'Thunderbolts*' is just what the MCU needed
For all of us who are depressed but also need a laugh.
The last time Marvel released a movie theatrically, I felt it was a totally adequate installment that was potentially excellent if viewed through a very specific lens. I am, as I have admitted many times previously, an MCU apologist, but their latest offering, Thunderbolts* (asterisk theirs, and intentional), requires no hedging or couching. The marketing push for this film has, perhaps a bit embarrassingly, been "BUT THIS ONE IS GOOD THIS TIME, HERE ARE THE BIG CRITICS SAYING SO." And they're right!
Thunderbolts* shares a lot – a LOT – in common with the first Guardians of the Galaxy, but it in no way feels like a ripoff of retread of the film that launched James Gunn into the stratosphere of nerd auteurs. Like GOTG, Thunderbolts (leaving off the asterisk this time, because it's tricking the CMS into thinking that I mean to italicize entire paragraphs) centers on a band of F-tier heroes who don't want to be teaming up at the outset, and bounce off of one another in electric, captivating ways (for the most part). Also like GOTG, Thunderbolts marries legitimate comedy with a profound and authentic sadness.
The movie begins with White Widow, Yelena Belova, explaining to a captive target that she's been affected by depression, apathy and ennui since the death of her sister, Black Widow (which happened in Avengers: Endgame, although we got to see the sisterly interplay in the flashback film Black Widow). Florence Pugh has been an absolute lightning rod and revelation as Yelena in the MCU, being the tiny motor powering the less-than-beloved Black Widow film and being the secret sauce in the already-fantastic Hawkeye series on Disney+. She clearly has a blast shoving all of her dialogue through her Natasha Fatale accent, and anyone who has seen Midsommar or even Little Women knows what she can do with a character who is disaffected, unmoored or depressed. The only minus for her in Thunderbolts* – for me at least – is that they didn't continue the running joke of Yelena's truly diabolical fashion sense. (A tremendous joke, not just because of the costuming they've provided for her in previous appearances, but because of course an Eastern European woman who was trained as a Russian assassin from the time she was a child until adulthood wouldn't have any sense of what was chic or cool.)
Pugh is showcased heavily in this film, but luckily for viewers, she's far from the only standout in the film. Wyatt Russell returns as U.S. Agent after being shamed out of the Captain America role in Disney+'s Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with additional years of bitterness and imposter syndrome fueling his vitriol and sarcastic edge here. Another famous son, Lewis Pullman, is phenomenal as Bob, a fish out of water who is, naturally, not what he seems.* (Okay, that asterisk is mine; check out the bottom of this post for it.) David Harbour, playing Yelena's quasi-adoptive father, Red Guardian, gets the full-bore comic relief role, and dives in headfirst to make a spectacularly watchable ass of himself. And still, in the best kind of MCU fashion, he gets to have a handful of very touching moments, eventually revealing himself to be the heart of the movie.
