Every new chapter builds on the last, pushing forward, folding back, twisting sideways. Some entries land with fanfare. Others slip in under the radar. Thunderbolts is one of the latter. A film about the MCU’s morally grey leftovers didn’t exactly scream “event.”
But what it delivers is smarter, stranger, and far more engaging than expected.
Directed by Jake Schreier and written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, Thunderbolts throws a crew of antiheroes into a trap they didn’t see coming. Florence Pugh (Black Widow, Midsommar), Lewis Pullman, and Sebastian Stan (he's Bucky!) anchor a cast that plays it like a pressure cooker.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, still lurking on the fringes of the MCU, corrals this motley crew—misfits, mercenaries, and walking red flags—into a mission that quickly unravels into something darker. Early leaks hinted at betrayals, secret facilities, and a new heavy-hitter named Bob, who becomes the godlike Sentry. By the time they reach a standoff at the former Avengers Tower, the team’s already splintering under the weight of secrets and suspicion.
The tone stays low to the ground. Humor bleeds from trauma, not punchlines.
Action plays in confined spaces, with weight and consequence. Jake Schreier’s direction favors claustrophobia over grandeur, often slowing the tempo to let silence do the heavy lifting. Even the surreal, like Sentry’s catastrophic alter ego The Void, is shot with unsettling restraint. A visual echo of nuclear fallout shadows lingers in the design, calculated, haunting.
At the center is Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, stripped down to nerve and sarcasm. She doesn’t anchor the film so much as expose its fractures. Lewis Pullman’s Bob >Sentry < draws tension from stillness, his performance shaped by unease and explosive potential. Together, their dynamic forms the emotional core.
The rest circle around them in flickers: Red Guardian’s blunt warmth, Bucky Barnes’ quiet calculation, Taskmaster’s cold focus. Each interaction carries a charge. Not warmth. Not trust. Something closer to detente.
The script carves deep into regret and identity. The characters don’t evolve, they reveal. Yelena’s trauma sits just beneath the skin. Bob teeters at the edge of control. Even Bucky, now a U.S. Congressman (what?), reads less like a reformed assassin and more like someone who knows the machinery from the inside and no longer wants to be inside it.
Set after Captain America: Brave New World, the film threads its consequences carefully. Valentina now owns Avengers Tower, rechristened Watchtower, and the implications stretch far beyond this one chapter. The shadow cabinet is forming. Power is shifting. The gameboard is the same, but the players are darker and far more aware.
The humor works because it’s not performative. It’s defensive. Weaponized. These characters know what they are. They know what they’re not. There’s no grand revelation, no redemptive catharsis. Just small, compromised decisions. A glance. A pause. A refusal.
The design and pacing push away from MCU excess. Practical effects dominate where possible. Fights bruise rather than dazzle. The original script’s influence a more contained, “Die Hard in a vault” setup still shows in the structure, even as the scope widens. Schreier and his collaborators, including Beef creator Lee Sung Jin in later rewrites, keep the film anchored in emotional realism rather than spectacle.
Thunderbolts doesn’t remake the MCU. It doesn’t need to. What it does is shift the center of gravity. From gods and icons to damage and doubt. From clarity to ambiguity. There’s no question here of good vs evil—only survival vs use.
As Phase Five’s closer, it feels pointed. Not grand. Not final. But decisive.
The universe isn’t collapsing. It’s mutating. The threat isn’t out there—it’s internal. As the credits roll, the message is clear: the line between leadership and manipulation is gone. And the ones still standing are the ones who’ve stopped pretending otherwise.
The script carves deep into regret and identity. The characters don’t evolve, they reveal. Yelena’s trauma sits just beneath the skin. Bob teeters at the edge of control. Even Bucky, now a U.S. Congressman (what?), reads less like a reformed assassin and more like someone who knows the machinery from the inside and no longer wants to be inside it.
Set after Captain America: Brave New World, the film threads its consequences carefully. Valentina now owns Avengers Tower, rechristened Watchtower, and the implications stretch far beyond this one chapter. The shadow cabinet is forming. Power is shifting. The gameboard is the same, but the players are darker and far more aware.
The humor works because it’s not performative. It’s defensive. Weaponized. These characters know what they are. They know what they’re not. There’s no grand revelation, no redemptive catharsis. Just small, compromised decisions. A glance. A pause. A refusal.
The design and pacing push away from MCU excess. Practical effects dominate where possible. Fights bruise rather than dazzle. The original script’s influence a more contained, “Die Hard in a vault” setup still shows in the structure, even as the scope widens. Schreier and his collaborators, including Beef creator Lee Sung Jin in later rewrites, keep the film anchored in emotional realism rather than spectacle.
Thunderbolts doesn’t remake the MCU. It doesn’t need to. What it does is shift the center of gravity. From gods and icons to damage and doubt. From clarity to ambiguity. There’s no question here of good vs evil—only survival vs use.
As Phase Five’s closer, it feels pointed. Not grand. Not final. But decisive.
The universe isn’t collapsing. It’s mutating. The threat isn’t out there—it’s internal. As the credits roll, the message is clear: the line between leadership and manipulation is gone. And the ones still standing are the ones who’ve stopped pretending otherwise.
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