Film Brain wonders if Marvel might be finally putting their spotty post-Endgame track record behind them, as a group of losers assemble an unlikely team!
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00:00Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Florence Pugh leads a team of unlikely
00:04anti-heroes in Marvel's Thunderbolts. Asterisk.
00:25Still reading from the death of her sister, Black Widow, Yelena, played by Florence Pugh,
00:29who has been doing shadow missions to corrupt CIA director Valentina Allegra DeFontaine,
00:35played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is facing impeachment.
00:38Trying to cover up the evidence, Valentina sends Yelena to a remote facility,
00:43where she encounters Wyatt Russell's John Walker, Hannah John Kamen's ghost,
00:47and Olga Korolenko's Taskmaster, who have all worked for Valentina and realized that they've been sent there to die.
00:54Discovering a mysterious man named Bob, played by Louis Pullman,
00:58they worked together to escape, and with the aid of Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes
01:02and David Harbour's Red Guardian, try to expose Valentina.
01:06It's not really been much for a secret. Marvel has been struggling with their films for years now.
01:11Literally everyone and their mum has said that, and that's because it's true.
01:15After Avengers Endgame, it genuinely felt like Marvel didn't know what to do with themselves,
01:20and the quality of the films has slid drastically with one or two key exceptions like Wakanda Forever or Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
01:29One of the biggest problems has been the lack of a clear sense of direction for audiences to even invest in what's going on in the MCU.
01:36Obviously, some of that has been partly down to outside circumstances,
01:40like the fact they were clearly setting out Kang as a major antagonist,
01:43and then Jonathan Majors was fired due to his abusive behaviour.
01:47But even outside of that, Marvel has felt aimless of late,
01:50with even the post-credits scenes being less of an exciting tease
01:54and more a nebulous sense of something will happen at some point, we promise.
01:59They also moved into streaming TV shows that felt like they overplayed their hand,
02:03culminating in outright flops like Secret Invasion,
02:06which, did anyone even watch that?
02:09Because I know I didn't,
02:10and did anyone even watch it to the end and like it if they did?
02:15Marvel's problems have been so great that they only had one film last year
02:19while they attempted to retool and change course,
02:21and that was the almost totally standalone Deadpool and Wolverine,
02:25and even that had Deadpool making cracks about how you've come at a bit of a low point.
02:30There's been a lot of hand-wringing about why this once-dominant franchise is in trouble
02:33or how Marvel could fix their problems,
02:35so allow me to throw my hat into the ring and give my explanation.
02:39They stopped being about anything or giving us reasons to care.
02:43If a lot of the Marvel films were about anything,
02:46it was about themselves,
02:47that they were less movies than they were just calendar slots,
02:51and they moved up from being appointment viewing to being straight-up appointments,
02:55that they thought their audience would be loyal just simply out of obligation,
02:58that they just watched the movies because they had to keep up with the MCU.
03:01Instead, it turns out it was quite easy to jump off,
03:05especially after Endgame felt like pretty much a wrap-up of everything.
03:102025 is meant to be Marvel's comeback year,
03:12but they stumbled out of the gate with Captain America Brave New World,
03:16a pale attempt to recapture the Winter Soldier,
03:19but it's a political film that feels both afraid to be actually political
03:24and wildly out of step with the current moment.
03:27It clearly had major reshoots that noosed it into another stodgy porridge of exposition
03:33flavoured by very silly OTT action sequences.
03:37I mean, that fight scene at the end with the Hulk-ified president was almost impossible to take seriously.
03:43But if Brave New World was a hangover of Marvel's trouble period,
03:46then Thunderbolts, yes I am finally getting around to talking about it,
03:50might be the first real indication of what the retooled Marvel looks like.
03:54And if so, the realisation that appears to have happened behind the scenes
03:58is that people have to care about the characters.
04:02People weren't seeing Iron Man primarily for the action beats and all the Marvel world building,
04:06they wanted to see Robert Downey Jr. and his performance.
04:09That's why they kept coming back to him.
04:13People invest in characters, not cinematic universes, outside of executive boardrooms.
04:19And Thunderbolts is well equipped to do that,
04:21being directed by Jake Schreer, best known for character-based dramas like Robot and Frank,
04:26and the film adaptation of Paper Towns.
04:29He also directed the hit TV series Beef, and this is his first film in a decade.
04:35And the trick of Thunderbolts is that it's primarily taking bits and pieces
04:38from a lot of what are considered to be the lesser Marvel films,
04:42but the better elements of them.
04:44Primarily it serves as a sequel to Black Widow,
04:47given that Yelena, Red Guardian and Taskmaster all come from that film,
04:51but also John Walker was the antagonist in the series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
04:55and Ghost was a forgettable villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
04:58So much so, in fact, that I genuinely forgot what film she came from
05:02until about ten minutes before I saw Thunderbolts.
05:05But Florence Pugh and David Harbour were far and away considered to be the best parts
05:10of the deeply flawed and rather belated Black Widow movie,
05:13so to see them actually take centre stage is a welcome return.
05:17Pugh gives Yelena the same devil-may-care attitude that she had in the earlier film,
05:21but is given so much more room to take it further and develop the character.
05:26Pugh has the full-blown movie star Riz at this point.
05:29She is just eminently watchable, and much of the film belongs to her.
05:33She definitely balances how Yelena can both be absolutely hilarious
05:37in a darkly detached way as she carries out her missions,
05:41but also so deeply troubled that she keeps herself emotionally numb
05:45to avoid confronting the pain and trauma inside of her.
05:49Yelena may have been trained as a killing machine,
05:51but there's a compassionate, fragile human that feels so much guilt for what she's done
05:55and her lost innocence that occasionally shows in things like
05:58adopting a guinea pig that she saves from a lab explosion.
06:02But there's also the fact that she feels so unbearably alone with what she carries,
06:07given that the sister that she only recently reconnected with is now gone permanently,
06:13and that she hasn't seen her father figure, Red Guardian, in over a year.
06:16That mix of pragmatism and emotion is something we've seen in Black Widow previously,
06:22and Yelena has many of the same traits,
06:24but in a much more unsettled and uncertain way.
06:28It feels like she's struggling to work out her own path.
06:32And Harbour is once again a scene-stealer in this,
06:34chewing through his lines with a Bradleyhammy Russian accent.
06:38That's more Arnie than Russian, but never mind.
06:40There's a weird kind of sweetness to Red Guardian that makes him endearing.
06:44He might not be her real daddy,
06:46but he's determined to be her father in spite of all of his flaws.
06:50And when Harbour gets a dramatic moment,
06:52especially in a crucial scene with Yelena towards the end,
06:55he allows the character's sincerity to sell it emotionally.
06:59That allows him to be more than just a one-note caricature.
07:02But the film also allows far more characterisation for someone like Ghost,
07:06who in Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn't really much of a character,
07:10or at least that's my memory of it.
07:12It's been six years since that film came out,
07:14and I gotta be honest,
07:15I don't normally have a burning desire to revisit a lot of Marvel films after I first see them.
07:20But Hannah John came in as giving room to have this prickly, frustrated personality,
07:25and again, finds some surprising humour with the role.
07:29And Wyatt Russell is great as the quick-tempered and asshole-ish John Walker,
07:34the former disgraced Captain America,
07:36who became the toxic version of what he represented,
07:39whose surly antagonism adds some friction to the group's dynamic,
07:43but is likewise struggling to try and become the better version of himself,
07:47like all of the main characters are.
07:50And there's this running idea that they keep wanting to be these idealised superheroes.
07:55Red Guardian talks about how this has
07:56the makings of a team that could be on the wittiest box.
08:01I need to stop doing the Russian impressions.
08:03But not living up to those expectations because of their faults,
08:06even in a post-Avengers world.
08:09But while they may not be perfect,
08:10they still have skills that make them valuable.
08:13And it's as much about confronting, quite literally, the image of the ideal hero,
08:18which doesn't really exist because nobody's perfect or infallible,
08:23even those with superpowers,
08:25or especially because they have superpowers.
08:29And you even see the characters bond over this.
08:31When Bucky joins in later,
08:32facing the fact that his political ambitions as a newly appointed congressman
08:36isn't giving them the kind of direct action results they'd hope for,
08:39there's an amusing exchange where Red Guardian points out
08:41that they are both attempts to replicate Steve Rogers,
08:44and that makes them the same.
08:46Which I think is meant to be a reference to the what-if story
08:49that they both were in at the same time.
08:51But maybe they should also commiserate with Walker,
08:54who also failed to follow in Rogers' footsteps.
08:57And conceptually,
08:59this idea of a group of anti-heroes teaming up is certainly nothing new,
09:03as Thunderbolts definitely draws comparisons to David Ayer's Suicide Squad
09:06and James Gunn's sequel,
09:08or Gunn's own work with Marvel on the Guardians of the Galaxy films.
09:12Like those films,
09:13it also deals with a group of loner misfits brought together by circumstance
09:17and become better by working together.
09:20And obviously it does that more successfully than the Ayer film.
09:24Although it does have one weird first act choice,
09:27which I think is meant to be shocking,
09:30but just comes across as oddly unceremonious and out of step with the rest of the film,
09:35because the tone otherwise is not like that at all.
09:38And that did definitely remind me of the Ayer's Squad film briefly.
09:42But the success of something like this comes down to
09:45how well a dynamic forms between the characters.
09:48And even though the cast is a bunch of disparate parts
09:50from other Marvel flicks,
09:52they genuinely play off of each other well
09:54and are really entertaining to watch.
09:57It just shouldn't work,
09:58having a bunch of random secondary characters from weaker outings
10:02in a team that in the comics takes its name from Thunderbolt Ross,
10:06who isn't even in this movie
10:08because he was a big red president in the last film
10:10and is now in jail.
10:12In case you were wondering,
10:13the title now refers to the childhood football team
10:16that Yelena fondly remembers,
10:18despite being a bunch of losers.
10:21But it works so much, in fact,
10:22that it honestly doesn't even really matter
10:24if you remember what films they came from in the first place.
10:27The film does such a solid job with these characters
10:30on its own terms
10:31that you could only see this film
10:33and still understand their motivations.
10:35And that is very much a deliberate and conscious choice,
10:38it seems,
10:39because Thunderbolts is much smaller
10:41and much more intimate,
10:43relatively speaking,
10:45for a Marvel film.
10:46Marvel has been dogged for years
10:48by complaints that both the long continuity in the MCU
10:50is now becoming an albatross
10:52and that the action sequences
10:53and world-ending stakes of these individual movies
10:56are now so huge
10:58that they often lose sight of the story and the characters.
11:02Thunderbolts tackles both of these issues directly.
11:05The film's story is so contained
11:07that much of the film's first act
11:09is simply characters trapped in the compound,
11:12literally closed off from the world
11:13and forced to socialise
11:15like if they were the breakfast club
11:17if they had the ability to kill each other
11:19and then out in the desert in the second act.
11:22So they've literally taken them out of the world
11:25and just put the characters on their own.
11:27Now, obviously,
11:28you get the usual nods and callbacks
11:30to things from previous films,
11:32but that's all they are here.
11:34They're not essential for understanding the plot.
11:36It feels like a genuine back-to-basics approach
11:40and it feels like it's just stripping away
11:43all the excess and just keeping what works
11:46and in turn,
11:47it makes you remember
11:48why you liked Marvel films in the first place.
11:52But perhaps the biggest thing
11:53that succeeds in Thunderbolts
11:55is that it has a clear and distinct theme
11:57running through it
11:58and that is dealing with depression.
12:01Yelena is wrestling with it the whole film,
12:04but it is most clearly seen
12:05with Lewis Pullman's Bob,
12:07who soon becomes the heart of the film.
12:09Bob enters the movie as a wild card
12:12in that he has amnesia
12:13and is clearly the work of Valentina's handiwork
12:16in some way which isn't immediately obvious,
12:19and initially appears to be a comic relief character
12:22with a seemingly cheerful disposition,
12:24but his background as an addict
12:26is the first hint that Bob
12:27is a far more complex and challenging character
12:30than he first appears.
12:31It's a difficult role
12:32and one I'm mostly going to tiptoe around
12:35for the sake of spoilers,
12:36but Pullman pulls off the trick
12:38of making him empathetic.
12:40And the film commits this theme completely,
12:42which makes this far more successful
12:44than say Black Widow,
12:45despite having the very same writers,
12:48which tried to tackle the theme
12:49of coercive control and abuse,
12:51especially patriarchal abuse,
12:54but was totally undermined and overwhelmed
12:56by having a load of huge,
12:57massive action sequences that fell out of scale
13:00with the story it was trying to tell.
13:02Instead, in this movie,
13:04the character-based approach
13:05is imbued even in the action sequences,
13:07and that makes it far more cohesive
13:09than some of the recent Marvel flicks
13:10where it feels like the director
13:12just lets second and third unit do their stuff
13:14while they just handle
13:16all the dramatic scenes in the middle.
13:18The opening moment with Florence Pugh
13:20indulging her inner Tom Cruise
13:21as Yelena jumps from Merdeca 118,
13:24the world's second tallest building,
13:26establishes the character is in literal
13:28and emotional freefall,
13:30just going through the motions coldly.
13:33And much of the action
13:34is satisfyingly practical and tactile,
13:36with the scale suiting the story
13:38and its characters,
13:39with a mid-film limo chase
13:41and Bucky looking ultra cool
13:43as he rides it on his motorcycle
13:44being an easy standout.
13:47The film's third act
13:47is also a refreshing change
13:49to the usual smash-em-up climax
13:51to the superhero flicks.
13:52And while there still may be a lot of CGI involved,
13:55I found the way it used the fantasy of the genre
13:57to turn despair into a metaphor
13:59and try to externalise an internal battle
14:02really imaginative and creative.
14:04Yeah, it might be very obvious
14:06to the point of being
14:06a SYMBOLISM CLIMAX,
14:09but I really don't think
14:10I've seen anything quite attempt to do that
14:12since X-Men 2 maybe?
14:15But it's a battle
14:16that we actually care about,
14:18not just because we're invested
14:19in these characters,
14:21but also because it taps into something
14:22genuinely human and real
14:24that I think plenty of people can relate to.
14:27I know I can.
14:28It has a genuine emotional impact,
14:31not least of which
14:32because people can see this
14:34and know that they are not alone
14:36and they don't have to be
14:37so long as they just don't give up.
14:40And the fact that the nemesis of this movie
14:42is basically an encroaching darkness,
14:45I think a lot of people
14:46have felt that kind of destructive desire
14:49that just makes them struggle
14:51to even get up in the morning.
14:54Thunderbolts isn't a top-tier Marvel film,
14:56but it is a strong outing,
14:57especially by the standards
14:59of their recent form.
15:00It does feel like a lot of the criticisms
15:02that people have had
15:03over the last few years
15:04about the MCU
15:05are genuinely attempted to be addressed here
15:08and it's a much stronger film
15:09for playing towards what works.
15:11It's really a lot of fun,
15:13a mix of solid,
15:14well-staged action sequences
15:16and the ensemble cast
15:17clearly enjoying themselves.
15:19I've not even mentioned
15:20Julia Louis-Dreyfus
15:21getting a welcome opportunity
15:23to flesh out her occurring character
15:24and her dynamic
15:25with assistant Jaldine Wiss-Ranathan
15:27that plays like a
15:28dark, taken-er-veep character
15:30only even more image-conscious
15:32and obsessed with power and control.
15:35But most of all,
15:36Thunderbolts is a success
15:37because it feels like a film
15:39and not a product
15:40and hopefully the MCU
15:42can keep this up
15:43even as it ramps towards
15:44another mega-stuffed Avengers movie.
15:47Turns out,
15:48Marvel films can be good
15:49when they're actually about something.
15:51Who knew?
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16:13Until next time,
16:15I'm Matthew Buck,
16:16feeding out.