While refraining from saying that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is back with their new movie “Thunderbolts*”, one can say that this Marvel film has a more improved action-to-storyline balance than others have in the past few years since “Avengers: Endgame” was released.
The film focuses on mental health; the characters work through their own trauma while trying to figure out their place and status in the new world. They help each other out of seemingly bottomless pits both literally and figuratively. Their challenges persist as Valentina, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, continues to stick her hands in the mud and manipulate the characters’ lives.
“Thunderbolts*” – rebranded halfway through its theatrical run to “*The New Avengers” – stars some returning actors such as Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, and Sebastian Stan as James “Bucky” Barnes, and adds in some new ones like Lewis Pullman as Bob, creating a ragtag assembly.
It was released May 2, the beginning of mental health awareness month, taking some of the most emotionally and physically traumatized characters, and putting them together. The movie shares a little more of the trauma that haunts these superhumans, taking the watchers to the void in the back of their minds, and perhaps making them more relatable than the shiny supersoldiers like Steve Rogers.
A handful of watchers didn’t grasp the quite obvious theme of mental health awareness, and the struggles within that loom over the whole film, or they’re simply adjusting to viewing the smaller, more nuanced – more human side of things from superhuman characters in the MCU, such as the daily struggle with their mental health.
There are too many poor reviews of this movie saying that these are “new characters” with “no background” or “a cheap substitute, crammed with new faces that have no real backstory or motivation,” so viewers are at least encouraged to search on google “What should I know about [insert character] before seeing “Thunderbolts*”?”
These characters however, are not new, nor do they not have background, we as watchers have been introduced to them in the past, in the original timeline even. Ghost was introduced in 2018 in the film “Ant-Man and the Wasp”, The Red Guardian, along with Taskmaster, were introduced in 2021’s “Black Widow”, and Bucky has been around since 2011 in “Captain America: The First Avenger.”
Although the plot within the movie, following the MCU storyline, doesn’t necessarily thicken until the end credits (which makes sense as this is the last movie in MCU Phase 5) the film does tie up some loose ends with where these characters ended up after we saw them last, and what we can expect from them in the future.