THUNDERBOLTS* isn't just the best MCU movie- it may be the best Marvel movie ever

“Righteousness without power is just an opinion.” 

Marvel Studios’ new entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- the MCU, an interconnected saga of films- released last weekend as THUNDERBOLTS*, with the asterisk finally being revealed to mean THE NEW AVENGERS in an admittedly predictable but nevertheless fun mic-drop moment at the end of the film.

Since the “official” title has since been officially spoiled by Disney / Marvel, I don’t feel bad pointing that out here. 

After 2019’s AVENGERS ENDGAME, the MCU has been in sort-of a slump. Their big-screen output, with the exception of hits like SPIDER-MAN NO WAY HOME and last year’s DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE have failed to make much of an impact, and the Disney brand has longed for an exciting new feature to gain critical and audience favor like the original Avengers of old, or the plucky Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Well, THUNDERBOLTS* isn’t just the best MCU film since ENDGAME. It is far and away one of the best films to come from the MCU umbrella ever, and it might be one of the best Marvel-branded films ever made, and that includes putting it up there with Sony’s Spider-Man series and Fox’s X-Men films. 

THUNDERBOLTS* follows Yelena (Florence Pugh), the sister of Scarlett Johannsson’s Black Widow, who is sleepwalking through life in an unfulfilled daze of going from one mission to the next for her contractor, the Director of the CIA Valentina “Val” Allegra De Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). 

Val, facing impeachment, wants all of her loose ends tied up. She pits all of her contract killers against one another at a blacksite in the desert including supersoldier and former Captain America US Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), expert thief Ghost (Hanna John-Kamen), assassin Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Yelena herself. 

At the site, the four realize they have been set up, and also discover an amnesiac man named Bob (Lewis Pullman) with a twitchy personality who has been locked in the site for an unknown reason. 

Val’s strike team, realizing the crew survived, ambush them outside the facility and take “Bob”, who exhibits superhuman abilities.

The team make their escape thanks to Yelena’s adoptive father The Red Guardian (a hysterical David Harbour) and plan to confront Val with the help of government agent Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). 

The scrappy group, however, soon discover “Bob” is a test-tube superhero known as The Sentry, lab-grown by Val as her ultimate contingency against other superhuman threats. 

Now she has him back. But what Val - and The Thunderbolts- fail to realize is that The Sentry harbors a terrifying dark side called The Void, a black mass capable of disintegrating those in its shadowy path, sending them to a sort of purgatory of their own personal hells. 

It’s up to The Thunderbolts to stop The Void before the entire world is consumed in darkness. 

Directed by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson (Godzilla vs Kong; Thor Ragnarok) and Joanna Calo (Hulu’s The Bear), THUNDERBOLTS* plays to the Marvel brand’s strengths with scrappy and funny characters while also genuinely exposing their demons and, just as well, their hearts. 

THUNDERBOLTS* is a film about depression- it is a film not only about depression, but how to work through it and how we are stronger together, even when our own “Void” takes us over. 

Everyone on the team has a chip on their shoulder- John Walker’s family left him as he was too focused on his shortcomings to be “present”, Ghost has been at the mercy of others her entire life, Red Guardian is a washed up hero with no purpose, and Yelena is stuck in an endless cycle, wanting to be a “good person” rather than just a shadow-ops killer. 

Even Val has her own motivations, but the real character which anchors the film’s message is the hero and villain two-for-one, Lewis Pullman’s Sentry / Void. 

Yelena, in the film’s climax, tearfully tells him that we all have darkness, we all have a void that sucks our happiness and our life away, and the answer to overcoming it isn’t burying it, it’s having a group of people close to you to help you through it. 

While Pugh is arguably the film’s leading role, and fantastic as ever, the film gives its roster of up-and-coming and solidified stars all a chance to shine, none more-so than Pullman, son of Bill Pullman (the president from INDEPENDENCE DAY) who audiences last saw as a Bob of a different caliber in TOP GUN MAVERICK. 

This super team, at each other's throats while also having their backs, is an absolute winner. It’s the kind of movie people will love, and the kind of film that you don’t need a mountain of Marvel homework to understand. 

The Thunderbolts or, The New Avengers, will return in next year’s crossover film AVENGERS DOOMSDAY, and outside of that I can assure you that this will not be the last adventure we see from these bad-turned-good guys.