Internet Janitor
It is no secret that Marvel movies have been stuck in the same formula for a long time now. While the overall structure of Thunderbolts is not really a grand departure from it, the story within is worlds better. It is more of a character piece than it is purely a spectacle. I despise the excuse, “Oh, it’s just a popcorn movie, relax!” as an excuse for lazy, generic writing and characters. Here, especially Yelena seems more like a real person than anyone in Marvel for a long time.
We open with a despondent Yelena (played by the magnificent, radiant, warrior, amazing … What? Oh, right, Florence Pugh) who, since the passing of her sister (Black Widow in Infinity War) has been stuck working as a mercenary for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus from Seinfeld). When things go bad for Valentina, she draws Yelena, Ghost (from Ant-Man & The Wasp), and US Agent (from Falcon and the Winter Soldier) to a secret facility. Oh, and there’s also Bob, but we’ll not get into him. He’s just Bob.
The whole movie is shot in a more grounded way. As I said previously, we get to understand what Yelena has been going through. Trying to find a purpose in all of the chaos that is her life. It’s no super deep dive. There are a lot of characters here, and it’s only so much time, but it’s far more than we’ve seen in a while. Audiences love villains, and while these characters are not so black and white, it was audacious to make a tent pole feature out of side character villains and pull it off.
The chemistry between all the characters is amazing. It’s clear as day that everyone involved had a lot of fun working with each other. I recommend checking out some of the flood of press the actors did as well. If I had to level a complaint is just, like so many Marvel films, this would have been better as a series with 8 episodes. There are things which are rushed for time like the origins of the “villain”, or backstories of US Agents who we’ve not seen in some time. They did the best they could I guess, and it is still better than many previous MCU entries.