Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts Has Me Excited About the MCU For the First Time in Years

Can Marvel rediscover its mojo through this non-traditional ensemble?

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Remember in Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos beat the Avengers like they called his momma fat, prison shanked Tony, and peaced out with the Time stone? In the aftermath, Doctor Strange tells Tony, “we’re in the end game now.”

We’ve been in Marvel’s end game for some time.

Fittingly, ironically, Avengers: Endgame was so successful at bringing the MCU to a satisfying conclusion, Marvel has been unable to recapture the special alchemy it enjoyed during its 10-year heyday. There are plenty of contributing factors—retired characters/actors; Disney+ spin-offs over-saturating an already-stuffed superhero market; a glut of forgettable and bad movies—but there’s no escaping the general sense of apathy surrounding the franchise. Which is why they’re throwing Brink trucks at Robert Downey Jr.; anything to make the bleeding stop.

Even the most fervent of MCU fans has to admit the franchise has seen better days. I used to count down the days till the newest MCU release, but of late, skipping the theatrical release has been my go-to move. I just don’t care. I want to, sometimes desperately. When the MCU was good, it was so good.

It hasn’t been good in a long time.

The last movie that tapped into the giddy, ‘holy crap, we’re going to see an MCU movie,’ was Thor: Love and Thunder. That was 2 years ago! And we know how that turned out.

I looked up MCU movies to check the release date for Love and Thunder and was legitimately shocked by this casual tidbit at the top of the Wikipedia page:

The films have been in production since 2007, and in that time Marvel Studios has produced and released 34 films, with at least 10 more in various stages of development.

34 films?! That’s bonkers. Even as someone who unabashedly loves the genre, it’s just too damn many movies.

Endgame was the 22nd MCU film, which I knew without looking it up because that’s how I nerd. The fact that they’ve released 12 movies after Endgame boggles the mind. Not just because they’ve left no impression at all. For all of Marvel’s strict adherence to their precious ‘phases’ release scheme, what did these movies accomplish? Everything leading up to Endgame felt largely cohesive. The movies after Endgame are the cinema equivalent of potluck: mismatched and unappetizing.

I’m intentionally painting with a large brush because hyperbole trades high on the internet. Not everything post-Endgame was a dog’s breakfast. Spider-Man: No Way Home is outstanding. Pretty much everything else is okay at best, but most are mediocre.

Any optimism about the MCU has to be found in what’s yet to come. And the one project that has piqued my interest is probably the weirdest.

Thunderbolts looks a bit like DC’s Suicide Squad, in that it brings together a disparate group of super-people with red in their ledger and makes them a unify into something like a team. It’s less the Three Musketeers and more like when Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage formed an alliance to take on mutual enemies. They’re allies of convenience, which narratively is super-interesting in the black-and-white world of comic book movies.

But I’m burying the lede.

Thunderbolts features the return of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). I’m a bit of a fan.

Bucky was so central to the Captain America trilogy—which itself was the backbone of the Infinity Saga—that it felt weird when he was relegated to the sidelines in Infinity War and Endgame. The absence felt discordant with what had come before. The melody changed but people kept dancing.

Maybe it’s just me.

I was excited to see Bucky return in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, as it gave closure to the character, which had been skimped on in the mainline films. And now he’s back, and for some reason he’s still brooding and coming with that emo energy. You can take the Hydra programming out, but there’s no putting back what it overwrote. Dude is Damaged.

As happy as I am to see Bucky return—and I’m equally glad he disinfects his vibranium arm—I’m just as thrilled about some of the other returning faces.

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh)—aka Natasha Romanoff’s sister—appears to be the driving force / main character in the ensemble. I’m all for it. As much as I was disappointed with the better-late-than-never Black Widow film, Pugh killed it. Likewise, Black Widow introduced the Red Guardian (David Harbour), a Soviet-era superhero in a one-way competition with Captain America. The Red Guardian is a mix of laughing stock and punching bag, but Harbour imbued the performance with self-reflective pathos.

The rest of the team includes a black sheep Captain America wannabe, the girl who could phase through objects in the second Ant-Man movie, and the girl/cyborg who tried to kill Natasha in the Black Widow movie. Also some guy named Bob, who may be bullet proof and probably has a big secret that will come into play. I honestly don’t know.

Bob is played by Lewis Pullman, who you may recognize as Bob from Top Gun: Maverick. That’s either the worst meta joke ever or the best.

They’re misfits, in other words, secondary characters from other films who have been cast adrift and are presently without obvious purpose. Collecting them in a standalone film makes a lot of sense, and helps plug holes the mainline films weren’t able to address.

There’s also something to be said for a superhero movie that isn’t about multiverses or quantum realms. For superheroes that don’t look all that super, actually. They look like people struggling to survive, struggling to define what survival even means, which is the most human story of all.

I honestly can’t say what this movie is even about. The trailer is all vibes. But I’m picking up what it’s putting down. For the first time in years, I think I’ll be there opening day.