For movie night last night, we saw Thunderbolts (2025), with "an unconventional team of misfits" (is there any other kind?) working together to escape a deadly trap and fighting a mad scientist. The intended audience consists of fanboys who instantly recognize the characters and situations from other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I got along fine by keeping the Marvel Wiki open on my cell phone.
Back story: The Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, and a few others) saved the world in 12 MCU movies, but they have disbanded, taking a beefcake bonanza with them, and leaving the United States vulnerable to scowling, teeth-gritting "rogue nations." What about Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, and other non-Avenger superheroes?
CIA director, senator, mad scientist, and all-around Big Bad Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tried to create a home-grown superhero, ostensibly for national defense, but actually so she could use him to take over the world.Things went wrong, people died, and now she is undergoing impeachment proceedings. To save her skin, she scours the files of wrongdoing, and plots to get rid of the four assassins on her payrole.
How do you get rid of assasins? By assigning each to kill another, then trapping them in a super-protected vault a hundred miles below the surface, and blowing it up.
1. Yelena from Black Widow (2021). Superhero Black Widow's adopted sister, trained as an assassin from childhood. She is struggling with grief over the Widow's death, and suffers from periods of existential angst.
2. Antonia from Black Widow, also trained as an assassin from childhood. She is killed during the initial battle.
3. John Walker (Wyatt Russell, left) from the tv series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). He was trained to be Captain America's replacement after Cap died or something, but the others think he's a government yes-man, and refer to him disparagingly as "Captain America Light."
Left: Wyatt Russell's butt.
5. Civilian Bob (Lewis Pullman) is just hanging around the super-secret vault. He doesn't know how he got there. The last thing he remembers is being a meth head and all around loser who signed up for a medical experiment in Kuala Lumpur, hoping that it would make him "better."
The three surviving assasins recognize that they are being set up, and work together (with Bob's inept attempts to help) to escape from the vault.
Problem: Big Bad Valentina and her head general, Holt (Chris Bauer), have assembled a huge army to take them out. Civilian Bob distracts them so his new friends can escape. He is shot many times, jumps ten miles into the stratosphere, and crashes to Earth, but survives. Valentina's crew captures him.
More after the break.
The three assasins are joined by Yelena's blustering father Alexei (David Harbour) from Black Widow: formerly the superhero Red Guardian, he is now retired and running a limousine service. He pushes them to become a superhero team named the Thunderbolts, after Yelena's middle school soccer team. Wait -- I thought she was raised in Russia, being trained as an assassin.
Next Senator Bucky (Sebastian Stan) captures them, planning to hand them over to Big Bad Valentina; but they convince him that she is evil, and he agrees to help.
Bucky Barnes has appeared in nine Marvel movies and the tv series Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He started out as Captain America's sidekick during World War II...and...complicated supervillain stuff happened. But he's a good guy now, and he was just elected to Congress.
Back to Civilian Bob: he was one of Valentina's superhero experiments, sent to the vault to be incinerated with the rest of the evidence. But the experiment worked on him: he actually does have superpowers.
Nope, he refuses to kill his friends.
Another problem: The experiment split Civilian Bob into good and bad personas. The bad guy, Void, makes you relive your worst memories (mostly about childhood abuse and assassin training). Civilian Bob tries to fight him, but pain only makes him stronger.
In his coups de grace, Void proclaims: "No one loves you. You'll always be alone." But Yelena and the gang rush to hug him and say that they love him, and Civilian Bob manages to defeat Void. But he can never use his superpowers again, or Void will return. He'll have to help the team from the sidelines.
Valentina spins the situation by claiming that her goal all along was to assemble a team of New Avengers (plus Bob) to save America. "Ok, but we own you," Yelena cautions. The end.
Beefcake: None.
Gay Characters: None specified. Marvel movies are very skittish about acknowledging the existence of gay people. But no one except John Walker expresses any heterosexual interest.
Heterosexism: Walker evokes the Family Man trope that we see everywhere in mass media. Big Bad Valentina couldn't be trying to kill him because he has a wife and child, so his life is infinitely valuable. The other assassins agree. Then Yelena points out that his wife left him, taking their child, so he's single, therefore expendable. They are satisfied with that explanation. Wait -- do you have to actually live with the kid? I thought that, according to the trope, just reproducing gives you infinite value.
My Grade: B. They should have had Civilian Bob come out.
Left: Jack Barlow. He's not in this movie, but it's a cool photo, and it gives me a chance to put his profile under "See Also."
The Horrible, Heteronormative, Offensive, Disgusting, No-Good End of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
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