REVIEW:
Thunderbolts* is the newest Marvel team up movie, following the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Eternals. Only unlike those last two, this one features characters we already know from other movies. Characters who have already been established.
In that sense it is more like the Avengers than any of those others (and the final scene of Thunderbolts, connects to the Avengers as well.) On the flip side, the Avengers featured a bunch of heavy hitters, whereas the Thunderbolts* features a list of B players from the previous films. When the first Avengers movie came out, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America had all headlined their own movies already. In the case of Thunderbolts, not a single member has done this. Which definitely makes them feel kind of like the forgotten players of the MCU, all being brought back and thrown together.
The good news is that the movie knows this. It is very aware of its flaws, and also what it has going for it. The movie knows, for example, that Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan,) is the single character who is the most connected to earlier MCU films (he goes all the way back to the very first Captain America movie.) And it knows that Florence Pugh is the biggest, most popular movie star in their deck of cards, and gives her character, Yelena Belova, the most to do. It even knows where to get the comedy from, with David Harbor, who is just perfect for this role, as the big, dumb, naive, and lovable optimist.
What the movie doesn’t know is how to deliver on its momentum and how to land the plane. You see, there are three clear acts here, and they start out good, but then get progressively worse. The first act is about the characters meeting. Valentina De La Fontane (Julia Louis Dreyfuss,) the leader who all our protagonists are working for, orders each member of the team to go to the lab headquarters of her company and kill another member who will be there at the same time. This is reminiscent the opening bank robbery scene in the Dark Knight, (the best scene in that movie,) where each clown-mask wearing member of the Joker’s team of bandits is tasked with killing one other member.
Here, in Thunderbolts, what all of this leads to is the members fighting each other. And that is of course right in line with the first Avengers movie (as well as the first Guardians film.) The individuals need to fight against each other before they can team up. When you combine some of the best material from the Dark Knight with some of the best material from the Avengers, you know you have a formula for success. Which is why the first act is by far the strongest act in the movie.
And the act continues to go strong as our characters realize they need to work together in order to find a way out of Valentina’s booby-trapped maze of a building. At one point Ghost (from Ant Man and the Wasp,) has to go through a wall to open a door to let the other team members out. But there’s a power source preventing her from going through the wall. So first the group needs to find the power source and destroy it. This step by step problem-solving is a lot of fun.
At another point, the team has to climb up a very high elevator shaft-like tunnel. And since none of them can fly, they need to work together to make the climb. They do this by going back to back, and each one using the backs of the others for support, as their arms and legs stretch out to scale the sides of the tunnel walls. It’s all great. The escape from the building sequences last a while, and the longer they last, the more compelling and interesting the movie is. We start to bond with these characters, and understand them, in large part because of the way they are interacting with each other in this small, confined space.
But our characters do get out, and that ends the first of the three acts. Now the team of three (Ghost, John Walker, and Yelena,) are picked up on the road by a limo-driving Red Guardian. Bucky shows up to destroy a convoy that comes after the group, and then he joins the team as well. Now we have two new members joining the others, with Red Guardian and Bucky. Together the group goes to New York to confront Valentina in the former Stark Tower – Avengers building.
This is where the team fights a bunch of Valentina’s guards in the garage, and then meets Sentry, (Bob, the patient they met in the lab earlier,) who is now working due Valentina. Sentry looks great in the yellow and blue costume. All decked out. It’s too bad we only get to see him like this for one scene. If the first act is about the forming of the team, then the deck d act is about the additions to the team snd introductions. It’s about bringing Red Guardian, Bucky, and Sentry into the fold.
The third act is where this movie really falls apart. Sentry becomes a shadow hovering in the sky as a villain now called Void. Just to be clear, this character has change three times now, once in each of the three acts, and each time not only does his look change, but so does his name. He goes from Bob in act 1 to Sentry in act 2 to Void in act 3. It’s a little much. Maybe it’s trying to emulate the first Iron Man movie, with how the suit and armor changes three times, or went through three renderings during the course of the film, and if it all it was had been changing Sentry’s look, like in Iron Man, then that would have cool, but in Thunderbolts, each time the look changes, so does the character…. Completely. It definitely gets annoying.
To make matters worse, they opt out of giving us action for the climax. Instead they give us one of those would inside a world, hallucination-fantasy endings. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness did it, Wanda-Vision, the Disney plus show did it, even the Avengers Age of Ultron did it with the spells Scarlet Witch was putting on characters. When they go into this world, they confront and have to relive some of their darkest moments from their lives. It feels way too familiar and similar to other MCU endings. And it doesn’t work.
Having a climax that takes place in the subconscious and in nightmares, instead of giving us action, is a huge disappointment. It takes the movie from something that could have been great, (that first act was terrific,) to something lousy and anti-climactic. All of a sudden the movie becomes okay. In the first act they were taking inspiration from some of the better superhero movies, and in the final act, they were taking inspiration from some of the worst ones. What a mistake.
If they had continued with following beats from the Avengers, this could have stayed the course. For example, the ending could have had a battle in the streets of New York City, with Void creating a team of shadow warriors and the Thunderbolts fighting them off. But going into the subconscious, and room after room (kind of like Inception,) is a cop out. We want action from these movies, and that really shouldn’t be such a difficult concept for the filmmakers to understand.
The movie is ultimately good, due to a great opening act, and some characters throughout. Pugh and Harbor really carry it along, her with the emotion and him with the humor. On top of that, the final post credits scene is the best Marvel end credits tag in years. Finally they went back to connecting the tag to other characters from other movies (the last time they did this was with the post credits scene from Shang Chi.)
But a great post credits scene still doesn’t make up for the letdown of a final act and the anti-climactic ending. Sentry looked so great once he donned the outfit, only for them to literally take it away from him just moments later. It’s a constant case of Marvel second guessing themselves and not having confidence to stay with something that’s working. The same can be said of why the ending switches tones from action to meta subconscious. The movie was good, but could have and should have been a whole lot better.