‘The greatest Marvel offering in years’

The latest in the superhero franchise is “sloppy, sloppy, realistic fun,” with the “charismatic” Florence Pugh at its heart, written by Nicholas Barber.

Since Avengers: Endgame was announced in 2019, the subtitles have felt are far more appropriate than the studios prefer. It’s not that Marvel wasn’t a hit in the 2020s, but it’s not that they haven’t released an uninterrupted chain of hotly talked about blockbusters, and they haven’t continued to invest in stories that let their audiences go all out. That particular game is over.

Marvel Films, which has worked best since Endgame, is the one that moved the farthest from the patterns set by the so-called “Infinity Saga.” This was the franchise’s first 22 installments, which got caught up in a battle with Uber-Villain Thanos. Last year’s R-Rate Deadpool and Wolverine used few characters from the main Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Postmodern Spider-Man: A way to go home in honor of a Spider-Man movie that was not made by Marvel Studios. And the latest Marvel film, Thunderbolts*, has a distinct identity of its own. That does not suggest that it is not part of the MCU. In fact, one of its clever touches is that it specifically deals with how pessimistic people feel in a world where Iron Man, Thor and Captain America are no longer in the air. But director Jake Schreier and screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Caro have come up with the most refreshing MCU offering of many years, making the superhero genre unruly.

What matters is, rather than trying to be as shiny and expansive as the Infinity Saga movies, Thunderbolts* is a crude, rubbing, and realistic fun. It’s not a grand story of an indestructible Titan that saves the universe, let alone a multiverse. It’s a comedy caper about a secret agent considered responsible by the very company that employed them. That’s not a new scenario. After Bourne’s identity, there were countless action films in which a denied spy shunned his former handler. But Thunderbolts* stands out because they have an entire group of such spies. It’s a bunch of ragtags of depressed, dysfunctional, lonely people who have to cooperate and can’t stop complaining about it. What’s particularly unusual about this film is that in Marvel terms, the premise is viable, even if the characters are very unpowered. And in fact, they are not that powerful compared to the aforementioned Captain America and Thor. Part of their appeal is that they could be killed by bullets and trapped in a room with locked doors.

There is a lesson there that makers of disappointment like eternity and wonder should have learned. It’s not the power of the characters that matters. That’s their personality. In Thunderbolts*, those characters are Yelena (Florence Pugh), the adopted son of Scarlett Johansson’s black widow and now deeply miserable about all the heartless violence of her life. Her adoptive father, The Red Guardian (David Harbor), the washed-down Slob, is nostalgic for his time as a national hero. A bionic armed winter soldier (Sebastian Stan), who was Captain America’s companion in World War II and still seemed uncomfortable in the 21st century. John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is a humiliated super-soldier who was supposed to become the new Captain America but was not entrusted with his job. Bob (Lewis Pullman) in a confused and conflict, another flawed attempt to create an alternative to Captain America. And while the science experiment Ghost (Hanna John Kamen) was wrong, unlike the other characters, it’s not so clearly defined otherwise. In many ways, they are all connected to one of Marvel’s most memorable slippery villains, Valentina Aregra de Fontaine (Julial Is Dreyfuss).

De Fontaine appears to have been behind some superhero-related black Ops. With her political enemies trapped in her, she decides to destroy all the evidence of her shady work, including those who performed them. And Jelena and the others switch from trying to kill each other to trying to keep each other alive. They become a team of some sort, but they don’t know if they’ll call themselves Thunderbolts, so the asterisk in the title means it’s just a placeholder name until it can be considered better.

One of the small obstacles is that most of the character’s backstory is in other films, with the TV series, Falcon and Winter Soldiers not Thunderbolts* itself, but Falcon and Winter Soldiers. Another obstacle is that gangster pursuits by De Fontaine’s squads account for a large part of the film’s running time, so there aren’t many set pieces that aren’t in the trailer yet. On the other hand, superhero movies rarely focus on them, rarely progress seamlessly from scene to scene without holding their breath, without suddenly jumping to different edges of the earth. Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in February, revolved around Washington, DC politics and was similar to Thunderbolt* in that it revolved around Falcon and Winter Soldiers. But the film was a nasty sprawl, which is plotted so nicely that you can get the point and enjoy the ride, whether you’re a Marvel nerd or not.

The underlying issues of Thunderbolts* are as concentrated as the story. All characters must deal with problematic past shame and trauma. The theme, although slightly rushed from the opening scene, is stylishly surreal enough to remind you of the two heart-bending films written by Charlie Kaufmann: John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine, stylishly and surreal enough to recall the spotless sunlight of your heart. Meanwhile, the character’s guilt is explored with some moving and surprisingly brutal sequences, as well as some sharply scripted, vigorously edited, cleverly performed comic scenes.

At both ends of the spectrum, Pugh offers an award-winning performance if he is not appearing in a superhero movie. She delivers punchlines with expert timing, especially when she argues with the Red Guardian and banks. But she can also radiate raw emotions. And you can radiate everything while maintaining a decent Russian accent and cart wheel through her acrobatic fighting scenes. After all, that’s why Thunderbolts* is far better than most of Marvel’s post-endgame movies. It’s not just because it’s a rough, heartfelt spice thriller about adorable, ignorant anti-heroes. That’s because at the heart of it there are charismatic actors like Pew.