Thunderbolts*

[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

On May 2, 2025, Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released Thunderbolts*. Thunderbolts* is a superhero movie advertised as “Pure cinema,” featuring “Not heroes. Not super. Not giving up.” In Thunderbolts*, a ragtag group of flawed characters cooperate, in spite of their self-loathing and mutual antipathy. They dismantle a deadly secret program, save Manhattan from Bob, a rampaging monster, and help Bob defeat his own demons. They thus redeem themselves.

Internet scuttlebutt insisted that Thunderbolts* addresses important issues in today’s society through real characters that develop through real changes, and that audiences were actually tearing up.

This time fandom did not over hype. Not only did the characters in Thunderbolts* change. I changed. I am now willing to give Marvel movies another chance.

Thunderbolts* addresses important problems without reference to the latest headlines. It is not pro-Trump or anti-Trump, not left-wing or right-wing. It’s a movie, dare I say it, about universal and timeless challenges.

After my review, below, in the manner of Marvel movies that include post-credit bonus material, my colleague Otto Gross and I debate the value of superhero movies.

Thunderbolts* opens with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) sitting on the ledge of a skyscraper. The building is Merdeka 118, the world’s second tallest, located in Kuala Lumpur. Fans familiar with Marvel’s previous thirty-five films know that, when she was a child, Yelena was trained as a Soviet assassin. Yelena has switched sides and helped her fellow child assassins escape.

Yelena is feeling malaise in Malaysia. “There’s something wrong with me,” she says. “An emptiness. I thought it started with my sister dying, but now it feels like something bigger. Just a void.” She steps off the ledge. This looks like suicide, but her parachute unfurls. “Or maybe I’m just bored,” she says, as she enters a lab and fights the lab’s workers. Afterward, she strolls a crowded street, and converses on a cell phone. Behind her, we see that the floor of the building she was on has exploded. Yelena tells her interlocutor that her mission is complete. Yelena is carrying a guinea pig she has rescued from the lab. “Guinea pig,” is, of course, a figure of speech referring to humans subjected to experimentation. Yelena’s guinea pig is a metaphor.

Yelena has been commissioned by CIA director Valentina (Julia-Louise Dreyfus) to eliminate O.X.E., a secret project to create new superheroes.

In a messy apartment outside Baltimore, Alexei Shostakov, aka the Red Guardian (David Harbour), is eating junk food and watching videos of his past glories. Back in the USSR, he was a respected superhero, honored by Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviets assigned Alexei to play the part of Yelena’s adoptive father. Since Yelena has no other family, even though she doesn’t get along well with Alexei, she, in desperation, tries to prod Alexei to act like a father to her. She complains to him about her ennui. He seems to be suffering from his own personal dead-end.

Valentina sends Yelena to destroy another O.X.E. lab, one in a desert of the American southwest. Onsite, Yelena finds photographs of corpses. O.X.E.’s experiments killed its guinea pigs. Yelena finds herself locked in this room with superheroes John Walker, aka US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Antonia Dreykov, aka Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ava Starr, aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).

The superheroes have all been told by Valentina to kill everyone they encounter, so they all start to fight with each other. In this melee, Ava kills Taskmaster. Fans were surprised that Taskmaster, a familiar character, was killed immediately. Director Jake Schreier explains, “A movie like this needed … a bit of shock … where you’re like, ‘Okay, if they’ll do that, they could do anything’ … You don’t really know exactly where the thing is going to go.”

A clueless-looking man in green scrubs appears. He introduces himself as Bob (Lewis Pullman). Bob doesn’t know what’s going on. We see an empty human-sized container and surmise that Bob is one of O.X.E.’s guinea pigs.

Yelena realizes that Valentina sent the superheroes to a death trap in order to dispose of them. We must unite, Yelena says, to overcome this dilemma. Uniting won’t be easy. They don’t like each other, each one is deeply flawed, and wallowing in self-contempt. Yelena was forced to facilitate the death of a childhood friend. Walker, in anger, and in front of onlookers using their cell phones to record the bloody event, used his “Captain America” shield to bludgeon an opponent to death. He is separated from his wife and child. Ghost has worked as a mercenary for Valentina.

They notice that an incinerator is activating and will burn the room up in seconds. The team must ignore their psychological problems and cooperate. They escape the room but find themselves at the bottom of a long structure that looks like an elevator shaft. The group turn their backs to each other, lock elbows, raise their legs, and slowly “walk” up the lengthy structure, and escape. The visually obvious metaphor communicates clearly their need for cooperation.

O.X.E. personnel attempt to block the group’s escape. Bob sacrifices himself by trying to distract the attackers. They shoot at Bob; the bullets do not harm him. Apparently Bob was one of O.X.E.’s guinea pigs and gained superpowers. Valentina captures Bob and transports him to Manhattan.

Alexei, who has been working, in his post-superhero life, as a limousine driver, shows up to drive Yelena, Walker, and Ava to safety. Alexei calls their group the Thunderbolts, after a soccer team Yelena played on as a child. Yelena was the team’s goalie, because she wanted to be someone others could rely on even after they made a mistake. Not everyone wants to be named after a girls’ soccer team, one in which one of the players notoriously lost bowel control during a game. The asterisk indicates that the name is provisional till a better name comes along; it also indicates the members’ hesitant commitment.

Valentina sends armored vehicles to overtake the Thunderbolts*. To fend off Valentina’s pursuers, Alexei makes a Molotov cocktail out of the vodka he keeps on hand. Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) also shows up on a motorcycle and fights off the pursuers. Bucky wants the others to testify against Valentina in her impeachment trial. They discover, however, that Valentina will soon be deploying Bob, so the newly-named Thunderbolts* travel to Manhattan to thwart Valentina.

In Manhattan, Valentina has dressed Bob in a gold suit, and dyed his hair blonde. Sentry, this new superhero, has a God complex, and he becomes dangerous. Valentina’s aide, Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), deactivates Bob with a kill switch. This releases the dark side of Bob, aka Void. Void is a human outline, entirely black, with glowing eyes. He rises into the sky and, by raising his hand and pointing it at people, he reduces passersby in Manhattan to shadows. Schreier has said that the shadows Void creates were inspired by shadows left by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The Thunderbolts* arrive. Alexei holds up a falling piece of pavement and thereby saves a little girl from being squashed. In spite of Alexei’s heroism, Bob zaps the little girl into a black shadow.

Yelena willingly enters the darkness Void is generating. There she experiences her own worst memories of the terrible things she was forced to do when being trained by the Soviets to be a child assassin. The other Thunderbolts* follow Yelena and also relive the worst, most shameful moments of their lives.

Yelena reaches Bob in his own “shame room,” where he is reliving having been an abused child. Bob grew up to be a meth addict. In an attempt to improve himself, Bob volunteered for experimentation. The Thunderbolts* encourage Bob to defeat his inner demon, Void. Bob begins to punch Void but punching does not defeat the demon. Yelena tells Bob that salvation can be found through camaraderie with others. Void is defeated; Bob is Bob again.

Like other superhero movies, Thunderbolts* features fights, chases, ridiculous costumes, and implausible plot points. But other features pleased this viewer.

Florence Pugh loves Yelena and Pugh busts her ample butt to give Yelena the depth, pathos, and complexity she amply deserves. Pugh’s Russian accent is imperfect, but even her accept slips moved me – they reminded me how hard Pugh was working to honor Yelena. Pugh is beautiful, and her make-up is arresting, but Pugh compelled me with more than beauty. She compelled me with her immersion, intelligence, and commitment.

Sebastian Stan is not the world’s handsomest man but he is a charismatic star. He communicates every nuance of Bucky Barnes, a mature man who has lived through history and is struggling to do the right thing, not just for others, but to redeem himself. Stan brings his biography to his performance. He was born in Romania, one of the poorest and most repressive Warsaw Pact countries. His pianist mother named him after Bach. The two emigrated to the US after the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989. Stan spent a year at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

David Harbour also has extensive experience playing Shakespeare onstage. Stan brings Hamlet’s troubled intensity to Thunderbolts*, Harbour brings Falstaff’s comedy. I loved Harbour’s Alexei, even though he plays the stereotype of the drunken, vainglorious, violent, slobberingly sentimental eastern European. Part of that stereotype is an earthy, animalistic vitality and constant readiness for a good time – think of anything you’ve ever heard about “Polish weddings.” The other side of the stereotype’s coin is the morose, past-obsessed, vodka-swilling eastern European. Alexei says to Yelena, “The light inside you is dim even by eastern European standards.”

Alexei was a hero in the Soviet Empire, a disgraced entity that no longer exists. He yearns to be pictured on a Wheaties box. When he finally achieves that dream, he tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade a grocery shopper to buy cereal she plainly doesn’t want. He’s pathetic, a little bit disgusting, a Slavic stereotype, but most importantly, funny, lovable, and “strong like bull.”

Wyatt Russell, son of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, doesn’t appear to be acting at all. He is John Walker: cocky, tightly wound, dangerous, overdosing on testosterone-fueled masculinity. His explosiveness and self-pity reminds viewers why we need perfect-but-boring superheroes like Steve Rogers, the always self-controlled and virtuous Captain America. Hannah John-Kamen, as Ava / Ghost, is not given much to do, but what she does she does well. No doubt she’ll be given more chances to shine in future Marvel outings. Lewis Pullman is suitably clueless as Bob, and creepily menacing as Void.

I liked Thunderbolts* because, unlike other superhero movies, the lead was a female and someone I could both believe and relate to. This female heroine does “fight or flight,” the male-coded response to danger. But she also does the female-coded response, “tend and befriend.”

Bob is an all-too common kind of failed male. He has, psychologically, never left his childhood home. He is dressed, when we first see him, in pajama-like scrubs. The only job we know he has ever had is standing on the street in a chicken costume to advertise a bail bondsman. He is manipulated by a crafty mother figure, Valentina, with whom he becomes violent.

In insisting that all these flawed characters remain valuable and salvageable human beings in spite of their past misdeeds, Thunderbolts* takes a firm stand against canceling, one of the rituals of the American left. John Walker’s canceling occurs when onlookers use their phones to film him killing a suspect – an event reminiscent of recent American history.

Void hovers over Manhattan reducing passersby to shadows. Void’s victims stop being three-dimensional people, capable of interaction in the real world, and become paralyzed prisoners in thrall to their own worst mistakes and their own worst idea of themselves. Punching this shame – one’s own inner, traumatized self – doesn’t work. The only thing that does work is uniting with others similarly trapped, giving them love, and receiving their love in return. Thunderbolts* thereby slaps a seal of approval on the Twelve Step movement. In Twelve Step, people unhappy with their human development, tell their stories, listen to other stories, and heal thereby.

Thunderbolts* leaves something out, though. The Twelve Step movement attributes healing not just to the fellowship, but also to a higher power. Twelve Step’s co-founder, Bill Wilson, was a Christian, and Christian ideas pervade Twelve Step literature. The Marvel Cinematic Universe does not recognize the Judeo-Christian God. Rather, it is a Pagan world, with multiple deities, primarily the Norse gods Thor and Loki. “Forgiveness is a major concept in Christianity. It’s not a very big deal in Paganism,” writes self-identified Druid John Beckett. Beckett explains that those who focus on forgiveness are bringing Christian ideas into the Pagan realm, where they don’t belong and don’t make sense. In affirming their own worth and the worth of a pajama-clad meth addict like Bob, the Thunderbolts* are injecting Christian ideas into the MCU, without acknowledging that they are doing so. I hope the filmmakers eventually get to the point where they allow themselves to cite their sources.

Post-Credit Bonus Material

Marvel movies often include “bonus material” shown after the final credits roll. In that spirit, here is some post-review bonus material. Below is my trying to explain to my colleague Otto Gross why most superhero movies don’t work for me. Otto is a comic book and Marvel fan. His retort is below my comments.

Me: Fans of fantasy, sci-fi, video-game-themed, and comic-book movies, including the superhero genre, on the one hand, and fans of realistic narrative film on the other hand, tend to be members of different tribes. The former tell us that the movies we love are “boring.” “Nothing happens!” “It’s just people talking!” Members of the latter tribe say to the former, “You can’t appreciate a movie unless it has explosions.”

For me, “nothing happens” in superhero movies. It’s the talk-heavy dramas where everything occurs, and everything that happens matters. I liked Thunderbolts* because it was not a typical superhero movie.

My favorite recent theatrical release is Conclave. In that movie, celibate seniors conduct literate conversations about faith, doubt, and the best qualities in a leader. The Catholic Church is the oldest, international, continuously functioning institution. How best to keep it going? Should Cardinal Tremblay, an ideology-free, successfully Machiavellian manager be the next pope? How about Tedesco, a right-wing zealot? Or Bellini, a left-winger whose flexible conscience belies his public pose of noble self-righteousness? Or Adeyemi, an African who wins the identity politics sweepstakes, even though he supports jailing homosexuals? Might a woman do a better job? These are real questions in the real world; the answers have real-world consequences, in which some will lose, and others will win international stardom and a place in history books.

Reading thoughts and feelings ripple over the skin, veins, eyes, lips, and nostrils of a human face is an important evolutionary skill. “Faces are among the most important visual stimuli,” wrote neuroscientists in 2010. “A single glance” at a human face informs the viewer of the other’s “identity, emotional state, and direction of attention. Neuropsychological and fMRI experiments reveal a complex network of specialized areas in the human brain supporting these face-reading skills.”

“Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs believed that it is the close-up of the human face that distinguishes film from other performance arts,” reports psychologist Siu-Lan Tan. The human face brings a story’s vast sweep into our hearts. “We have difficulty computing emotion on a large or abstract scale. The close-up of the distraught face of a single victim helps us to understand the real consequences of a devastating flood.” As we watch the face of Cardinal Lawarence (Ralph Fiennes), who manages the conclave, reveal his inner wrestling with mutually exclusive choices, none of them safe or entirely good, we connect with 2,000 years of power politics.

And those power politics suddenly are planted in us. Humans “catch” emotions as if they were contagious. “In one study when students watched a video of a man recounting a happy or sad story … their facial expressions mirrored those of the storyteller … Film theorist Carl Plantinga goes a step further, proposing that close-ups of the face may provide a route to empathy.”

To action fans, “nothing happens” in Conclave. But Conclave offered all the fireworks I need in a movie. Fireworks lit up the faces of a world-class cast of award-winning veterans. Fiennes fully inhabits an archetype – the nice, average guy who confronts a serious challenge and must overcome his get-along-to-go-along habits and discover and exercise his inner hero. Isabella Rosellini plays a nun struggling to remain true to the expectation that she must be silent and submissive. Her power is tamped down like lava but blows up strategically. Stanley Tucci’s deceptive insouciance flares into a warrior’s ambition. Newcomer Carlos Diehz pure, earthy sincerity made me feel that I was watching a documentary about a dark-horse papabile, not a fictional film. Two thousand years of history, and larger questions about leadership, are all recounted in the faces of these remarkable actors. To an action / adrenaline addict, that means, “boring,” that means “Nothing happens.”

In superhero movies, of course, characters often wear masks or heavy protheses. You can’t see their faces. Thunderbolts* was different. Critics point out that Florence Pugh gives a riveting performance. We focus on her face, not her fists.

There are implacable limitations in a realistic drama like Conclave. In such films, death is, as it is in life, final. You fall; you are injured; injury limits your next move. You fight; you risk permanent injury. You make choice A, you can’t enjoy option B. Because of these non-negotiable limitations of physics and human anatomy and physiology, I care about the decisions of characters in realistic dramas.

Death is permanent; realistic drama can’t suddenly change that rule and make death a mere hiatus. Rey, a main character, dies at the end of one of the Star Wars movies. It’s all very poignant, not to mention morbid, as her body goes slack and turns a sickly shade of gray green. Sad! Tears! But then she comes to life again. So much for my investment. Wolverine dies, and he seems really, really dead, until Ryan Reynolds realizes he can make a few bucks if he brings Wolverine back to life. Online scuttlebutt reports that Marvel will resurrect Taskmaster, who was killed in Thunderbolts*.

Conclave surprised me. When Lawrence the introvert asserted himself I was thrilled for him and for myself. His courage inspired me. Conclave’s surprise ending, which nobody saw coming, messes with your brain and makes you question thousands of years of tradition. In lengthy internet discussions of the film’s final twist, people are thinking. People are feeling. People are interacting with others, trying to work out big issues.

Superhero movies always seem to have the same plot. A diabolical genius plots to destroy the world. Through lots of kicking, punching, weaponry, and bending of reality’s rules, the superhero saves the world. The end. Until the next Apocalypse, which will somehow manage to blow up the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, Rio’s “Christ the Redeemer” statue, and/or Big Ben. It’s interesting how they never get around to blowing up the Kaaba. Roland Emmerich wanted to blow it up in his 2012 film, but chickened out.

Sci-fi, fantasy, and comic-book movies tend to be episodic. There are twelve Star Wars and thirty-six Marvels. In college English classes, I learned that the main character is the character who changes. Episodic narrative plays bait-and-switch with its audience. It promises you that Han Solo will be changed by love for Princess Leia. He will settle down, and be a good husband and father. Almost forty years after the first Star Wars movie, Han Solo is still a renegade rascal. His longest-term, most committed relationship is his bromance with Chewbacca. He and Leia are still separated by his footloose, bad boy nature. Episodic narrative lures you in and says, “In this episode, Spock will show human emotion!” Audiences want to see that, but they also really want Spock to be the same emotionless Vulcan next week.

Episodic art’s bait-and-switch rug-pulling is more than cheap marketing. It robs audiences of the depth of a real character who really changes and who can’t reverse time and go back to being, say, a naïve Southern Belle. Scarlett is a friendless, used-up, bridge-burner at the end of Gone with the Wind and realistic narrative’s honoring of linear time insists that she can’t be saved from her own self-destructive choices.

On November 4, 2019, Martin Scorsese published an op-ed in the New York Times. He said that Marvel movies are “theme parks.” For the most part, I have to agree.

In Otto Gross’ response, below, Otto talks about how comic book heroes inspired him. It’s important to add that when Otto says he grew up poor, he’s talking about being so poor that he was hospitalized for months as a child because of malnutrition. His family had just arrived in the states, but whites were perceived as guilty no matter where they came from, and white skin rendered one vulnerable to street violence in Paterson.

Otto: When I was a kid, I purchased Marvel comics. Unlike DC comics, Marvel used scientific themes to educate and inspire readers. The characters were teenagers and adults with human problems and fears even kids could relate to. Spiderman, was orphaned, poor, and a nerd bullied at school. He gained his power after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. He learned, through personal loss, that “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The X-men were mutants. They were too weird to fit into the normal world, but, in spite of that, they had enough empathy to protect the world. Daredevil was a poor, skinny kid who had a drunken pug boxer for a father. He was blinded. He gained radar vision and lost his fear. Captain America was a skinny, young guy who always did the right thing and never give up. Sidekicks like Bucky didn’t have super-powers but they did have skills and intelligence. Dr Strange was a medical doctor who forgot his oath, was arrogant, and became disabled. He was humbled and, through mystic arts, learned that there’s more to reality than what he had valued when he was able-bodied.

Life can be hard. None of us is guaranteed happiness. A person’s true character is what comes out in hard times. Never give up no matter what challenges life has in store. There’s a hero or heroine in all of us and it’s not because of any superpowers. Those were the lessons comics offered.

I started reading because of comics. Comics got me thinking beyond the poor neighborhood I might have never left. Decades later, I was working at Bell Labs when a friend asked me if I wanted to go to a comic book convention. I had stopped reading comics by that point, but I went out of nostalgia. Stan Lee was there. I bought an old comic book. I stood in line a long time with thousands of others all for the chance to stand face to face with this creator for just one minute. As he signed my comic, I told him what an influence he had on me and a lot of other kids who made it through poverty and bad situations. Saying that was more important than the autograph to me. Heroes don’t need super powers. Stan Lee is an example.

Action films and talk-heavy films offer the same messages. Should I be pope? Should I make money with my superpower or save a damsel in distress? The lesson’s appearance in one genre or another doesn’t make it a better lesson.

The Thunderbolts* are all flawed humans trying to find purpose, be happy, and gain redemption. Bucky goes from being a hero to being an assassin. Yelena loses her sister, Natasha, and that breaks her heart, because Natasha made it possible for Yelena to leave the child assassin program. Alexei, once a Soviet hero, lost his reason for living and pride, but he never gives up. John Walker is corrupted by his superpower and kills someone rather than allowing the courts to administer justice. He learns what leadership and honor are really about. The Ghost, a woman manipulated into spending her life flipping between quantum realities, regains control over her reality. Throw out their powers, lose the booms and the bangs, and they’re still heroes.

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.