Thunderbolts* (Film Review)
May. 3rd, 2025 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis was surprisingly delightful. I came for Yelena and remained not solely for her but pretty much everyone else as well.
While in recent years, I really loved some of the Marvelverse tv stuff - Agatha All Along most recently comes to mind -, the movies were only so-so. The Marvels as an idea was good, it had a lot of fun moments and I went already in with love for most of the characters, but as a movie, it didn't rise above "okay, entertaining", not least because it seemed to shy away from anything involving deeper conflict and emotion for the main characters. (Thus Monica got over her resentment vis a vis Carol pretty quickly, Kamala was allowed to be shocked about their collective inability to save all the inhabitants of the first alien planet she ever experienced for two heartbeats or so, and Carol's as an idea interesting conflict about having to face the fact that by taking out the Supreme Authority without also providing a structure to replace the adminstrative things the Supreme Authority had done, she wrecked havoc on a people she had lived with and believed herself to be was defanged by making her opponent so clearly crazy an irrational.) Guardians 3 by contrast was superb - probably the best Marvel movie in a long while - but it also achieved this by giving up the ensemble structure by making Rocket and his story central. (This is not a criticism, I loved G3 best of all the Guardian movies. It's just an observation.)
Thunderbolts for me gets the balance between humor and emotion right, not least because contrary to what the first two trailers led me to assume, it doesn't shy away from emotion. I would say Yelena is the clear lead, and her story the one that gets the most narrative space - they clearly know what they have with Florence Pugh -, but the other characters still get more to do, by which I mean character stuff, not just fighting skills, than most non- Rocket, non-Gamora characters in Guardians 3. It's an excellent take on the "bunch of misfits thrown together by circumstance becomes team" trope, and it doesn't commit the mistake of first building up an opponent to ridiculous levels and then let the solution to defeating them come out of nowhere Marvel banter aside, this is very much a movie about depression and the lack of self worth that goes with it, and note that the way Yelena bonds with Bob/Sentry early on allows her and then the others to help him in the climactic showdown, he's not magically cured by the end (hence him not using his powers in the tag scene because he doesn't want to risk the Void again); depression can't be hugged away, but it can be helped and contained with emotional support. Yelena herself will have black days in the future as well, but her joy and sense of purpose have returned, and a new sense of belonging with it, so she will cope better. Every one of the Thunderbolts starts out near suicidal going in, with some more obvious than others, and letting that brokenness be what allows them to connect with Bob and each other (again, in varying degrees) makes for a powerful and effective red thread throughout the film building up to the grand climax not being resolved by a physical victory (which has been demonstrated to be impossible), but an emotional one.
(BTW, Lewis Pullmann does a great job as Bob. In the one comic I read where he was in, Sentry didn't do anything for me, but Pullmann and the script manage to introduce him in a way that hint at the emotional instability behind the goofiness and seeming harmlessness from the get go, yet also include, in a show, not tell manner, that there's a lot of good in him (he's the one who has the idea of how to escape through the shaft, he's sacrificing his life for a bunch of strangers later - after all, he has no idea he will survive this courtesy of his amnesia -, and so Yelena befriending him just works, which is essential to us believing what she does once he becomes Void.)
The Yelena-Alexei scenes were as great as advertised in the various trailers; I got over my annoyance at Alexei's accent (which I had in Black Widow, a movie that starts with Alexei and Melinda being basically Pihilip and Elizabeth from The Americans complete with US accents, only to have them talk in cod Russian accents and broken English for the rest of the movie) by telling mself it's meant to signal he's really talking Russian to Yelena but the production team didn't want to put the actor through either having to learn his dialogue phonetically and butchering it, or having to learn Russian.Anyway, the way Thunderbolts both has Yelena facepalm at her embarrassing Dad and get from him the love and support she direly needs in finally the right way is emblematic for the humor/emotion balance I mentioned earlier. Also, depending on how long the production of this movie took, Alexei fanboying the Winter Soldier either inspired the What If? episode in which they team up or vice versa.
Val: has graduated to a good antagonist in this one, I thought. (And Ms Dreyfus has fun with the amoral, cynical quips as well as Val the spin meister when she's in PR mode, but also gets to show there is some genuine courage along with the power hungry ruthlessness at one point.) (She even gets her very own flashback to childhood trauma, which for me hit the "explain without apologize" button.)
Downsides: considering the state she is in at the start of this movie, Yelena clearly did not have Kate Bishop as a girlfriend or even platonic friend at her side these last few years since Hawkeye, alas. (BTW, in case anyone is worried, the bonding between her and Bob does not come with romantic subtext. She basically treats him as a little brother.) Also, I wish Ava had gotten a flashback as well, though I will admit we already know her childhood trauma from Antman and the Wasp.
While in recent years, I really loved some of the Marvelverse tv stuff - Agatha All Along most recently comes to mind -, the movies were only so-so. The Marvels as an idea was good, it had a lot of fun moments and I went already in with love for most of the characters, but as a movie, it didn't rise above "okay, entertaining", not least because it seemed to shy away from anything involving deeper conflict and emotion for the main characters. (Thus Monica got over her resentment vis a vis Carol pretty quickly, Kamala was allowed to be shocked about their collective inability to save all the inhabitants of the first alien planet she ever experienced for two heartbeats or so, and Carol's as an idea interesting conflict about having to face the fact that by taking out the Supreme Authority without also providing a structure to replace the adminstrative things the Supreme Authority had done, she wrecked havoc on a people she had lived with and believed herself to be was defanged by making her opponent so clearly crazy an irrational.) Guardians 3 by contrast was superb - probably the best Marvel movie in a long while - but it also achieved this by giving up the ensemble structure by making Rocket and his story central. (This is not a criticism, I loved G3 best of all the Guardian movies. It's just an observation.)
Thunderbolts for me gets the balance between humor and emotion right, not least because contrary to what the first two trailers led me to assume, it doesn't shy away from emotion. I would say Yelena is the clear lead, and her story the one that gets the most narrative space - they clearly know what they have with Florence Pugh -, but the other characters still get more to do, by which I mean character stuff, not just fighting skills, than most non- Rocket, non-Gamora characters in Guardians 3. It's an excellent take on the "bunch of misfits thrown together by circumstance becomes team" trope, and it doesn't commit the mistake of first building up an opponent to ridiculous levels and then let the solution to defeating them come out of nowhere Marvel banter aside, this is very much a movie about depression and the lack of self worth that goes with it, and note that the way Yelena bonds with Bob/Sentry early on allows her and then the others to help him in the climactic showdown, he's not magically cured by the end (hence him not using his powers in the tag scene because he doesn't want to risk the Void again); depression can't be hugged away, but it can be helped and contained with emotional support. Yelena herself will have black days in the future as well, but her joy and sense of purpose have returned, and a new sense of belonging with it, so she will cope better. Every one of the Thunderbolts starts out near suicidal going in, with some more obvious than others, and letting that brokenness be what allows them to connect with Bob and each other (again, in varying degrees) makes for a powerful and effective red thread throughout the film building up to the grand climax not being resolved by a physical victory (which has been demonstrated to be impossible), but an emotional one.
(BTW, Lewis Pullmann does a great job as Bob. In the one comic I read where he was in, Sentry didn't do anything for me, but Pullmann and the script manage to introduce him in a way that hint at the emotional instability behind the goofiness and seeming harmlessness from the get go, yet also include, in a show, not tell manner, that there's a lot of good in him (he's the one who has the idea of how to escape through the shaft, he's sacrificing his life for a bunch of strangers later - after all, he has no idea he will survive this courtesy of his amnesia -, and so Yelena befriending him just works, which is essential to us believing what she does once he becomes Void.)
The Yelena-Alexei scenes were as great as advertised in the various trailers; I got over my annoyance at Alexei's accent (which I had in Black Widow, a movie that starts with Alexei and Melinda being basically Pihilip and Elizabeth from The Americans complete with US accents, only to have them talk in cod Russian accents and broken English for the rest of the movie) by telling mself it's meant to signal he's really talking Russian to Yelena but the production team didn't want to put the actor through either having to learn his dialogue phonetically and butchering it, or having to learn Russian.Anyway, the way Thunderbolts both has Yelena facepalm at her embarrassing Dad and get from him the love and support she direly needs in finally the right way is emblematic for the humor/emotion balance I mentioned earlier. Also, depending on how long the production of this movie took, Alexei fanboying the Winter Soldier either inspired the What If? episode in which they team up or vice versa.
Val: has graduated to a good antagonist in this one, I thought. (And Ms Dreyfus has fun with the amoral, cynical quips as well as Val the spin meister when she's in PR mode, but also gets to show there is some genuine courage along with the power hungry ruthlessness at one point.) (She even gets her very own flashback to childhood trauma, which for me hit the "explain without apologize" button.)
Downsides: considering the state she is in at the start of this movie, Yelena clearly did not have Kate Bishop as a girlfriend or even platonic friend at her side these last few years since Hawkeye, alas. (BTW, in case anyone is worried, the bonding between her and Bob does not come with romantic subtext. She basically treats him as a little brother.) Also, I wish Ava had gotten a flashback as well, though I will admit we already know her childhood trauma from Antman and the Wasp.
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Date: 2025-05-03 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-04 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-10 06:22 pm (UTC)Mostly it's the little things that annoy me. No hint at Yelena or Ava having ongoing relationships with people from their past appearances. (the Ant and Hawkeye families.) Them being rebranded at the end and then credits/aftercredits sequence making clear how stupid that is.
And Taskmaster's death. She didn't get redshirted to show Sentry's power or Fridged for the other's pain. Because there was no pain on that score or they were so stoic and fatalistic about it barely seemed to impact them. Unless I'm missing something.
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Date: 2025-05-17 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-21 12:08 pm (UTC)I disliked the "new avengers" stuff in the ending, and particularly the "epilogue" bit, and I really didn't think the characters should have gone for the "we're the Avengers now!" trap, but other than that, yeah, an enjoyable ride.
And Florence Pugh is great.