Thunderbolts* (2025)

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is not living her best life. Alternating between drinking and scanning her phone, and running operations cleaning up messes for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Until one of those operations runs her headlong into Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Failed Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster, and a confused guy in hospital scrubs named Bob (Lewis Pullman).

(Taskmaster ends up dying in the 4-way free-for-all. Chalk her up as another antagonist with lots of personality in the comics wasted by the movies. Batroc's another that's high on my list.) 

Figuring out they're the last loose end Valentina needs to clean up, they first try going on the run with the Red Guardian (David Harbour), then convince Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to let them try and attack Valentina head on. Which fails miserably, because it turns out the medical study Bob was part of worked. He has the power of a million exploding suns. Unfortunately, the study didn't do anything for his myriad mental health issues, and having that much power only exacerbates said issues.

It was pretty good. Alex felt it was the best Marvel movie since Endgame, low bar that is to clear. I might put it above Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. While Thunderbolts* has the Sentry (minus), it also feels less bloated than GotGv3 did in places. And I will grudgingly admit, the Sentry's whole deal does fit well with this group of damaged people, full of exposed nerves and insecurities, lashing out and crashing against each other. The messy, exhausted way Yelena goes about her work, the unhelpful advice she initially offers Bob about dealing with feeling everything is useless. The relationship between her and Alexi, where he keeps defaulting to this loudmouth, gung-ho guy, but when he really focuses on her, the young woman in front of him, he can actually help her.

I don't know if admitting that the time where he felt best was when he was a public hero, saving people on the streets and being cheered in parades, was the best answer, but it was honest, at least. I expected him to say the time where they were a family of four in the U.S., which would likely have come off as schmaltzy. Doubt Yelena would have believed it, either.

Bucky being a lousy Congressman, who can't get any bills passed, is awkward with the press, and clearly not taken seriously by any politicians, was both amusing, and felt entirely accurate. Honestly, I was trying to figure out by how and why he became a politician. It doesn't feel like something he would have any interest in doing.

Walker and Ghost get short shrift on their issues, with so much being taken up by Yelena and Bob. Russell seems to play Walker as more of a dumbass than I remember from Falcon and Winter Soldier, but maybe that's just him trying to puff up and impress people who are absolutely not impressed by his act. Feels like there could have been something with the notion that, at one time, the others at least had a semblance of normal family lives (before things went to crap), while things have pretty much always been crap for Ghost. Unless I'm misremembering her backstory, which, entirely possible. Yelena calls her out for not even being a good person and it's like, yes? When would she have received positive reinforcement for that development? When being used to steal equipment to try and keep herself alive?

I thought Pullman did a good job as Bob and the Sentry (Alex really liked the design for the Void, with the two tiny glowing pinpricks of his eyes as the only light.) I liked that even when he's the Sentry, and even as he starts to get high on his own supply, there's still something unsure in his posture and the way he looks at Valentina. Like when he asks her, wouldn't he qualify as God if he's stronger than all the Avengers, who included a god, it doesn't feel rhetorical so much as he's almost bracing himself for a cutting response which will reveal how stupid it is for him to even think such a thing.

Also, the bit in his mind where they encounter Methed-Out, Sign-Spinning, Chicken Costume Bob made me bust out laughing.