Marvel had a landmark 2024 at the cinema, grossing over a billion dollars at the box office from a single film that combined Fox’s Marvel X-Men characters with the Disney-owned MCU. The film, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” pleased fans and critics with an incredibly funny script, immensely human performances, and amazing cameos that ignited theaters with cheers. That film was (very wisely) the only Marvel theatrical release for the year, seen as part of a scaling back effort to focus less on consistently putting out content and revitalizing the Marvel theatrical experience as box office had fallen dramatically post “Avengers Endgame” and “Spider-man No Way Home.”
At the start of 2025, the MCU took a big step back with “Captain America Brave New World,” ultimately underwhelming audiences and critics with a cinematic chimera of uneven in tone and clear reshoots to try and improve a film that never got a good test score.
What was most disappointing for Marvel fans was that the Captain America franchise had been Marvel’s strongest solo franchise, with the original trilogy of films helmed by Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers and this fourth entry welcoming Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson into the fray as Captain America.
The box office showed that fans were not keen to see this multiple times, and it cast a shadow on how “Thunderbolts” would perform. Being a semi-equivalent to DC’s “Suicide Squad,” it was unclear if the mostly B-list supporting characters could be profitable leads in an ensemble film. If you want to know the answer on Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, it’s a resounding “Yes.” However, the other actors fail to elevate the script and their characters in the manner that Pugh does. She is a true star and the future of the human heroes in the MCU.
Let’s dive into the full review after watching the final trailer here.
The film opens with the MCU’s replacement for Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in — CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) — who faces imminent impeachment for numerous illegal covert operations and ethics violations, and this is a character who desperately attempts to cover her tracks as she attempts to amass more power and influence.
De Fontaine summons four operatives to a remote government compound: skilled assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), disgraced super soldier and one time Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), molecular phase-shifter Ava Starr AKA Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and the reflexively gifted assassin Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) who makes a brief appearance.
De Fontaine sets them against each other with the mission of each targeting one another as targets, it’s a flimsy at best plot beat to create a very banal action set piece. Ghost eliminates Taskmaster in the fight as a mysterious man lab experiment in the form of a man named Bob (Lewis Pullman) suddenly appears. Bob is disoriented and confused and not very imposing. Pullman was also, oddly, named Bob for his role in “Top Gun Maverick.”
The survivors piece together that de Fontaine never intended for any of them to leave, and this was her final step in cleaning up all evidence of her wrongdoing. The compound was set to be incinerated with them inside, however they manage to break free from the facility. Bob creates a crucial diversion by drawing de Fontaine’s heavily armed security forces away from the others. Bob remains completely unharmed despite being riddled with bullets, then mysteriously launches himself skyward before crashing back down into the compound with devastating force.
Meanwhile, former Soviet super soldier Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), who has been working as a freelance chauffeur after falling on hard times, overhears details of de Fontaine’s plan which is one of many weak script points. Red Guardian arrives just in time to help the fleeing trio escape in his vehicle in the desert. During their tense getaway, Red Guardian suggests they need a team name, eventually dubbing them the “Thunderbolts” after an elementary school soccer team that Belova reluctantly played on as a child.
As de Fontaine’s tactical teams pursue them across the city, the newly formed Thunderbolts find themselves suddenly intercepted and captured by Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the former Winter Soldier turned Congressman, though much of that plot was scrapped in Captain America 4 so it feels very confounding and generally all the Washington government scenes are vapid of intrigue, interest, and any sort of cinematic quality.
Barnes reveals he’s been building a case against de Fontaine and they are vital to detailing her rogue operations. Upon learning from them that Bob was actually a test subject in one of de Fontaine’s classified super-soldier programs, thanks to de Fontaine’s assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), Barnes forms an alliance with the rogue antiheroes.
They plan to infiltration of the former Avengers Tower in New York City, now ominously rebranded as the “Watchtower” under de Fontaine. Inside the heavily guarded skyscraper, they find Bob in a colorful superhero uniform with the new name of “Sentry,” with powers exceeding those of any previous Avenger.
Sentry proves to have powers akin to Vision, effortlessly defeating the Thunderbolts with his overwhelming strength and forcing them to retreat from the Watchtower. As Sentry begins to develop a god complex, de Fontaine realizes she can’t control him and he may kill her. Despite being disarmed, de Fontaine’s assistant Mel activates an emergency neural kill switch. It appears Sentry is dead, but he comes back as a shadow figure.
Sentry’s dark alter ego, known as the Void, spreads literal darkness across all life and architecture in New York. He turns everyone in his vicinity into shadows, rapidly engulfing New York City in an endlessly expanding void.
Recognizing that conventional attacks are useless against the Void, Belova enters the shadow dimension to reach the good inner-Bob consciousness. After navigating through manifestations of her own traumatic past, she finally locates Bob’s trapped essence. Her teammates join her and they stop Bob from falling into the Void’s trap, barley escaping but doing so as a team.
The Void entity dissipates, and across the city, the darkness recedes as shadowed victims return to normal. Somehow bob is himself again, despite his brain stem bein blown up by de Fontaine’s kill switch mechanism.
The Thunderbolts spot Valentina Allegra de Fontaine nearby, and move to intercept her through all the fallen building debris. De Fontaine steps through a large piece of debris and right to a press conference (which would have never been waiting there with the crazy world ending shadow engulfing the town).
Nevertheless, she uses this cliche moment to rip off the first “Ironman” ending and anoint the team as as the “New Avengers.”
A post-credits hints that Sam’s Captain America has his own team, and that this unit is staying in Watchtower full-time now. An interdimensional ship appears from space which is clearly the fantastic four, leading us to assume they lose very badly in their upcoming film against Galactus and the Silver Surfer. However, based on the ability of this team and this film, it would leave me expecting Earth to fall quickly to any new threat… the largest being low ticket sales.
Having said all that, immense praise goes to Florence Pugh for proving her electric, star-power to the film and proving that she is an impeccable actress who carries a film and commands the screen, much like Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark.
She effortlessly displayed real humanity, conflict, and delivered pitch perfect humor while coming from a place of truth as her character. As tiring as it was listening to Red Guardian in his ongoing two-dimensional performance, Pugh’s Yelena Belova is the best thing going for the MCU’s human-powered characters.
Letter Grade: C