Farewell, then, Phase 5 of the Marvelverse, with your inconsequential plotlines and D-list villains (Dar-Benn and M.O.D.O.K. anyone?).
This run of movies and TV shows post-Endgame has felt like an extended middle-age for a once all-conquering franchise groping to rediscover its mojo. The joints have stiffened on the action, the temples have started to grey on the storytelling. And how do you avoid a sense of grating overfamiliarity after 35 movies?
The answer, to a point, is Thunderbolts*. It’s a team-up superhero movie that’s ballsy enough to set aside the usual labyrinthine weave of subplots and dig into mental health, childhood trauma and domestic abuse – and do it with feeling.
Sure, you’re probably arguing that all of Marvel’s superheroes are the products of trauma – even Captain America, the wholesome heart, got a brutalising serum-ing – but not quite like here. The misfit nature of its scrappy antiheroes stems from relatable psychological damage that cuts a bit deeper. An Inception-like battle inside a character’s unconscious is an especially bold touch – like director Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank) has just handed the keys to Carl Yung.
And the plot? Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s scheming CIA wonk Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is facing impeachment hearings after the events of a previous movie (don’t ask, not sure). With Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) now a senator and on her case, she’s trying to bury the evidence.
It’s like director Jake Schreier has handed the keys to Carl Yung
On her kill list are her former superhero operatives: depressed former child assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh); broken-down family man and ‘dime store’ Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell); glitchy shapeshifter Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen); and masked mercenary Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). They’re all lured to a mountain base for an overlong ambush sequence that introduces the mysterious Bob (Lewis Pullman, also Bob in Top Gun: Maverick) and sees them form a reluctant team hastily named after Yelena’s childhood soccer team.
As so often the case, this Marvel effort is best when its talented cast is flinging around snarky banter and self-aware asides. David Harbour is exuberant as limo-driving one-time Soviet superhero Red Guardian, Yelena’s adopted dad – ‘The light inside you is dim, even by Eastern European standards,’ he tells her – while Stan gets some cool Winter Soldier stuff to do, and the excellent Pugh moors things as a troubled but compassionate superhero trying to hold it all together.
By now, you’ll know if you’re still on board for MCU Phase 6 and the runway to Avengers: Doomsday, in which case you don’t need me to tell you to stay until the end of the credits. Thunderbolts*’s Marvel callbacks aren’t as baffling as those in Captain America: Brave New World, but some prior knowledge of Black Widow and dreary Disney+ spinoff The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is helpful.
Happily, though, it’s a cut above any of those. Maybe Marvel has a few new cards to play.
In UK and Australian cinemas Thu May 1. In US theaters Fri May 2.