A bit of warning: it takes about 18 hours to get up to speed with Thunderbolts*, the 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You’ll need to trawl through Black Widow, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Brave New World, the first Avengers, and the TV shows The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye.
Or not. It’s sufficient to know that the titular Thunderbolts* (the asterisk means “the Avengers aren’t available”) are a crack team of, well, side characters, henchmen and refugees from other MCU products. We’re talking Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), grieving sister assassin to Black Widow; her dad Red Guardian (David Harbour); Bucky Barnes / Winter Solder (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a Captain America knock-off without the moral compass; and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who can disintegrate her molecular structure and reassemble it within a close radius (i.e. she can walk through walls).
The Thunderbolts* are forced together when they’re double-crossed by handler Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louise-Dreyfus, in full Veep mode). Valentina’s cleaning up dirty laundry following an incident from the previous MCU chapter in which President Ross transformed into ‘Red Hulk’. Val’s biggest secret is softly-spoken wimp “Bob” (Lewis Pullman), who may have godly powers. But can Bob be controlled? Inevitably, it’s up to the ragtag Thunderbolts to put their (largely contrived) differences to one side, team up, and save New York from a shadowy destruction.
Sound familiar? It’s basically the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Winter Soldier; i.e. autocratic forces unleash superweapon, superweapon is too powerful to control, ensemble cast beats the shit out of the superweapon. Cue post-credit sequence.
After its clunky expository first act, director Jake Schreier, whose credits are mainly TV, gets things moving. And certain performances, particularly Pugh and Pullman (an actor to watch), elevate the broad material and give us something tactile to hold onto. Particularly strong are the ‘shame rooms’; physical spaces for our characters’ traumas and regrets that haunt their adult lives. Yelena’s murderous childhood, Walker’s ruined marriage, Bob’s abusive parents. Sure, it’s broad as hell, but these little vignettes, shot tenderly, humanise the characters and inject skerricks of motivation into otherwise flat renderings.
But there’s still a lack of depth and specificity here, there’s still a sense of big-budget cosplay. Dreyfuss’s character is Head of the CIA because she tells us; Harbour’s Russian accent is SNL caricature rather than immersion, he has done no work here. We don’t need Daniel Day Lewis for these performances, but can’t we try a bit harder?
No. We don’t need to. The fans are going to love Thunderbolts*. That’s ok, but they don’t love cinema. What they love is cross-referencing movies and shows, new characters, post-credit Easter eggs. They love Reddit forums and corporate tie-ins and discussing whether the MCU is too woke or not. They didn’t come to Thunderbolts* for drama or suspense, not really. They came to cheer.
Post review Easter eggs. Next up: Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled for release on 1 May 2026. A new Fantastic Four is due this July. That’s not the Sam Mendes’ directed Beatles films coming out in 2028. For the petrol heads, Fast X: Part 2 comes out in June 2026. And just announced: Bridget Jones Diary 4: Mad About the Winter Soldier*
*Not a real film.