Movie Review: Thunderbolts

There have been more than a few bad Marvel movies released in the last few years, most recently "Captain America: Brave New World" (2025) and "The Marvels" (2023). The release of the new Marvel movie "Thunderbolts" was an opportunity to greatly improve the quality of this franchise. Unfortunately, mainly due to the crazy and mostly boring screenplay, this movie cannot be considered a step in the right direction.

The story starts with the main Marvel characters Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, Bucky Barnes played by Sebastian Stan, John Walker played by Wyatt Russell, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen and a new superhere they call "Bob", played by Lewis Pullman all trapped in a warehouse, for the first 10-15% of this film. There is no real way to make scenes where several people are trapped in a large series of rooms - interesting, especially in a film that is supposed to be a superhero action movie.

We later find out that Bob has superpowers that greatly exceed the powers of all the other superheroes, and later Bob turns to the dark side and has evil forces that can send people into some other dimension. All this does create several scenes of extreme special effects, but not enough to cover what I thought was a surprisingly bad screenplay.

There are some good father-daughter scenes between Velena and her father, Alexei Shostakov, played by David Harbour, but once again, not enough to fix what could have been a far better story.

I was surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the part of politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, after reading this script. She seems completely miscast in this role, regardless of the mostly ridiculous story.

I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are on average 88%, with the most accurate review from critic Jeffrey Harris:

"The film exemplifies how The Multiverse Saga constantly stumbles and fails to find its footing, with the entire narrative amounting to little more than a groan-inducing, bait-and-switch joke."

Due to the many flaws, and mostly bad screenplay I do not recommend this movie.