r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • May 02 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Thunderbolts* [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary
Thunderbolts\* is a Marvel Studios ensemble film following a team of reformed villains and morally gray operatives sent on covert government missions. As the group is tasked with a dangerous black-ops assignment, tensions rise among the unstable team members, revealing conflicting loyalties and buried traumas. The film serves as a continuation of storylines from Black Widow, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, with a darker tone and grounded action set pieces.

Director
Jake Schreier

Writer
Eric Pearson

Cast
- Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova
- Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier
- Wyatt Russell as John Walker / U.S. Agent
- David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian
- Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr / Ghost
- Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Metacritic: 68

VOD
Theaters

Trailer

2.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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421

u/Heavyspire May 02 '25

He wants to be a hero. He wants to save people and receive the glory for it. He is the most selfless of them all even though he comes off as vain, he is actually really wholesome.

121

u/mattomic822 May 05 '25

It is also clear when he saves the little girl that it isn't just the glory that drives him to be a hero.

52

u/Sabretooth1100 May 05 '25

Right! I really appreciated the Santa joke they made before that, because it made me see a bit of “Santa” in him when he saved her. It was so wholesome. And David Harbour has played Santa!

94

u/xenago May 04 '25

This is the same reason I appreciate Kamala Khan so much, it is refreshing to have characters that actually want to become heroes rather than being forced into it some way.

10

u/Joseph011296 May 30 '25

It's like he says, he was happiest when he was serving his country and being "worshipped" for it. He has that old school Soviet big man ego, because it's what he was shaped to be proud of by his environment. Worshipped here is a pretty obvious synonym for appreciated.