Hogan Reviews

Thunderbolts, or “Thunderbolts*  *The New Avengers” was probably one of the most uninteresting MCU films announced in recent memory, but I don’t know whether it was because of extremely low expectations or if it is just that good, but I really enjoyed it! The cast was fun, the lead “villain” was a good adaptation of a particular favourite obscure comic character of mine and generally it was a good time. Was it perfect? Well no, for example the ending felt a tad anticlimactic, but it was at least a whole film that didn’t feel like it was coming apart at the seams like some recent efforts… Let’s take a look!

So going into the film I assumed this would be a Suicide Squad thing where Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) “assembles” the Thunderbolts as a CIA black ops thing to do a mission after seeing her appear in a few TV series / film cliffhangers, but I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t the case at all. Instead Valentina is being impeached as the director of the CIA due to evidence that she has been working with an off-the-books company called OXE on illegal human experiments that are trying to recreate the super soldier serum, and in a desperate attempt to bury all evidence of her wrongdoing she sends four people she’s used off-the-books to destroy OXE evidence to a final black site with orders to kill each other to tidy away any last bit of proof (an incinerator would finish off whoever “won”) These four people are Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John “US Agent” Walker (Wyatt Russell), Avar “Ghost” Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) and Antonia “Taskmaster” Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko), although Taskmaster is almost immediately offed by Ghost with zero fanfare and basically no reaction for her old (admittedly at-odds) ally Yelena… Oh well, I always preferred the Brooklyn-accented comics/cartoon/game version anyway! During the scuffle they unlock a pod containing a man named “Bob” (Lewis Pullman) and soon the four of them figure out what’s going on in time to avoid being burnt alive.

The Thunderbolts themselves… with Yelena looking away, sadly. Don’t worry, she has her own picture later!

As they work together to get out of the bottom level of the facility Walker touches Bob and is given a vision of his worst memory, surprisingly NOT being ousted out of the Captain America role but instead being a crap father to his child and arguing with his wife, which was humanising, if nothing else. Putting that aside the group then manage to get outside but a large group of Valentina-led soldiers are there as she has placed who Bob is, namely a test subject from “Project Sentry”, an experiment it was believed nobody had survived. Bob subconsciously taps into his new superpowers serves as a handy distraction for Yelena, Walker and Ghost to escape with the help of Yelena’s dad Alexei “Red Guardian” Shostakov (David Harbour), who is thrilled to be doing something more exciting than being a taxi driver. While all this is going on we catch up with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who is finding a life in politics rather boring and after getting Valentina’s PA Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan) on his side he tracks down the fugitive group on the road, taking out their pursuers and then their vehicle as well. As this is going on Valentina has tried to convince Bob to be her golden boy and despite being sent into the same shadow dimension of bad memories by touching him as Walker did she still believes he can do it, despite Mel being worried about Bob’s mental history. This leads to Mel telling Bucky what’s going on, and when it matches up with the self-dubbed “Thunderbolts” story he decides to head to New York with them to stop her.

A corrupt person in politics?! This really is a fantasy film…

When they get there she introduces Bob as a new hero dubbed “The Sentry”, complete with very comic-accurate outfit and new blonde hair. Yelena tries to talk him away from Valentina but she has already filled his head with lies and half-truths that have convinced him he’s a God-like being, so he beats them up instead. The so-called Thunderbolts start to break apart as Yelena believes they can’t win, while Sentry starts to wonder why he has to take orders from a regular human when he’s a God and gets shocked unconscious for his troubles. Sadly, this leads to his literal darkside to manifest and begin to plunge New York into his bad memory “Void”…

It’s a fun movie, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing a great power-hungry “villain” and Florence Pugh stealing the show with her Yelena character being the major highlights, but even the rest of the cast were good in their roles, Walker was a sarcastic dick who you end up kind-of feeling sorry for, Ghost and later Bucky are the “straightmen” in a lot of the gag routines and Red Guardian was of course the over the top comic relief. Then you get Bob, who starts off as something of a gag character himself, but then when we begin to focus on his unfortunate mental state and how he’s been treated (in the past and present) then he becomes an interesting sympathetic villain, or at least part of him does…

Overall Thoughts:

See? Told you: Here’s Yelena in her very own, oddly blurry screenshot.

Thunderbolts was a fun MCU entry, full of good action and banter but with a solid heart at the centre of it. While I think it was well-written and made sense within the context of the film I do think the finale was a bit of a letdown, but that really didn’t affect my enjoyment much. It’s nice to enjoy an MCU entry properly again, including a fun post-credits scene setting up things for the future…

As the Thunderbolts come back together to protect some New Yorkers from falling debris (and giving Valentina an idea in the process…) Yelena decides to intentionally enter the Void and save Bob from himself, having to relive painful memories over and over before finding him. He’s hiding in his own bad memories of himself and his mother being physically and mentally abused by his Dad but soon with the help of Yelena and the emerging other Thunderbolts he’s given a reason to hope again and the Void starts to lift… until it fights back. As everyone is pinned back by the Void’s projections Yelena manages to pull free and give him the hug he needs, followed by everyone else joining in and banishing the Void back into Bob’s subconscious. While I completely get the significance of banishing someone’s unpleasant voice in their head that tells them they’re worthless by showing them love, I can’t say it didn’t make for a bit of an anticlimax.

The Sentry reveals that he’s watched too much Matrix.

A short while later Valentina invites the group to speak with her only to surprise them by having them suddenly be in a press conference revealing that she has assembled the “New Avengers” as part of her projects in a desperate attempt to deflect people looking into the superman she created that just nearly plunged the city into a literal nightmare. They go along with it (Red Guardian is thrilled!) and Yelena whispers to her that they “own her” now… In a post-credit scene set 14-months later we find out that Sam “Captain America” Wilson has formed his own Avengers and is suing the “New Avengers” for copyright infringement, and that Bob is still on the team but he refuses to use his superpowers for fear of losing control again. The scene ends with “that thing happening in space” leading to a spaceship breaking through from another dimension, a ship bearing the logo of the Fantastic 4…