Inherently, Marvel's attempt at doing their own Suicide Squad, with how things have been going in the MCU, just on paper sounds like a horrendous idea. But this is, for my money, the best the MCU has been since Endgame. It's a common takeaway but it's true. The best Marvel has been able to achieve since is "a fun time at the movies" with Deadpool and Spiderman and the most recent outing was a dose of "damn that was not nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be" with Captain America 4.
Thunderbolts is somehow both a non conventional take on the anti-hero concept but also feels like a return to the MCU's roots by feeling a lot more grounded and putting real emphasis on its characters. I appreciate that the movie aimed for comedic moments but it seemed to have a healthy balance between moments that needed to be serious and moments that could be cut at with a joke. The MCU after Guardians and Ragnarok collectively decided that movies needed a quip every other minute if not less. Thunderbolts has some silly moments but for the most part even the jokes feel reigned in and grounded.
The cast as a whole is pretty strong but the standout for me was, quite unsurprisingly to anyone who read up on the early hype, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova or Black Widow 2.0. This movie is, in function, an ensemble team up flick, but the beating heart of the movie is Yelena. And Pugh crushes it from start to finish. Her scene with Alexei talking about her suffering since Natasha died was a highlight of the movie. In Hawkeye you see her filled with vengeful rage over her sister's death, but that really just served as a justification for her place in the story. In this movie, you see her just completely shattered and struggling to find meaning in life* and it all comes to a head when she breaks down in front of her adoptive father. It was a really powerfully acted scene in my opinion. And I don't care who disagrees with me, after this movie, Yelena has cemented herself as the best new character to come out post-Endgame and she is way way more interesting/compelling a character than Natasha Romanoff ever was. By a lot.
I'll give Harbour some credit too. He was a little annoying as Red Guardian in Black Widow, but he felt a lot more earnest and positive in Thunderbolts. I also thoroughly enjoyed that Julia Louis Dreyfuss' Valentina, in an expanded role, was basically just a smarter Selina Meyer from Veep and Veep is one of my all time favorite comedies so that worked for me. Something like that can easily lend to JDL being one note, but a smarter Selina Meyer being the anti-Nick Fury just works.
As someone who has struggled with depression for huge chunks of my life I really appreciated the way the real villain was more or less a manifestation of the cocktail of depression and anxiety and one of the driving messages was that even though everyone needs to find it in themselves to overcome their darkness personally and individually, we all (or at least most of us) need the love and support of others to endure and persevere. The loneliness of a lot of these characters (Bob and Yelena in particular) felt remarkably honest, earnest, and authentic. The way the Thunderbolts all seemed to understand they had to come together to support each other was a bit cheesy and hackneyed, but I thought it served the themes well to deliver a very non traditional superhero conflict and resolution so i consider it more of a win when it could have easily been a groaner. Again, Florence Pugh's heartfelt and powerful performance was really essential to selling this film's underlying premise. The MCU is not a proper staging ground for Oscar contention as someone discussed above, but no one should bat an eye if she gets nominated.
My gripes are minor, but they're there. For one, I know that with this many characters there's only so much time you can devote to each one's stories but Bucky felt like he was just there to drive interest by having someone we can, at this point, consider a legacy MCU character. I'm not really familiar with The Void/Sentry outside of playing the card in Marvel Snap, so I don't know how true to the source material he was but having a super serum that can now make someone essentially a god (assuming they survive using it) just feels like an over the top way to set up the mental health themes when the movie as a whole did good to move away from timeline and multiverse shit while also continuing to see the MCU feel compelled to try to come up with more threatening villains than Thanos. Also, it's not a huge plothole but Valentina basically getting away scot free at the end just seemed weird. Like there was a big push to impeach her, and what the US government just stops investigating the wrongdoing of her company because she introduced a new de facto Avengers team?
The rest aren't really complaints as much as general thoughts but I bust out laughing for the second end credit scene, more so than the first, because my theater cheered like they just saw a super bowl touchdown at the reveal of the Fantastic Four ship. Like unless everyone has been living under a rock, we all know they're coming, it's not THAT exciting.
I do feel like the time it took for Bob to go from Aw shucks everyone I'm no good at nothing to "I'm a god and I don't have to listen to you" just felt rushed. But the movie was already long enough as it is so I can't complain too much.
Anyway 8.5/10. Upper third of MCU movies for me.
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