May 2nd, 2008 — the Paramount Pictures produced and distributed Iron Man releases into theaters and audiences discover they are a small part of a larger universe. Seventeen years later, Thunderbolts* debuts, the 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), produced now by the Walt Disney-owned Marvel Studios. In this time, we’ve seen The Avengers rise, break up, lose to a mad titan, and assemble. Since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, some have felt like the stories have lost their draw thanks to Marvel Studio’s potential oversaturation via television shows and films that have yet to pull everything together like The Avengers did in 2012. Some of this can be explained by COVID-19 screwing up release orders, some can be explained by voices in charge not understanding the value of what they have thereby delaying potential films from even going into production (see: Black Widow), and some can be explained by stories seemingly losing the spark of what made the first three phases of the MCU exciting. Now enters director Jake Schreier (Beef; Brand New Cherry) with Thunderbolts*, a team-up film that’s essentially the anti-Avengers yet still manages to save the day by delivering on what seems to be lacking most, heart and a willingness to confront the darkness within us.
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.
While on another mission for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), feeling lost and adrift, finds herself face to face with a collection of likewise contract assassins John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). When the appearance of Bob (Lewis Pullman) puts a hold on the expected dust-up of such a gathering of killers, they find themselves on the Most Wanted List. Can a group of misfit murderers pull themselves together long enough to figure out who wants them dead and why? And, strangely, who is Bob and why is he so important?
Bob (Lewis Pullman) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.
By the time this review publishes, the asterisk attached to the film’s title has well been explained by the Marvel Studios marketing team. However, as some secrets deserve to be experienced with a first watch, this review will not identify it in strict keeping with the avoidance of spoilers.
Second note: With this being film 36 in the franchise, this review will presume you’ve seen the Captain America trilogy, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Black Widow (2021), and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). The good news if you haven’t, there’s plenty of thoughtfully setup exposition drops to fill in gaps.
Final note — while Thunderbolts* possesses shades of The Suicide Squad (2021) in the sense that there’s a group of killers working together to save the day, they are quite different in profound ways. The first of which is that members of the Suicide Squad are convicted killers (each with a deadly explosive implanted in their heads) who receive some of their sentence shaved off for each completed mission. This group is more rag-tag, assembled out of necessity (much like in 2012), but comprised of individuals who do currently wet work for the highest bidders have resumes that include working for Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (Ghost), for the Red Room (Taskmaster), for the U.S. Government as a replacement for Captain America when Steve Rogers retired and Sam Wilson refused to take up the mantle (U.S. Agent), or for the current C.I.A. director Ms. De Fontaine (Yelena – not yet going by her comic moniker White Widow). In their individual form, their work is mainly that — work. A job they clock into because what else are they going to do? In the case of each of them, their options outside of their prior lives are extraordinarily limited and that’s what writers Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok; Black Widow) and Joanna Calo (Suburban Hell) lean into, thereby making Thunderbolts* more than the sum of its parts and an exciting entry into the MCU.
L-R: Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo Credit: Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL.
It all begins with the opening. By that, I mean the Marvel Studios logo which has, by and large, stayed the same from film to film save for small adjustments like highlighting the source characters in the film being presented, highlighting Stan Lee, or removing the color from characters no longer with us (T’Challa, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, etc). Here, however, Schreier makes a specific choice that audiences were given clues to in the marketing for the film as the typical Marvel Studios logo fanfare plays and the image spins, until it’s slowly overtaken by a black shadow and left still, colorless, and in silence. From here, we’re taken to Yalena, giving a voiceover as she stands atop a building. (One which Marvel wasn’t too keen to have Pugh jump off of, at first.) Between the logo and Yalena’s positioning, if not for our awareness of her as a Black Widow like Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), we’d have room for concern. Except, we should have concern anyway for any character, regardless of their training, seeing them standing at a precipice, their calm not a professional type, but eerie and off-putting. Credit to costume designer Sanja Milković Hays (Spider-Man: No Way Home; Blade) for Yalena’s look which, at first, seems as-expected for the young assassin, until one remembers that the last time she was seen — hunting Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) in the Disney+ series Hawkeye (2021) — she had long, golden blonde hair. Now, it’s significantly shorter and with dark roots well grown in under more bleach than blonde coloring, indicative of someone who feels powerless trying to take control of something. This is how Schreier chooses to open the film, a scene which has been advertised with fast cuts, quippy dialogue, and a helping of Starship. In reality, the tale offered to audiences (wrapped as it may be in the usual MCU flair) is one of profound sadness and loss, of seeking meaning in the absence of direction, and what it means to step into the light.
L-R: Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Bob (Lewis Pullman), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo Credit: Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL. All Rights Reserved.
One of the things that the MCU films don’t do well, typically, is the interrogation of the type of worldview they uplift. Vigilantism is preferred over official government action because governments (a) move too slowly and (b) operate with agendas. Overall, those who make up The Avengers are presented as altruistic types, acting in service of a greater good while working hard to preserve public trust. It’s idealistic and often forgets to look at itself in terms of the reality regarding such a make-up of superpowered individuals. They get close with Captain America: Civil War (2016) via the integration of the Sokovia Accords, but then it all fades with Avengers: Infinity War (2018) thanks to The Blip. Here, however, Pearson and Calo center the machine itself and those who work within it. First introduced in Black Widow and then briefly appearing in television programs as a female Nick Fury-type before taking a larger role within the C.I.A. in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), de Fontaine comes to represent the government worker whose altruism stops when their power is threatened or when someone stops being useful. Cast in the role, Louis-Dreyfus (A Bug’s Wife; National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) makes a meal of every scene she’s in here and it’s the kind of diva performance (heavy compliment) we haven’t gotten since Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in The Avengers where you kinda love to hate her and hope that she sticks around a while. She’s a proper foil for a group of miscreants who start to view heroism as a redemptive tool (once more introducing the complexity between altruism and self-interest). In that same vein, this group (comprised of actors whose chemistry is immediate from the get-go) is less of the Avengers-type and more of the Guardians of the Galaxy-type, a collection of killers and thieves who find themselves forced together in an extraordinary situation where their survival chances increase by working together. The massive difference, however, is that each of these people didn’t start out wanting to be killers. Ghost was manipulated as a child instead of being given help to cure her reality phasing problem; Dreykov was collateral damage during Natasha’s escape from the Red Room and given drugs plus special training to become a malleable fighter; and Yalena was also brought up in the Red Room. Walker was selected as the best candidate to become the next Captain America, but the selection process didn’t examine Walker’s personality, only his combat record, which didn’t take into account super solider serum creator Dr. Erskine’s (Stanley Tucci) own beliefs on how the serum worked, setting up Walker for a dishonorable discharge. The Guardians made their choices, but the Thunderbolts? Too many had their choices taken from them, thereby creating a deep well of loss and pain. With this script, with these characters, the MCU actually takes a look at what it means to pursue redemption, to step into the light out from the shadows, and how doing so is a selfish act. At the very least anyway, it gets the conversation started. On top of that, it asks large questions regarding mental health. This is the portion where Thunderbolts* gets a little shaky as the inclusion of Bob comes with a complex background comic book-wise whose cinematic translation is both intelligently executed and dangerously thin. The thinness comes from the lack of clarity regarding whether Bob has schizophrenia, dissociative, or depressed making some elements of the narrative harder to accept given the lack of depth on this aspect. That said, the arc of Bob and its handling, sans comic backstory awareness, is handled with deftness, leading to one of the more emotionally satisfying climactic confrontations in ages. Though most MCU audiences don’t love Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), the emotional significance of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) sharing his power with the children of New Asgard in order to prevent the grief-driven Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from reaching Infinity always moves me to tears, and the final confrontation between the Thunderbolts and the villain of this adventure does the same.
L-R: John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo Credit: Chuck Zlotnick. © 2025 MARVEL.
When not dipping into issues of mental health (some people will really try to be a global hero before going to therapy) and utilizing the usual playful banter of the forced together team (the source for the team name in-universe is a solid joke), it also features some of the best shots in recent MCU films which bring back the joy of Eternals (2021). That film has as many fans as it does detractors, but we can agree that it looked fantastic because it used locations and sets and didn’t rely heavily on CG. Whether shooting on location in Australia or on a studio set, there is a tangibility to the look of Thunderbolts* that makes the adventure feel weighted, thereby aiding the emotional arc that courses through it. Part of this is cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (The Green Knight) utilizing more natural tones akin to the look of Winter Solider or production designer Grace Yun’s (Hereditary; Past Lives) work which made each space feel realized and lived-in instead of vacant or overly-produced. Aside from the narrative depth, what’s really been missing since the start of Phase Four is the sense of reality from the MCU, an element that matters most as the stories explore the multiverse and grow cosmic.
Center: Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.
There is a dauntedness with the MCU that didn’t use to exist. The announcement of a new tale used to draw baited breath and fill conversations, but, now, with some audience members not knowing a world in which the MCU didn’t exist, there’s a commonality to it. An expectedness. Comics themselves have experienced this, as have other entertainments through the years, so it’s now a matter of how to navigate it. That even in their 36th film, Marvel is taking chances on big ideas with more minor characters, tackling heavy concepts and, rather than devolving into third act CG slop, finding another route. That feels very Steve Rogers, honestly, and we can only hope for more moving forward as Phase Five closes out with Ironheart this June. Give us humanity, give us honesty, give us individuals grappling with the difficulty of being heroes and what that means when we thrust ourselves out of the shadows and into the light. Rogers made it look easy, but even he struggled with the weight of being Captain America. What does it look like when someone not of his constitution falls on the grenade for the greater good? That’s a story worth exploring and, Avengers: Doomsday (2026) depending, maybe we’ll get the chance to see it.
In theaters May 2nd, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Marvel Studios Thunderbolts* webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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