Movie Review
Thunderbolts*
Directed by Jake Schreier
So about that asterisk in the title — (skip this one paragraph if you haven’t seen the picture!) turns out it’s exactly what it signifies, a mark meant to refer to a footnote or omitted matter, in this case the movie’s real name The New Avengers, suggesting several things: 1.) this is about the level of humor we’re getting here on out, more meta and complicated and not really that much funnier, and, 2.) this movie and the characters in it are placeholders for when the real thing arrives.
Which is both unfair and totally appropriate. Thunderbolts* takes the classic premise of misfits so misbegotten they can’t possibly work together and somehow contriving that they not only do so but also win the day: think the original The Avengers (2012), or (off the top of my head) Stripes (1981), or before that and without superpowers (or even military hardware) The Bad News Bears (1976); think all the way back to one of the earliest misfit teams assembled for impossible missions, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai, with Florence Pugh playing the Kambei Shimada role as putative leader and David Harbour in the Kikuchiyo role of big-hearted comic relief.
Throw in John Walker (Wyatt Russell) as dishonorably discharged super-soldier; Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr, who can phase through solid walls; Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), former Winter Solider turned congressman who struggles in the role of US House Representative; and one Bob (Lewis Pullman) some random clueless dude in pajamas who shows up out of nowhere, just because. All pitted against the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), director of the CIA, who’s everything poor Bucky is not: when Congressman Gary (Wendell Pierce) calls her “Ms. Fontaine” the Contessa promptly corrects him: “Ms. DE Fontaine; when you address the Secretary of Defense, you don’t call him the Secretary of Fence.”
The Contessa makes for a formidable foe but much of the picture is spent wondering if the team will ever form at all, a fairly entertaining proposition; half the time they’re bickering (which can be fun), the other times they’re fending off troops sent by La Contessa to wipe them out (and thus all record of her criminal activities) — not as much fun, but to his credit Jake Schreier directs these sequences as coherently edited, inventively choreographed battles, part influenced by the John Wick movies (directed by stuntman turned filmmaker Chad Stahelski), part by Captain America: The Winter Soldier (bruising fight style by James Young).
Which means not a lot of super-powering, and I for one like that: a fair amount of kickass, not as many digital effects. Of course, that means most audiences used to gods whizzing about the air lifting entire locomotives and firing lightning bolts might be bored stiff… but maybe not; maybe there’s actually a stable sustainable market for the more realistic stuff, however ludicrously premised. Might help if the budget wasn’t over $100 million, though.
On the sense that the picture is a placeholder — that’s partly its weakness partly its strength, its strength in that it flies its freak flag proudly, declaring its second tier status for all to hear, draws strength from the fact that no one sees it coming and no one expects it to perform (so when it does a decent job it gets a standing ovation). Same for every character in the movie; and when it turns out Bob isn’t that unimportant a character after all, it all falls to Yelena and the bit of rapport she’s built with him and her inexhaustible knowledge and experience of being the lesser rejected daughter of a family of rejected losers (the one noted exception being her deceased older sister) — sure, I can buy that, why not.
Maybe the movie’s big weakness is… we’ve seen all this before, from the losers turned winners premise, to Yelena drawing from her life experience to help others, to the doofus in pajamas who turns out to be the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Did I say Seven Samurai? Maybe as far back as the Bible: “the stone the builders have rejected has become the cornerstone.” Preach it, Moses.
Not to get all biblical on y’all but we’ve seen this before and better. Bob’s later slippages in and out of minds recalls Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without Charles Kaufman’s free-floating wit and ethereal romanticism; Yelena’s traumas recall Natasha’s back in the Avengers days and while Florence Pugh is arguably the better actress than Scarlett Johansson (she’s taken riskier roles in general, and pulled them off well), I don’t see her doing more than suggesting the kind of psychic burden her character might actually bear, inside of a PG-13 rated comic-book action movie.
Not even leaving this godforsaken universe, when it comes to onscreen bickering there’s James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and maybe it’s a matter of degree and intensity than any real difference in concept, but why do I feel Gunn’s band of losers is far more endearing and inventive and entertaining than Schreier’s? Is it the number of jokes per minute, or the possibility that Gunn really feels the Zen of being a loser and being bitterly, rebelliously, defiantly funny about it? Maybe the sense that they’re not trying to be funny, simply telling it as it is (or as they feel it) and because of circumstances and because they’re so pathetic and the odds are so badly stacked against them the bile comes out hilarious and unintentionally heroic?
As for the look… gave up having any expectations for Marvel movies years ago, back when real filmmakers (Sam Raimi, Ang Lee) actually directed the pictures. Ryan Coogler made a go at it and at least created a compelling villain in Michael B. Jordan (his longtime actor collaborator) but was ultimately defeated by the Marvel house style; Chloe Zhao attempted and her effort was more character-driven than usual but could be counted as the worst in her filmography (if the best of recent Marvel efforts). The last picture I had any hopes for was Raimi’s 2022 Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and it had brief flashes here and there, even entire sequences… but was ultimately upstaged by the smaller-budgeted Everything Everywhere All At Once (The Daniels, 2022),and the even teenier-budgeted Filipino independent Leonor Will Never Die (Martika Ramirez Escobar, also 2022 — what dimensional portal opened to release both pictures into this universe that same year, stymieing the mighty Marvel agenda?!).
Meantime, I spotted this name in the closing credits: Kevin Feige. Oh him. Earned billions for his studio, provided zero pleasure to me, to date. The real supervillain of the picture.
*(Not the real Avengers)
