The misfits and the antiheroes get top billing in ‘Thunderbolts’ (2025), the latest film from the Marvel machine. Set in the wake of the events of ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ (2025), ‘Thunderbolts’ sees Marvel take on mental health as its reluctant heroes grapple with their troubled pasts and face a formidable new threat … named Bob.
To begin, we find contract killer Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) having a dark night of the soul. Black Widow, her sister, is dead. The thrill is gone and she’s going through the motions as she listlessly kills a bunch of people in order to destroy evidence for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
De Fontaine is dodging impeachment and scrubbing her involvement in the ‘Sentry’ superhuman initiative. Of course, the last piece of evidence is Yelena herself, as well as the various mercenaries who have done sketchy stuff for De Fontaine in the past.
Enter John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurlyenko) who battle it out in an underground O.X.E. facility which each of them has been sent on a mission to.
While they’re going at it, out steps Bob (Lewis Pullman), an unassuming young man in medical patient garb who says he doesn’t know how he got to the facility. Once they’ve copped to De Fontaine’s plan to have them all kill each other, they band together to get out of the death trap, but Bob isn’t what he seems.
Instead he’s a surviving member of De Fontaine’s presumably failed Sentry project with powers enough to rule the world, should his dark side, The Void, take over.
Teaming up with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena, Ghost and Walker are the Thunderbolts* and their mission goes well beyond De Fontaine’s Watchtower and into the mind.
As the leads and anchors, Pugh and Pullman are particularly engaging, Stan, Harbour, Russell and John-Kamen are solid and quick with the banter, and the action sequences are well worth a ticket for the big screen.
An origin story and chapter about loneliness, isolation and mental health, as well as masterclass in spin doctoring from De Fontaine, ‘Thunderbolts*’ introduces an exciting new team while exploring some dark themes tempered by Marvel’s signature wisecracking and plenty of heart.
– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
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