Thunderbolts* 2025

I have finally finished my MCU catch up by watching Thunderbolts* aka the New Avengers (which is an odd choice they made with their marketing when they do this whole switch up after the movie’s been out a few days and they change the title based on what happens at the very end of the movie, but whatever)(also, it was an odd choice to use the Thunderbolts name that was initially connected to Thunderbolt Ross, AND this movie came right after Brave New World featuring Ross, yet the Thunderbolt name within the movie had zero connection to him, but again whatever). Right off the bat, I feel like this has been one of my favorites from this entire catch up, on par with Guardians volume 3. This is a film that on the surface is about a group of anti-heroes trying to not get permanently shelved, but it’s actually about finding hope through depression and hopelessness mainly through the eyes of Yelena Belova and Bob. The action and humor is also quite fun throughout especially with the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Red Guardian and the general haplessness of Bob throughout most of the movie.

The basic premise of this movie is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has had her various black ops dealings catch up with her and she is trying to get rid of any loose ends before her impeachment hearing. She sends Yelena to clear out a lab where they were involved in the Sentry project, and after Yelena asks for more heroic work she gets sent on “one last job” which ends up being all of Valentina’s black ops sent to kill each other, aka Yelena, John Walker, Taskmaster, and Ghost. And while they’re inside the vault trying to kill each other, the vault locks and they release an amnesiac who turns out to be a superhero experiment before realizing that they are all trapped and about to be incinerated. Taskmaster plays the role of Slipknot from the Suicide Squad and gets shot in the head by Ghost. The rest of the movie is basically the four of them not wanting to work together because they each think the others aren’t trustworthy while repeatedly showing that they actually are trustworthy despite being morally ambiguous.

Even though this is basically billed as an ensemble movie, Yelena is by far the main character. She is the perspective that starts the movie along with her using her victims in the opening job as a sounding board, and its her depression from her work as essentially a killer for hire that is the through line of the entire movie. When she visits her surrogate father Red Guardian for the first time in over a year, he notes that she doesn’t have the light behind her eyes, but he does see it when she is doing more heroic work in the latter half of the movie. It’s also reflected in Bob aka Sentry, the meth addict with mental health issues that just so happened to survive the experiment to give him super powers that in some ways rival Superman with flying, super strength, invulnerability, as well as heat vision, telekinesis, and on the dark side of things he has the ability to bring out the darkest part of someone’s memory, and in the climax of the movie he’s also able to trap them inside of that memory. But it’s Yelena’s realization and understanding of that shared depression and that one method to help get through it is with the help of friends that she’s able to get through to Bob when he’s under the influence of his dark side, and helps get herself over her own hump.

Alongside the undercurrent of the depression angle, there’s also the rest of the building the team, as it initially starts with just Yelena, John Walker, and Ghost, but is quickly added on with the highly enthusiastic and caffeinated Red Guardian, and shortly afterwards a reluctant congressman Bucky. His angle was a little on the odd side as he was introduced as an aspiring congressman in Brave New World, and here he’s trying to understand the political system, but very quickly falls right back into field operations as a hands on hero. They form a relatively interesting team even though with the exception of Ghost their powersets are all extremely similar. They’re all basically humans with enhanced strength and/or agility and exceptional firearms training. Bucky also has a vibranium arm and Ghost has the ability to phase through objects. Yelena isn’t technically super powered, but was trained as an assassin since childhood so she isn’t technically super in the same way that Black Widow wasn’t technically super. Sentry is the one wildcard as he immediately joins the team with extreme optimism, but zero knowledge of his abilities. And when he gains the knowledge, events quickly turn on the dark side of his psyche and turns him into the villain of the movie. But luckily most of his “kills” initially seem to be visually inspired by the shadow left behind after a nuclear explosion, but are later revealed to be more of a teleportation into an alternate reality. This loophole allows him to be the villain, but once the team defeats the real villain of his depression, his victims are restored with the only lasting damage being the mental trauma that they were forced to relive within their own minds, which in theory could actually be much worse than just physical damage, but that’s not something that the movie would ever address.

The film ends with a slight feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you, though it did flow together well enough from how Valentina set up the press event beforehand and it makes sense that she’s the type of character that could quickly pivot and turn a potential PR disaster into “The New Avengers” which is a group that is distinct and unaffiliated with the lowercase new Avengers that Sam was tasked with assembling in Brave New World. The post credit scene makes that pretty clear in a fun way despite the cop out that Bob not only has no memory of what happened, but also has no interest in exploring his powers in fear of becoming dark again, or the Void as the character is called in the comics and indirectly referred to in this movie, though the reference to the Void was more about referring to the darkness of depression rather than specifically referring to the dark Sentry persona. And the end teaser of the Fantastic Four rocket heading towards Earth was a nice little preview both for Fantastic Four being the next movie as well as the Fantastic Four being a presence in the upcoming Avengers Doomsday. Again, this movie was a great mix of action, comedy, and allegory, the third of which has been a bit more hit and miss with many of the Marvel movies of late. But until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.