‘The greatest Marvel offering in years’

The latest in the superhero franchise “is scrappy, scruffy-looking, down-to-earth fun”, with a “charismatic” Florence Pugh at its centre, writes Nicholas Barber.

Ever since Avengers: Endgame came out in 2019, the subtitle has felt a lot more appropriate than the studio might have liked. It’s not that Marvel hasn’t had any hits in the 2020s, but it is no longer releasing an unbroken chain of talked-about blockbusters, nor is it keeping audiences invested in a story that threads through all of them. That particular game has come to an end.

The Marvel films that have worked best since Endgame are the ones that have moved furthest away from the pattern set by the so-called “Infinity Saga” – the first 22 instalments in the franchise, which pivoted around a fight against uber-villain Thanos. Last year’s R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine used almost no characters from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU); the postmodern Spider-Man: No Way Home paid tribute to the Spider-Man films which weren’t made by Marvel Studios; and the latest Marvel film, Thunderbolts*, has its own distinct identity, too. That’s not to suggest that it isn’t a part of the MCU. In fact, one of its clever touches is that it specifically addresses how gloomy people feel in a world where Iron Man, Thor and Captain America are no longer around. But the director, Jake Shreier, and the screenwriters, Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, have come up with an unruly take on the superhero genre which makes it the most refreshing MCU offering in years.

The key is that, rather than trying to be as glossy and expansive as the Infinity Saga films, Thunderbolts* is scrappy, scruffy-looking, down-to-earth fun. It isn’t the epic tale of indestructible titans saving the Universe, let alone the multiverse; it’s a comedy-tinged caper about bungling secret agents who are deemed a liability by the very company that used to employ them. It’s not a new scenario: after The Bourne Identity, there were countless action films in which disavowed spies dodged their erstwhile handlers. But Thunderbolts* stands out because it has a whole group of such spies: a ragtag bunch of depressive, dysfunctional loners who must work together and can’t stop grumbling about it. What’s especially unusual about the film, in Marvel terms, is that its premise would be viable even if the characters weren’t super-powered. And, indeed, they aren’t all that super-powered compared to the aforementioned Captain America and Thor. Part of their appeal is that they can be killed by bullets and trapped in rooms with locked doors, which makes them a lot easier to relate to than Norse gods.

There’s a lesson there that the makers of such disappointments as Eternals and The Marvels should have learnt. It’s not the characters’ powers that count; it’s their personalities. In Thunderbolts*, those characters are Yelena (Florence Pugh), a Russian assassin who was the adoptive sister of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, and is now deeply miserable about all the mindless violence in her life; her adoptive father, Red Guardian (David Harbour), a washed-up slob who is nostalgic for his days as a national hero; the bionic-armed Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), who was Captain America’s sidekick in World War Two, and still seems uncomfortable in the 21st Century; John Walker (Wyatt Russell), an embittered super-soldier who was supposed to be the new Captain America, but wasn’t up to the job; the confused, conflicted Bob (Lewis Pullman), another flawed attempt to create a Captain America substitute; and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who is a science experiment gone wrong – but who, unlike the other characters, isn’t very well defined beyond that. In various ways, they are all connected to one of Marvel’s most memorably slippery villains, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a businesswoman with all the brittle, condescending confidence that you might expect from the reliably excellent star of Seinfeld and Veep.

De Fontaine, it seems, has been behind several superhero-related black ops. Now that her political opponents are closing in on her, she decides to destroy all the evidence of her shady undertakings, including the people who carried them out. And so it is that Yelena and the others switch from trying to kill each other to trying to keep each other alive. They become a sort-of team, but they aren’t sure whether or not to call themselves the Thunderbolts, so the asterisk in the title signifies that it’s just a placeholder name until they can think of something better.

One small snag is that most of the characters’ back stories are in other films, and in a TV series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, rather than in Thunderbolts* itself. Another snag is that the gang’s pursuit by De Fontaine’s troops accounts for the majority of the film’s running time, so there aren’t many set pieces that haven’t been in the trailers already. On the other hand, superhero films are rarely so tightly focused, and rarely progress so seamlessly from scene to scene, with no pausing for breath, and no sudden jumps to different ends of the Earth. Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in February, was similar to Thunderbolts* in that it revolved around Washington DC politics, and followed on from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But that film was a messy sprawl, whereas this one is so neatly plotted that you can get the gist and enjoy the ride whether you’re a Marvel nerd or not. 

The underlying issues in Thunderbolts* are just as focused as the narrative. The characters all have to deal with the shame and trauma of their troubled pasts – and this theme is there from the opening scene to the requisite Final Battle, which is slightly rushed, but stylishly surreal enough to recall two mind-bending films written by Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In between, the characters’ guilt is explored in some touching and surprisingly brutal sequences, as well as in some sharply-scripted, briskly-edited and skilfully-performed comic scenes. 

At both ends of the spectrum, Pugh delivers a performance which would win her awards if it weren’t in a superhero film. She delivers her punchlines with expert timing, especially when she is bickering and bantering with Red Guardian. But she can also radiate raw emotion – and all while maintaining a decent Russian accent and cartwheeling through her acrobatic fight scenes. When it comes down to it, that’s why Thunderbolts* is so much better than most of Marvel’s post-Endgame films. It’s not just because it’s a rough-edged, big-hearted spy thriller about lovably clueless anti-heroes. It’s because it has an actor as charismatic as Pugh at its centre.