Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, Chris Bauer, Wendell Pierce, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Director: Jake Schreier
Platform: In cinemas from 1 May 2025
Rating out of 5:★★★
Marvel’s Thunderbolts lurches into cinemas as the 36th installment of the MCU, a franchise that’s getting more and more bloated with self importance. Yet somehow, against all the laws of physics and good taste, this enterprise manages to exhale something vaguely resembling fresh air. It’s kind of a miracle, but hardly worth
celebrating.
The plot slithers about like an octopus, mainly tentacles but little brain. Covert missions, shadowy government schemes and a looming superpowered threat. Not very original as I’ve seen this cocktail in every other MCU film.
her character with the delicious combination of wit and unexpected vulnerability. Image: IMDB
But here’s the miracle: these characters actually feel like they possess functioning organs rather than CGI proxies for human emotion. Jake Schreier has managed to
coax performances from this motley crew of damaged superheroes that suggest they
might occasionally experience feelings between explosions.
Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova continues to be worth the price of admission, playing her character with the delicious combination of wit and unexpected vulnerability. Her scenes with David Harbour’s Red Guardian, a sort of Soviet Superman filtered through a mid-life crisis, actually provoke something resembling human emotion. Harbour bumbles about like a bear wearing a cape, yet manages to find genuine pathos in his desperate need for validation.
Lewis Pullman’s Bob emerges as the film’s unexpected heart, portraying a man so
traumatised by newfound powers he makes Spider-Man look like a model of
emotional stability. His performance adds weight to an ensemble that might otherwise
have floated away from one another.
The humour, mercifully, knows when to stop. No endless and unnecessary banter
here, no desperate attempts to undercut every emotional moment with a punchline.
At 126 minutes, the film maintains a pace that won’t outstay its welcome – a minor
miracle in an epoch where superhero films seem determined to test the limits of
human endurance. Still, the plot sputters like a secondhand car, lacking the cohesion
of Marvel’s earlier, less cynical entries. Several characters – Olga Kurylenko’s
Taskmaster and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost exist purely to cash paychecks and fill
visual space.
Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematography attempts to inject some visual sophistication,
employing a grittier aesthetic that suggests someone actually looked at the frame. Son
Lux contributes a score with atmospheric touches.
In the end, Thunderbolts commits the cardinal sin of being merely adequate in a
franchise that’s built its fortune on being spectacularly mediocre. It dares to focus on
character development, that quaint notion abandoned somewhere around Age of
Ultron. It won’t redefine cinema and won’t win Oscars but it offers something
increasingly rare in these endless superhero franchise factories: actual human beings
with human emotions doing human things while wearing ridiculous costumes.
For fans still clinging to the hope that Marvel might occasionally produce something
with a pulse, Thunderbolts delivers just enough to keep them on life support. It’s the
best kind of mediocrity, mediocrity with a soul
