Thunderbolts* - Marvel's Saviour?

Since 2019's Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Universe has been somewhat lost. Between the over-saturation of content and impossible time constraints, the MCU has been producing, for lack of a better word, slop. For the 6 years since this last historic cinematic event, Marvel has been clambering to save themselves as they slowly lose more and more of their once worryingly loyal fanbase, just hoping to hear those few fateful words: "Marvel is back". It seems as if this phrase has been thrown around very loosely in the last few years, but of course for every Guardians Vol. 3 there's a few Thor: Love and Thunders. 

Does the MCU's newest addition - Thunderbolts* - deserve that honour of being named Marvel's saviour? Not quite, but it's a good start.

Thunderbolts* is a very unique movie for Marvel, especially in these last few years. I'm impressed at how quickly the MCU matured, going from the flying man fighting the big red president to a deep exploration of depression and loneliness shown through the lens of a supernatural power in just under three months.

Let's start with the good. First, this movie feels much more meaningful than we've seen previously. Not for the future of the Marvel Universe, but in its messaging and themes. This is a much more layered addition to this world, which I must say was very much needed. Using themes of depression to create their villain, the Void felt much more understandable and grounded as a person, as opposed to some other, very one dimensional antagonists. Even though he didn't seem human, his motivations and problems definitely were.

This is a man who has been beaten down by everybody around him his entire life, leading him to wonder why he exists. Once he is given the power to create his own destiny, he wonders why and how anybody else can. This takes him to a very dark place, physically and mentally, allowing him to give the world a taste of his reality.

To take a step back, let's look at the rest of this roster. Every single character in this Thunderbolts team is in one of the darkest places of their life, desperate to find any way out. However this movie does focus mainly on Yelena, struggling to cope with her sister's death and, in many senses, harming herself in the process. This is when Valentina, the real antagonist of the film, offers her a way out. This story can be told for every other member of this team.

While Yelena is the most narratively interesting character in this roster, I would've liked if this did at least try to pretend it was actually a team movie. This ended up simply being "The Yelena Story (Featuring Bucky)" for the majority of the runtime. Even in moments where we very easily could've given anybody else some amount of the story without padding the runtime too much, they were still hyper focused on this one character. 

The best example of this was the third act of the movie, akin to Episode 5 of Moon Knight, in which each character travels through many different 'rooms' of their broken lives, before joining together in Bob's psyche. I would've liked to have seen at least one room for each of the other members as I'm sure at least a few of them have something that could really shock the audience and flesh out their character much more.

Ghost is a character that I would've loved to have seen the backstory for. It was alluded to quite a lot throughout the movie but it was more used as a snarky way for her to win a quick argument than to open up. She seems like possibly the most traumatised and interesting character in this entire team but we weren't even given a small glimpse like we did with John Walker.

Speaking of, John Walker really did not fit into this team, in my opinion. it seems like he was simply there for them to have some sort of Captain America figure in this Avengers-like team. Not to unfairly compare, but his trauma is much less dense than the rest. He was at the highest point of his life and he lost it all after murdering a man in cold blood. I assume he was there to represent more recent trauma and to slightly juxtapose the rest, as most of them accrued their trauma from a young age.

Possibly my biggest criticism with this movie was their handling of the character of Taskmaster. I always love dissecting her fight scenes and seeing all the homages and I'm disappointed we saw almost none of that here. Unfortunately there really is not a lot to talk about with her because she had less screen time than it took for you to read this section.

Yelena, on the other hand, was utilised incredibly in this movie. The opening scene not only has some amazing fight scenes - in both the choreography and cinematography, seeming to take inspiration from the two Daredevil shows - it also gives us a perfect idea of what our main character is going through from the start. Even the first frames of this movie show us the numbness that Yelena is feeling, as she jumps off a building and parachutes down with no hesitation, exhilaration, or even thought. This is all too normal for her.

Unfortunately for me, I assumed that this was setting the standard for the rest of the movie, of which I was quite wrong. The other fight scenes were serviceable, they had good fight choreography and felt quite raw, something we hardly ever see from Marvel anymore. However, none of them really felt like anything special, at least not for this movie.

One thing that did continue throughout the movie, though, was the realness of the stunts and action. This was very interesting because it was mostly all practical, making for a much more raw feel with some damage that actually had weight to it. This movie was much less action heavy and a lot more character driven than most MCU movies, however. There was some incredible deep dives into the darkest moments of some of these characters live's, which once again I just wish we saw more of because that was the highlight of the movie for me.

Of course, there is an argument to say that the Void was defeated by the 'power of friendship' but I don't think that is always a bad thing. When 'the power of friendship' arises in a movie, you immediately think of something like Power Rangers, in which it is very goofy and silly. However this wasn't used in the same sense. This movie was all about mental issues and illness, of which people can feel isolated. This final 'fight' against the Void was Bob taking control of these mental issues by allowing in the affection from his peers. While there may have been other ways to defeat the Void, this felt appropriate for this story. It's not like The Avengers are defeating Thanos by giving him a hug. And besides, aren't all team up movies about friendship?

To conclude, Thunderbolts* may not be 'Marvel's Saviour' - that's a name reserved for The Fantastic Four: First Steps - but it is definitely a step in the right direction, as long as Marvel continues to drive their stories with their characters rather than getting to the next movie.