REVIEW: Thunderbolts* (2025)
Thunderbolts* is being touted as Marvel’s return to form after a few years in the wilderness, where, with a couple of exceptions, their films ranged from boring duds to unwatchable garbage. It’s not; it’s the same poorly written, unevenly paced, tension-devoid, charmless, weightless, laughless, rushed, unsatisfying waste of time most of its post-Endgame brethren are. On that scale, I suppose Thunderbolts* at least leans towards the higher end of the bottom of the barrel because it has a few promising themes and a couple of decent scenes, but none of the good stuff amounts to anything, like life rafts for passengers who’ve already drowned.
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is growing tired of being an assassin for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and asks to be reassigned to something a little less murder-death-killy. Valentina agrees and sends her to a remote CIA outpost to destroy the inventory and kill an intruder trying to ransack the place as her final mission. Once there, Yelena finds herself pitted against several other operatives working for Valentina and an unassuming little weirdo named Bob (Lewis Pullman), who may be Valentina’s darkest secret.
Right off the bat, Thunderbolts* lets you know what you’re in for, partly because the opening scene is a good encapsulation of the entire film and partly because it plays out like all Marvel movies do now. This is the moment from the more recent trailers where Yelena jumps off a building. Before she does, she talks about feeling lonely, guilty, and hopeless, so you’re supposed to think that the main character is about to kill herself. Of course, she doesn’t, and it isn’t long into her dive before she opens her parachute and drops into a secret spy mission. But all the elements of Thunderbolts* are present here: a lack of stakes, the pretense of examining serious psychological themes before undermining them with a sight gag, lame action (no points for guessing if Yelena makes short work of her enemies), and constant attempts to make bad jokes land. All it’s missing is a poorly inserted 80s song to distract you from the lousy movie you’re watching. (“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship only plays over the end credits; whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you.)
The rest of Thunderbolts* follows suit. You may have heard the fawning over how this film deals with mental health issues and is an “important” superhero movie as a result (this week’s Real BBC had a great segment on this). Well, it does this in the most superficial ways possible. The movie pays lip service to these things, and it dwells on how depressed the characters are and how they’re struggling with various demons gnawing at their psyches, but it doesn’t do much with any of that. This is mainly because most of the characters are so poorly drawn that it’s hard to understand or care about why they’re so damaged. Yelena and Bob are the only ones who get much attention on that score, and their journeys could have been interesting if Thunderbolts* made any effort to show the link between them that it demands we believe is there and which is the key to them resolving their crises. But you never feel much between them, and they share very little screen time, so Thunderbolts* becomes yet another tell-don’t-show Marvel movie.
Some of this comes down to the pacing, which is horrendous, especially in the first and second acts. When Yelena and the others arrive at the top secret desert facility, Thunderbolts* gets stuck in the mud for about an hour. The heroes take forever to leave this one boring location, and there is zero tension while they’re trying to find a way out. Most of this time is spent having them take potshots at each other – mostly the women insulting John Walker (Wyatt Russell), in case there was any doubt. When the action starts, it’s bland and often difficult to see, and when they finally do leave the compound, there’s just more desert… a lot more desert. Things pick up a bit when they get to New York, but it’s still mostly dull action with little to no character work, and every time it looks like something interesting is about to happen, it stops as soon as it starts. The one decent fight takes place at the end of the second act, and this one is legitimately good; it’s different from all the others, and it feels like it actually means something and may even have stakes. (It ultimately doesn’t, but for a minute there, you allow yourself to dream.) And it all leads to a final act that is certainly different from the usual superhero fare but doesn’t accomplish what it needs to for the story and characters on multiple levels. The ending feels more like one of those “You Are Here” maps at a mall than the end of a movie.
The general weightlessness of Thunderbolts* is also a result of the threadbare characterizations for almost all of the characters. Yelena is very much the lead, and she at least gets some moments where you understand the things that are weighing on her conscience, and Bob’s mental state becomes the main thrust of the movie (although his past trauma isn’t given the time it needs considering how much damage it causes), but we get next to nothing for John Walker and even less for Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). And I’m not sure which is worse because while Ghost’s backstory for the movie is that she did some vaguely bad stuff that’s never elaborated on, Walker’s history has to be recontextualized to the point where the movie just flat-out lies about his actions in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He’s also got a completely different personality, which I suspect is because the Marvel folks realize that most people didn’t think what he did on the show was bad, so they had to reframe him as an asshole. The funniest part of the movie is hearing Yelena and Ghost – a hardened killer and the central villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp – keep telling him how bad a guy he is despite his not having done anything nearly as bad as them. Red Guardian (David Harbour) is once again a caricature who comes off as longing for glory more than making up for past mistakes.
And while Yelena is the lead and has the most screen time devoted to her, her story is undermined at every turn with the awful Marvel humor that won’t go away or even calm down for five whole minutes. There are a few scenes with her that are almost good until the jokes start; the one from the trailers between her and Red Guardian is so close to being terrific, and Florence Pugh and David Harbour are great, but then Thunderbolts* cuts the legs out from under them with some idiotic gags, and we’re reminded of nothing so much as that they deserve much better movies than Marvel is willing to give them. Speaking of wasting opportunities, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is completely adrift in Thunderbolts*, once again playing second fiddle to less interesting characters. Bucky is an older hand at overcoming his past sins, so he’s kind of at the finish line while everyone else is still in the race, and it forces him into the background. They should have had Bucky act as a guide and sort of mentor to the others, which they seem to toy with in one scene before abandoning the idea completely. And the whole congressman story they cooked up in Brave New World is not only nonsensical (they never explain how he won, and during one interaction with the press, it seems impossible that he ever summoned up the charisma to make it through the primaries) but entirely unnecessary. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus continues to be grating as Valentina, one of the most annoying characters in a universe that is now full of them; a potentially interesting subplot with her assistant goes nowhere and never has a payoff.
One good thing I can say about Thunderbolts* is that it has the best special effects in any Marvel movie in a long time. This is probably because there aren’t many instances of CGI, but when it’s used, it’s believable and seamless. There’s none of that awful rubbery nonsense that plagues so many MCU films now – and even Daredevil: Born Again. I hope this is a sign of Marvel finally getting back on track, at least in this one aspect; I miss seeing the gods and monsters of the Marvel Universe come to life on the screen rather than make us laugh more than the jokes. It’s faint praise when the plot, characterizations, themes, pacing, and tone don’t work, but it’s something, I guess.
Let us know what you thought of Thunderbolts* in the comments!
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Thunderbolts* (2025)
Plot - 4
Acting - 5
Directing/Editing - 4
Music/Sound - 4
Themes - 5
4.4
Bad
Thunderbolts* is another pointless, poorly plotted Marvel film with minimal characterizations and mostly listless action, though it has a couple of good scenes and some decent special effects.
Comments (2)
Yeah, Jim Starlin, who created Thanos and the Infinity Gems and wrote “The Infinity Gauntlet” was not invited to the Infinity War premiere, and Rob Liefeld says Marvel Studios treats the creators like shit. Marvel doesn’t care; the writers and directors of the new movies and shows are now explicitly told not to read the comics.
You aren’t missing much by skipping Thunderbolts*, although the ending will probably come up again in Doomsday; it sets up some of what these characters will be doing. Sentry was not bad when he was around; I think he works better as a villain than a hero.
Unless Doomsday and Secret Wars pull off a miracle, I think the MCU is on its last legs. The quality nosedive is showing up in box office and Disney+ viewing numbers; Thunderbolts* isn’t projected to do well, and I don’t think Fantastic Four will be much of a hit with Superman and especially Jurassic World in theaters at the same time.
A lot of nepotism here. None of the characters are Marvel ones that I read in youth. They botched She-Hulk. Fantastic Four had it’s moments before, but this new cast is ruined by Pedro Pascal, who really does not belong in Hollywood much like a Michael Rappaport type figure or a John Leguizamo. There are some people you look at and just wonder what they are doing there, and Pascal is one of those.
The only feeling I have towards Marvel now is pity. It’s becoming much like Star Wars, where the overall look is there but not the characters nor story nor writing nor plot. I did not even care much for DP vs Wolverine, which I did NOT see in theaters.
For me, it really was that Claremont and Byrne era that I was lucky enough to catch on the tail end and yes, there were other writers and artists that managed to make great contributions to Marvel on the tail end of that. I prefer Image Comics and Mad Cave and perhaps Boom every now and then.
I fully expect Marvel to start pulling Andor and Star Wars stuff soon in terms of Lezlie Headland type insertion characters and that will finish off this brand. They did it in the comics already and, although I tried going back, there is almost nothing except the occasional work by artist Pepe Larraz. Fans seemed torn on Hickman, but he was alright by me.
I will probably skip this Thunderbolts movie, but will say that the villain looks good. What’s becoming more than apparently clear is the caste system in the whole market economy and that these people was insiders from the start and don’t care about comics and don’t really care about fans much. I heard writers and creators are even excluded from premiers.