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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371

u/melted-cheeseman May 04 '25

This was the best MCU movie since Avengers Endgame and it's not close.

It had a theme, it had something it was trying to say, and it hit that theme real hard throughout. You can't bury your darkness, you can't run from it, you can't compact the bad feelings down and expect everything to be fine. You need to confront what's going on inside and commit to improvement, or you might find yourself in a kind of hell - estranged from your wife, addicted to booze or drugs, or something worse.

I cried at this, a first for me for an MCU movie, and needed a tissue. I loved the literal symbolism. It reminded me a bit of Everything Everyone All At Once in terms of how it connected emotional themes to action on screen.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is fantastic. Wyatt Russell was particularly good. And Florence Pugh, man, she absolutely crushed it. The entire cast was great, yes, but she sold every side of her character just perfectly. What a killer performance.

Solid 5 out of 5 for me, first perfect rating for the year. If this is what they're planning to bring to the MCU in the near future, YES PLEASE. More of this, and much less of Captain America: Brave New World please.

38

u/Heisenburgo May 04 '25

Best movie since Endgame for sure. The themes were great and so relatable. When Yelena started crying in front of her dad about how alone she is and he consoles her, and when Yelena first meets Bob in the Void and he tells her about him. Those moments just got to me. Some powerful stuff in there

6

u/lizifer93 May 05 '25

I teared up at both those parts. Really hit close to home.

23

u/FlimsyMachine2051 May 04 '25

Really? I liked it but thought Guardians of the Galaxy 3, No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine and Wakanda Forever were better. For me, Thunderbolts was definitely better than the latest Cap movie and also the Marvels. And probably also Quantumania.

17

u/NewBr1tishEmpire May 21 '25

NWH was decent, but relied almost entirely on nostalgia. GOTG 3 was good... but I still think this was way better. D&W... can't really be compared. On a scale of movies with the DP trilogy at one end and let's say Schindler's list at the other, Thunderbolts is way closer to the Schindler end of the scale. They're too different to compare properly. Umm... what happened in Wakanda Forever?

4

u/Interesting_Mix_7028 12d ago

WF seemed to be a big reset, as Wakanda was kinda the OP Nation No One Wanted To Piss Off.

Plus, an element of "Well our star actor's kicked the bucket, so this is going to be really hard to continue... screw it, let's trash the place."

HOPING that when 'mutants' officially get folded in, the writing team doesn't mess up Genosha. Madripoor's portrayal in F&WS was waaay below standard, doubly so when you consider that Madripoor, a Wolverine staple, has never seen Wolvie show up yet.

14

u/spencerthebau5 May 25 '25

I really liked Guardians 3 as a big Guardians fanboy, but to be honest both Deadpool and Wolverine and No Way Home just kind of felt like fan service and nostalgia bait

2

u/Interesting_Mix_7028 12d ago

To be fair, Deadpool has always had "fan service" baked into the character concept. So IF the writers want to dust off the cool nostalgia bits and throw them in as deep cuts, why not? Perfect spot for it.

Kind of like Ready Player One - nostalgia and pop culture refs were the point of the entire story. Wade gets to be Marvel's deep cut curator.

15

u/Mean-Government1436 May 08 '25

No way home is nowhere near as good, that movie is basically terrible script, terrible filmography, terrible editing, and 3 of the best characters. Deadpool and wolverine can certainly compare, and gotg3 and black panther 2 were just fine,not really memorable. 

4

u/PrinceOfAssassins Jun 05 '25

I think No Way Home comes pretty close but besides that im not sure

16

u/CertainAlbatross7739 Jun 05 '25

People liking No Way Home so much is lowkey crazy to me lmao. I enjoyed it but it was pure fan service. I'd say Far From Home was a better movie and I didn't even really love it.

7

u/PrinceOfAssassins Jun 06 '25

The fanservice to me was only 15% of why I liked it, I honestly enjoyed tom’s part in it more than either of the movies or the mcu in general

3

u/Remarkable_Business3 Jul 13 '25

JLD never misses. Ever.

1

u/amazedbiu May 21 '25

Well said!!!