Movie Review – Thunderbolts*
Director: Jake Schreier
Starring: Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Lewis Pullman
Year: 2025
Better than expected. Which is maybe the best thing you can say about a Marvel movie in 2025.
Thunderbolts* (yes that asterisk is part of the title, yes it’s annoying) assembles a team of B-list villains and morally compromised anti-heroes for a black ops mission. Yelena Belova. Red Guardian. Bucky Barnes. John Walker. Ghost. Taskmaster. And this new guy Bob who’s clearly going to be important.
The pitch is basically “What if the Avengers but they’re all kind of terrible people.” And to the movie’s credit, it actually leans into that. These characters don’t trust each other. They don’t like each other. They’re here because they were forced to be here and they spend most of the runtime being dicks to each other.
Florence Pugh carries this thing. She’s the main character in everything but title and she’s magnetic whenever she’s on screen. Yelena’s dry humor, her barely-concealed trauma, her competence wrapped in sarcasm — Pugh makes it all work. If Marvel is looking for their next anchor after the original Avengers, she’s it.
David Harbour is having the time of his life as Red Guardian. The bit works. Dumb proud Russian guy who thinks he’s more important than he is. Some of the jokes land harder than they should.
Sebastian Stan gets more interesting material here than he did in all the Captain America movies combined. Bucky as a guy actively trying to atone rather than just brooding about his past. About time.
The Sentry stuff. Okay. Bob — played by Lewis Pullman — is clearly a big deal. Without spoiling too much, his power set is. Significant. And there’s a subplot about his mental state that’s darker than Marvel usually goes. I’m curious where this leads.
My issues. The villain is generic. The third act is the same CGI destruction you’ve seen in every Marvel movie. The asterisk in the title never gets explained which is going to annoy me forever. And the runtime is bloated — there are scenes that could have been cut without losing anything.
But here’s the thing. I expected to hate this and I didn’t. I expected another soulless content product and instead got something with actual character dynamics. Something where people talk to each other like people instead of just delivering quips before punching.
Is it great? No. Is it good? It’s. Okay. It’s solidly okay. In the current state of Marvel that feels like a minor miracle.
The post-credits scenes set up something I’m actually interested in. That hasn’t happened in a while.
My rating: ★★★☆☆
