‘Thunderbolts’ is a different type of underwhelming Marvel movie

The latest from the MCU buries one interesting character arc beneath way too much other stuff.

Thunderbolts is missing a lot of the things that I’ve most disliked about some of the MCU movies of recent years. The multiverse does not make an appearance, at least in the main plot. It doesn’t spend too much time setting up the next installment. And, despite a couple of hundred effects people and multiple effects houses appearing in the credits, the film isn’t too overly reliant on massive special effects blowouts.

That said, Thunderbolts is still an underwhelming effort, with a structure that feels a lot like a dumping ground for secondary characters that the MCU doesn’t know what to do with, or doesn’t consider worthy of a movie or even a Disney+ series of their own. There’s only one character in the film whom I cared much about, but unfortunately, the film has to make room for a large ensemble.

It’s going for the vibe of the original Avengers era, with lots of references to the void left by the Avengers, and the knowledge of most people watching that there’s going to be a new Avengers movie next year and another the year after. But it’s just not the same thing.

The plot is that CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is facing removal via “The Impeachment Committee” in the House of Representatives, led by The Wire veteran Wendell Pierce.

In light of the hearing, Valentina feels the need to bury her past misdeeds, so that means gathering various superheroes with whom she’s tangled in the past, and killing them off. But because the plan doesn’t work, we soon have a new superhero team-up of flawed characters who are more antiheroes than heroes.

There’s Yelena (Florence Pugh), the original Black Widow’s sister and someone scarred by the trauma of the red rooms; US Agent (Wyatt Russell), a rage case who was briefly Captain America before blowing it; and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who I would remember from Ant-Man and the Wasp if I remembered a single thing about Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Also on board is a new character named Bob (Lewis Pullman), a troubled, nerdish young man who’s dealing with dark things from the past. A different type of character not often seen in superhero movies, his character arc was essentially the only part of the movie that I cared about, even a little bit.

They’re all soon joined by Bucky (Sebastian Stan), who despite his prolifically murderous past as the Winter Soldier, is now a freshman member of Congress.

If the recent Captain America: Brave New World inexplicably required familiarity with the minor characters and plot points of the 15-year-old Edward Norton Incredible Hulk movie, Thunderbolts requires sharp recall of Black Widow, which came out only in 2021 but feels like much longer ago, probably due to the pandemic, and because Scarlett Johansson’s titular character had been killed off a couple of years before that.

One character in particular from Black Widow, I had abolutely no memory of ever existing before, while we also get plenty of Red Guardian (David Harbour), used here as an extremely tiresome comic relief character who’s never all that funny. Speaking of Black Widow, I’m a huge Florence Pugh fan and would have been all for a Black Widow sequel that was mostly about her character. But Thunderbolts misuses and underuses her.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina is the main heavy, and there are three big things wrong with the movie’s characterization of her: She’s supposed to the CIA director, although her particular brand of scheming appears to have little to do with either the purview or the past misdeeds of the CIA; we’ve already seen JLD as a much more compelling and malevolent creature of Washington, from all those years on Veep, and the white streak in her hair makes her look so much like Tulsi Gabbard that I kept getting distracted. Although, I gather the hairstyle is straight from the comics and long predates Tulsi’s version.

She does, though, come equipped with a long-suffering assistant (the always-wonderful Geraldine Viswanathan) who I kept waiting to go Cassidy Hutchinson on her.

Much as I liked what it does with Bob’s arc, the film’s ultimate conclusion — that really, it’s all about all of the characters’ trauma — is already the subject of just about every horror movie, so naturally, it’s now it’s made its way to superhero films too.

It also doesn’t help that the action filmmaking is atrocious, with most of the fight scenes shot hand-held and at stomach-level, which is quite possibly the ugliest and most incoherent way to shoot action. One scene is shot in fog, where we can’t see anyone’s face.

Thunderbolts was directed by Jake Schreier, best known for Robot & Frank and Paper Towns, as well as a lot of TV directing. The two screenwriters are Eric Pearson — who wrote Black Widow, among other MCU films of the past — and Joanna Calo, who wrote for Hacks, BoJack Horseman, and is co-showrunner of The Bear. Those are some of the wittiest, smartest TV shows of the recent past, and there’s not a hint of any of that in this script.

And finally, the production has made a big deal about most of the cast and crew having been part of indie films, mostly for A24, with a promo even being cut to emphasize that.

But… that’s not exactly a new development with these things. They’re constantly hiring indie directors for these, and most of the original Avengers have quieter, more un-superhero-like movies too. I’m reminded of that great tweet showing the poster of Spotlight, with the caption “everyone on this poster has been in an MCU movie, including Brian D’Arcy James.”