The Falcon and the Winter Solider. Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko, briefly) you might remember in Black Widow. There are probably a couple more but is anyone interested in anyone apart from Pugh’s Yelena? The screenplay isn’t.
It’s when this loose rabble move into the old Avengers building that the outline of what Marvel are up to becomes more distinct. Are they assembling a New Avengers?
Bouncing around like a rogue plot element, the grit in this oyster is Lewis Pullman’s Robert Reynolds. Reynolds is a lank-haired normie who just happened to wander onto the battlefield when “de Fontaine” (she insists on the “de”, as a baddie would) was trying to wipe Yelena and co off the face of the Earth. He turns out to have skills of his own. Good or bad? That’s the thing.
Thunderbolts* wants it both ways – snarky and heroic – and it mostly achieves its aims. Visually it’s straightahead MCU, director Jake Schreier (who did the rather excellent Robot & Frank) obviously working to strict Marvel guidelines. As does Son Lux’s score, which churns away heroically in the standard Marvel way, though heroics are not on offer in the usual Marvel way.
Pugh got all the best notices but Harbour is the making of it, really, his big bellowing Russian accent slipping here and there but mostly delivering a comedic turn as a reminder that the MCU in its pomp was a lot of fun – Thor, Hulk, Iron Man and even Captain America etc all had jokes and patter, Black Widow and that guy with the bow and arrow not so much.
There is a lot of setting up to get through. This is the last film in Phase Five of the MCU and we’re clearly going to see this lot again in Phase Six, the final phase of the so-called Multiverse Saga. There are probably people sitting exams on this stuff somewhere.
Thunderbolts* – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
