‘Thunderbolts*’ review: Florence Pugh can’t rescue this flop from the MCU’s worst impulses

Superhero fatigue has gotten so intense that even the protagonists are bored now.

Thunderbolts*, the 36th Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, kicks off with charismatic assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) bemoaning how tedious her life has become. Through a beleaguered voiceover, she laments that she’s stuck in an unfulfilling rut of work, work, work. Sure, she’s a highly skilled mercenary whose work involves life-or-death confrontations. But amid all the espionage and murder, she’s lost her joie de vivre.

Looking bored, the fan favorite from Black Widow and Hawkeye flawlessly base jumps off a dizzyingly high skyscraper into a top-secret laboratory, where she slays a slew of minions with ease (in a clichéd hallway fight scene). We can assume director Jake Schreier intends this contradiction of hard-hitting action (with no blood, because PG-13) and Yelena’s blasé attitude to be funny. However, she might as well be speaking for those audience members who are exhausted by the same superhero movie beats being hit over and over again, with lessening impact through repetition. Like Yelena, some of us are numb to the violence and conspiracies because they’ve become routine.

Sadly, Yelena and her eponymous team of antiheroes won’t save us from this downward spiral. Instead, we get a mess of a movie that balances hijinks, heroics, and a half-hearted message about depression with all the grace of a black widow with eight broken legs.

Thunderbolts* is The Avengers, but worse in every respect.

The premise of Thunderbolts* is basically the MCU’s answer to Suicide Squad (or its standalone sequel, The Suicide Squad). A shady government muckety-muck brings together a batch of notorious villains, who — despite their differences — will fight as a team to save the day from a world-threatening big bad. The only real difference between these spinoffs from different comic brands are the names — and that CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) didn’t mean for her crew to join forces.

She’d brought Yelena, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) together expecting them to kill each other, giving her a clean slate for her latest political maneuvering. But after they survive her trap, these wild cards loop in Red Guardian (David Harbour), The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), and some befuddled dude named Bob (Lewis Pullman) to fight back.

From this very Suicide-Squad framework, however, Thunderbolts* becomes an aching retread of The Avengers (2012). Dialogue will proclaim that there’s no way they can come together as a team! They have different powers and different priorities; personalities will clash with harsh words and harsher physical blows. However, through some bonding/action sequences and heart-to-heart-moments, they’ll unite just in time to battle a high-flying evil in midtown Manhattan, at the base of Tony Stark’s tower, where the Avengers iconically assembled. Except this time, it’s not a fleet of alien invaders led by a super beguiling supervillain. The heroes aren’t bursting with personality (or even wielding boomerangs). And worst of all, it’s not all that thrilling or entertaining.

Florence Pugh is constrained by Yelena’s mopey plot line.

After the death of her adopted sister Natasha “Black Widow” Romanoff, the dynamic assassin who has launched a million crushes and bevy of memes is no longer quipping and charismatic. Sure, even as she sought revenge in Hawkeye, she was chaotically flirty as she delivered threats alongside an offer for mac-and-cheese. But in Thunderbolts*, she — like too many MCU heroes from post-Snap MCU — is deep in grief, offering sulking over spirit or snark.

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For some confounding reason, rather than tailor a superhero team-up movie to Yelena’s typically spirited energy, screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo took the funniest character in this collection of misfits and put her in Brooding Batfleck mode. Thus, Pugh must shoulder the movie with her character’s greatest powers — her wit, humor, and winsome vulnerability — all tied behind a serious face (not even her signature hard frown!).

This leaves Harbour as Red Guardian to be comic relief, which he does with ease. But his part is one note — a series of dad jokes spiced up with his broken English/Russian accent. To his credit, Stan is wryly funny as the ever-vaguely annoyed Winter Soldier. But his part is so small that his biggest moments involve trailer-worthy stunts and pulling his metal arm out of the dishwasher. (Truly, though, that is a great comedic beat that is character-driven!)

What do you need to remember about the MCU before seeing Thunderbolts?

Pearson and Calo give enough context to this collection of supporting characters that you’ll be able to follow Thunderbolts* just fine without revisiting Black Widow, the Captain America and Avengers movies, the miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Ant-Man and the Wasp. And yet, it just doesn’t matter, because every one of these antiheroes is being reduced to the same cliché.

Trauma in their past has led to them to make bad choices, which makes them feel bad about themselves, pushing them to seek a higher purpose in life. Much like the Rick & Morty episode “The Vindicators,” which parodied such superhero team-ups, they are all the same, separated only by their trauma accessories, be it a shield, a phase-shifting ability, or Bob’s mysterious abilities. And to that end, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Disney and Marvel Entertainment are scraping the bottom of the barrel with Thunderbolts*.

Sure, Yelena and Bucky are fan favorites. But who was aching to see most of these other characters? And even if these antiheroes have fans, will they be satisfied by the slapdash approach this Avengers retread offers, even staging climactic confrontations in the same spaces as the 2012 movie? This time, there are no epic gods, no cocky billionaire with a mech suit, no raging Hulk or America’s ass. It’s just a bunch of bickering mercenaries wearing black body armor and sullen expressions as they combat suicidal depression made manifest as the comic book villain The Void.

The feel-good message of Thunderbolts* is offensively undercooked.

Calo has a stellar resume, having worked on such daring and critically heralded comedy series as Hacks, BoJack Horseman, and The Bear. So perhaps it was her pitch to make the real villain of Thunderbolts* mental illness so severe it can literally suck in anyone near its sufferer. And it is an intriguing concept. As teased in trailers, The Void can raise his hand and — poof! — whoever falls under his shadowy grasp vanishes from the streets of New York City into a flat shadow, as if incinerated onsite. But what that means within the movie cuts deeper, pitching the captive into a Being John Malkovich (or Harley Quinn or Gravity Falls) mind labyrinth of trauma.

Yelena’s experience with depression proves crucial in this climactic battle. It’s not so much her lightning-fast reflexes or marksmanship that save the people of Manhattan, but her empathy. To the filmmakers’ credit, Thunderbolts* has a unique approach to discussing depression, showing that even heroes (or antiheroes) can struggle with it. However, it also literally weaponizes depression in a super villain, then resolves the issue with a climax that has all the depth of a Folger’s coffee commercial. (The Babadook did it better!)

Thunderbolts* is a dizzying disappointment on several levels.

If you’ve come to see a summer movie with wall-to-wall action, witty banter, and big personalities coming to blows, you’ll be confounded by the maudlin tone that hangs over most of this MCU offering. If you loved The Avengers and crave that feeling of seeing it for the first time, this clumsy pretender won’t deliver. Leaning into clichés, Thunderbolts* lacks imagination and feels like Kevin Feige and company have shaken out their toy box and tossed in whatever action figures were left into their shrinking sandbox.

There’s not a compelling chemistry in this group or an enthralling thrust to the story as much as the feeling of a list of fan expectations being checked off. Sure, there’s action, callbacks, deep-dive comic book lore, and the occasional character-driven comedy beat. But overall, Thunderbolts* feels like two to six ideas for a movie haphazardly cobbled together. There’s little flow, less fun, and a final act that feels more like a cheat than an achievement.

Thunderbolts* opens in theaters May 2.

If you’re feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis, please talk to somebody. You can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988; the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860; or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. Text “START” to Crisis Text Line at 741-741. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET, or email [email protected]. If you don’t like the phone, consider using the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Chat at crisischat.org. Here is a list of international resources.