Thunderbolts*

Marvel takes on misfits, mental health, and the loneliness epidemic.

Photo credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel

Please note: Depending on your definition of “spoilers,” there may be some spoilers in here.

Last night I found myself once again in the cavernous darkness of the Indiana State Museum IMAX, the only theater in Indiana that can make popcorn as good as Regal Cinemas (AMC’s popcorn is trash—I say this as a Stubs Premiere member, mind you), and the only true IMAX screen in the state. Yes, there are other IMAX theaters right here in Indianapolis, but the State Museum IMAX is one of a limited number of theaters globally with the equipment to screen films in full spectrum 70mm IMAX. With a screen over six stories tall, the State Museum IMAX is a hard venue to top, which is why I don’t usually try. I got hooked after seeing Oppenheimer there twice a couple summers ago. Now I’m fully spoiled, and seeing a movie in any other setting feels like I’m watching a black and white propaganda film on a 12-inch screen from the back row of a large room.

Now, I'm not typically one for Marvel films. For one thing, they can be relentlessly complicated. Blink and you’re liable to miss two movies and a streaming platform spin-off, which also means losing huge chunks of intricate canon lore. Without it, you can’t fully appreciate or even understand all the equally tedious inside jokes and references, nor have you any hope of stitching together the labyrinthine storyline. Central characters have a weird tendency to die suddenly, only to reappear again—alive, or as ghosts, or shadow versions of themselves (played by a different actor), or in some cases existing on an alternate timeline—and usually in a completely different movie or franchise. Get up to go to the bathroom and you’re suddenly clueless. As such, to the typical Marvel-obsessed teenager, you may as well be dead.

There’s a lot to keep track of, in other words.

However, Audrey, Lauren’s 13-year old daughter, has persuaded me with her enthusiasm for all things Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU. She may be one of the world’s biggest and most earnest Captain America fans, such that I now occasionally wear a Captain America T-shirt I picked up at 5 Below. She is steeped in the lore, and can cite chapter and verse across several timelines, universes, and media (comic book series, streaming platforms, movies, storylines canonical and otherwise, etc.). Some of this was bound to rub off on me. But I went in with all the healthy skepticism and gentle, good-natured cynicism of a full grown, supposedly sophisticated, adult filmgoer. This is a Marvel movie on a giant screen with 90,000 watts of bass. No matter what it’s going to be an entertaining ride. But no one is expecting high art.

I found myself surprisingly engaged for the entire 2+ hour run time. Thunderbolts* presents all the usual Marvel elements: dynamic fight scenes and immense destruction of public property; a cadre of misfit superheroes, some new, some established, all nervously tip-toeing around getting to know each other; the subtle (and not-so-subtle) nods to world and US politics, the standard inside joke Easter eggs, of which I was mostly clueless (though Audrey’s tutelage helped). Yet, it also offered unexpected depth.

Strange, first, because the principal antagonist is a fellow named—brace yourself—Bob. No gilded suffix, no cosmic adjective. Just Bob, whose beige moniker disguises a mind quietly radiating trauma. Critics have zeroed in on Bob’s jittery vulnerability, praising Lewis Pullman (son of actor Bill Pullman) for embodying a man who looks like he’s run every scenario in his head except the one in which he is loved. Without giving away too much, let’s just say that Bob has a transformation, of sorts, into a character named Sentry, who I learned in preparing this review is a character in the vein of Superman: he can fly, has supernatural powers, and appears to be all-powerful. He also has a “shadowy” alter ego that is supposed to represent depression.

The moment that sold me on this melancholy project arrives halfway through. John Walker—Captain America 2.0 for those keeping score—is scrolling his phone while his small child pleads for eye contact. The camera lingers, letting the glow of the screen bleach the rest of the room; later we learn his wife has left him, tired of playing second fiddle to whatever infinite scroll poisons a super-soldier’s evenings. Yes, it’s obvious, maybe even prescriptive, but the thirteen-year-old beside me sat motionless, transfixed. The scene was a bit ham-fisted for my taste, but who knows? It may be the kind of gentle parable Gen Z needs.

Reviewers have split into familiar camps. Some find the gloom refreshing—finally, an MCU chapter willing to leave a bruise. They point to the script’s willingness to name depression outright and to wrap each combat sequence around a bout of collective therapy. Others argue that the tonal shift feels market-researched, like Disney auditioning for A24 and hoping we won’t notice the Mickey-shaped watermark. The result is that Thunderbolts* feels heavy in a way most Marvel flicks do not.

What buoys that weight, paradoxically, is Florence Pugh. Her Yelena Belova moves through grief in a way that feels more authentic, lending critical weight to a series of maybe-just-a-hare-too-on-the-nose “message” scenes about the importance of working together and getting off your phone long enough to build community. All worthy messages, to be sure, and I was gratified to see the kiddo talking all this in. (But it also made me feel a bit like the wooden parent in a very expensive PSA.) Pugh’s acting and just-in-time facial expressions give the ensemble a center of gravity, and lends some humor to the film as well. Pullman’s Bob, meanwhile, vibrates on a different frequency, equal parts menace and panic attack, corroborating early chatter that Marvel’s most interesting villains are no longer megalomaniacs but men who remember every mistake they’ve made, including a meth-fueled tirade in a chicken costume, apparently. David Harbour’s Red Guardian character is a breath of fresh air.

Still, intention is not mastery. Some critics complain that the movie’s mental-health message is sprayed like a cheap fragrance over what is at its core a fairly conventional superhero movie. They’re not exactly wrong. The messaging sometimes has the subtlety of a TED Talk on 1.5x speed. But I found myself grateful for a popcorn film that treats despair as something other than a setup for witty banter, or jokes.

All of this plays out against the backdrop of what the US Surgeon General recently called our “loneliness epidemic,” an era marked by a worldwide increase in feelings of isolation and social disconnection. Thunderbolts* sketches the contours of what it feels like to be lonely, or drug addicted, or hopeless, or depressed with surprising empathy, and it spends enough time dwelling in the discomfort of these topics to make it feel like something more than throwaway “messaging.” The movie’s heroes are societal misfits conscripted into teamwork, not unlike the edgier Suicide Squad, or the sillier Guardians of the Galaxy. Somewhere in the margins of the film is a Terkel-esque reminder that we can indeed be together, and connected, and yet still quite alone. We built these little glowing rectangles to connect us, only to discover they make better mirrors than bridges.

The result is a movie that rarely feels triumphant, but it rarely feels hollow. Thunderbolts* is a two-hour argument that connection is the last super-power worth coveting, with enough well-placed humor and scene-chewing to keep it from feeling like a slog. Will it rewire the MCU back to its Avengers: Endgame glory days of the late teens? Probably not. But Thunderbolts* feels like a movie for 2025. As Alonso Duralde writes in his review, the movie “presents a world where everything kinda sucks, and powerful people seem intent on crafting your demise.” That feels about right, and it lends the film a freshness and authenticity that is hard to achieve.

That’s something to chew on while the credits roll. And you will definitely want to hang around for the credits, since there’s a mid-credits and post-credits scene that push the intricate mythology even further.

In closing, I generally agree with Manohla Dargis’s take. She writes that

The larger problem is that the movie doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, so it tries to be too many clashing things. By the end, the Thunderbolts might not look as baffled as they do in some of the movie’s posters, but a question mark — do they have the box-office muscle and appeal? — hangs over them along with that cutesy asterisk.

About that asterisk. It’s meant to signal that the name hasn’t quite stuck yet. Ultimately, as it’s revealed post-credits, the group takes on the moniker The New Avengers. More lore for the fans.

One more fun element of the film: Julia Louis-Dreyfus glides in as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Director Val to her frenemies) and instantly tilts the energy of every scene 15 degrees toward screwball menace. She weaponizes that breezy Elaine Benes timing, but here the punch lines land like covert ops dossiers: clipped, knowing, slightly toxic. Everyone on-screen seems wary of her velvet-gloved grip, even when she’s merely sipping an espresso and suggesting, with a smile, that an entire city might need to be leveled “for optics.”

I may have been the only guy in the theater silently mouthing one-liners Seinfeld (“Serenity now!”) whenever her Tulsi Gabbard-inspired white streak sashayed into frame, but the comic dissonance works. Val’s sardonic cool keeps the movie from drowning in its own existential molasses and reminds us that bureaucracy can be as chilling as any super-laser.

So where does that leave Thunderbolts? Somewhere between group-therapy blockbuster and strapped-for-cash global thriller. It may not straighten the MCU’s wobbling spine, yet it plants a seed: the next great Marvel crisis isn’t about infinity rocks or multiversal ruptures; it’s the slow, quiet unraveling that happens when we neglect the power of connection. If a franchise built on spectacle can convince a thirteen-year-old to set the phone down for two focused hours, that’s at least one small victory.

Thunderbolts* opens nationwide on May 2.

Director: Jake Schreier

Writers: Eric Pearson, Joanna Calo, Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, Stan Lee

Stars: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, David Harbour

Rating: PG-13, Running Time: 2h 6m