"There's something wrong with me. An emptiness."
So says Florence Pugh's Yelena in the initially promising opening moments of the Thunderbolts*, before she leaps off the world's second-tallest building. In addition to this first line feeling like it could just as easily be referring to the emptiness at the core of the latest film in the Marvel machine, the scene itself serves as a fitting metaphor for the descent of all that follows. While it's a fun stunt with an idea about how even assassins who are essentially gig workers can grow existentially exhausted by the daily grind (à la The Killer) underpinning it, the rest of the film is never once able to reach the same heights with which it began. Though Thunderbolts* (stylized with an asterisk for reasons ultimately more tiresome than cheeky) is, in many ways, about living in the long shadow of the far better movies that came before it, all the subtextual readings in the world about it as a knowing response to superhero fatigue can't give it a spark.
This comes despite the best efforts of Pugh who, as one fascinating trailer for this film attempted to foreground, has done great work in films like the stunning Midsommar. So too have returning stars Sebastian Stan (frequently astounding in last year's A Different Man) and the always great Julia Louis-Dreyfus (witheringly funny in 2023's You Hurt My Feelings). Yes, as the so-called "A24 trailer" (because it referred back to so many of films released under that studio's banner) established, Thunderbolts* employs plenty of talent in front of and behind the camera. It is indeed directed by Jake Schreier and co-written by Joanna Calo who worked on the stellar series Beef together. It does have cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo who previously shot the terrific The Green Knight, production design by Grace Yun who helped Hereditary come to nightmarish life, and editing by Harry Yoon who cut the wonderful Minari. While it's clever marketing to try to align the Thunderbolts* with all these more acclaimed works, it's a deception. Because when it all comes down to it, this is still a Marvel movie too timid to take the necessary leaps to warrant praise of its own.
After Yelena makes her leap, takes out a bunch of goons in a lab, and gets sent on one final mission that will bring her into a broader conspiracy surrounding the attempt to create new Avengers, the film itself falls into being just like any of the recent Marvel movies of late. There is a world to save from a threat that actually doesn't ever feel all that meaningfully threatening, an array of serviceable yet frequently stiff quips to make, and an increasingly forced emotional throughline less embraced as much as it is half-heartedly tacked on. There are moments when it wants to be closer to something like James Gunn's joyous The Suicide Squad in how it assembles a more scrappy group of antiheroes, which includes The Winter Soldier (Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Red Guardian (David Harbour) and mysterious newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman), though the longer the film carries on, the more you feel it's struggling to remain light on its feet.
Some of this comes down to the action, which starts out rather solid with the fights Yelena has on her initial missions, yet is reduced to seemingly invincible, awkwardly CGI characters throwing each other about. When they fight more generic gun-wielding cannon fodder, there is at least one moment where you can see a stunt performer going out of their way to not attack and instead just wait their turn to get beat up. When we get the unsurprising reveal of a new all-powerful being, whatever moments of wonder that shadowy figure finds when it takes to the sky or unsettling darkness it creates as it begins to obliterate any who come in its way are too rushed to leave a mark.
That the film builds itself around shame, peering into the past to see what guilt the characters carry, is interesting, but it never takes this far enough to cut into the psyche. Instead, it plays like a hollow gimmick and a way to get into more generic fights. Thunderbolts* is leaps and bounds better than the studio's other movie from this year, the baffling Captain America: Brave New World, but that's damning with faint praise. As an inauspicious end to the MCU's Phase Five, it's less a triumphant conclusion and more just a shame.
Thunderbolts*
Rated PG-13
Directed by Jake Schreier
Starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Lewis Pullman, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
