It’s no secret that the MCU has struggled since Avengers Endgame and the loss of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man. No wonder he’s now shooting Avengers Doomsday as the villainous Doctor Doom in London for release next year.
Yet in the lead up to what many Marvel fans hope is a return to form, we’ve got to get through a couple of sidekick adventures that no one beyond the most dedicated of fans really asked for.
Following the grey and gloomy Captain America: Brave New World is the sullen-looking Thunderbolts*, with all your favourite B-tier superheroes you probably don’t really remember or care about.
The Thunderbolts are the MCU’s Suicide Squad, a group of anti-heroes who just want to like belong and stuff – a bit like Guardians of the Galaxy but nowhere near as good or interesting.
Post-Endgame Marvel over-saturation means you may have missed the introduction of Wyatt Russell’s pound shop Captain America, John Walker, in Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Or perhaps, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost from the forgettable Ant-Man and the Wasp.
At the top of billing is Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes who is always a welcome on-screen presence, while the dry comedy between Florence Pugh and David Harbour’s Russian mercs are highlights in an otherwise mostly boring blockbuster that feels much longer than its 2 hour runtime. After Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director Valentina sends the Thunderbolts to a compound to battle each other in a death trap to cover her crimes, the group of misfits realise what is going on after Ghost kills Black Widow’s Taskmaster. They come across Lewis Pullman’s Bob (strangely the name of his character in Top Gun Maverick), who turns out to be one of the most powerful superheroes ever called Sentry, who has a jet-black destructive side (the Void), who can turn people into shadows. The brutal nature of Sentry/Void’s killings (they’re based on Hiroshima) in the New York third act makes this one of the darkest MCU films to date. Amid all this is where Thunderbolts* is strongest, as Pugh’s Yelena deals with depression and grief while Bob comes to terms with his literal inner demon.
At the end of the conflict, we soon discover what that asterisk on Thunderbolts* was referring to. Valentina announces to the world that the superhero team are the Government’s New Avengers, who then move into the old Avengers tower. Clearly, they’re not the real Avengers (Sam Wilson disapproves), but we’ll see them team up with the others in Avengers Doomsday next year, alongside the original X-Men cast and the new Fantastic Four, who enter the MCU’s Earth-616 in a thrilling post-credits scene.Overall, another unnecessary Marvel adventure about sidekicks that could have been a Disney+ miniseries, but at least it’s back to the big leagues in the upcoming MCU slate.
Thunderbolts* is out now in UK cinemas.