Marvel's Thunderbolts Review: A Flawed but Fascinating Ride for Unsung Heroes

 Marvel’s Thunderbolts is a worthy outing for some of the MCU’s most overlooked heroes — a film with both a dark half and a light half, much like its complicated antagonist, The Sentry. One half is actually pretty great.

I’ll admit, I had a lot of hope going into Thunderbolts. There’s been a shift in the air lately. From the Doctor Doom and Fantastic Four buzz to the sense that we’re finally past the aimlessness of Phase 4 and Phase 5 is working toward something concrete — Marvel feels like it’s trying to recapture some of its old magic. Anthony Mackie has even said as much out loud.

For the most part, Thunderbolts moves in the right direction, offering a solid and fairly unexpected ride for its band of anti-heroes. But it does take some time to get going. The early portions of the film are heavy on exposition, with much of the runtime dominated by Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Meanwhile, Bucky Barnes mostly hangs around the fringes of her scheming in his surprising new role as… a politician. This section of the film had me wondering when exactly it was decided to make the Winter Soldier a congressman — and whether it was simply because one of the Thunderbolts needed to be around to anchor all that early setup.

But once the film gets moving, one of the best things about Thunderbolts is actually something I loved about Infinity War and Endgame: character combinations we’ve never seen before that create fascinating dynamics. Imagine a whole film built around moments like War Machine and Nebula bonding over their cybernetic limbs. Here, Red Guardian and Bucky have charming chats about super soldier serums, and Yelena Belova and Ghost gang up on Agent Walker to mock his beat-up, Valor-stealing Captain America helmet. Not only are these scenes funny, they hit at exactly the right moments.

At this point, Marvel is a factory. Stories almost always exist to set up the next thing rather than fully immerse in the moment. The action, while serviceable, rarely offers anything new. So a film like Thunderbolts stands out best when it can prop up those workmanlike elements with endearing character moments — and thankfully, some of its lighter material does exactly that.

The standout relationship here is one we already know and love: Florence Pugh and David Harbour as Yelena Belova and Red Guardian. They were a blast in Black Widow and they’re just as much fun here. Their father-daughter dynamic swings from deeply emotional to hilariously embarrassing, and it’s hard not to love how sweetly dependent they are on one another. Harbour, of course, chews up every piece of scenery he can with metal teeth and a thick Russian accent. “America is so big — you ever drive through Oklahoma? It’s so flat,” he quips, in one of many memorable lines.

Still, despite these quality interactions, the Thunderbolts as a team never quite gel. Director Jake Schreier and screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo aim for the snappy back-and-forth of Guardians of the Galaxy but can’t quite sustain that energy long enough to make it feel organic. And while Yelena and friends are cracking wise, the movie’s gloomier half lurks just out of sight — ready to bum you out. That’s not a criticism; in fact, it’s where Thunderbolts is at its best.

Lewis Pullman’s Bob Reynolds (a.k.a. The Sentry) is a powerful and tragic figure, a character wrestling with mental health and extreme loneliness. There are days when Bob is every bit the invincible Sentry, and days when the Void consumes him and unleashes havoc. He’s the perfect foil for Yelena, who constantly questions her own past and self-worth. As Bob forces the Thunderbolts to confront the darkest moments of their lives, the film makes some of its most potent statements about how broken these people really are.

There’s a scene near the end that had me scribbling in my notebook in the dark: “That’s prettyed up.” I usually can’t even read my handwriting after a screening, but that line stuck with me.

This is where the film’s craftsmanship shines. Schreier’s experience with dark humor is evident, but my favorite behind-the-scenes contributor is cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story). His visuals — like the stark, overhead one-vs-many hallway fight in the opening sequence — elevate standard superhero tropes into something striking. Black-and-white shadows stretch dramatically across the frame, visually echoing Yelena’s isolation. It’s gorgeous work, even within Marvel’s restricted action style.

Because Thunderbolts excels so much in its darker, more upsetting material, the lighter, comedic highs don’t quite land as powerfully — and the imbalance left me feeling like the movie was, overall, kind of a bummer. A compelling, moving bummer at times, but not exactly a romp I was ready to laugh through by the final stretch. There is, however, one exception: a scene involving a chicken on meth in the third act. It’s as wild and funny as it sounds.

Think back to Guardians of the Galaxy — a movie that opened on a kid watching his mother die of cancer, but quickly pivoted into a dance sequence through alien ruins. Thunderbolts aims for that low-to-high tonal shift but never quite nails it.

I’ll also acknowledge that there’s unfair pressure on this movie. Phase 5 is wrapping up, and with Fantastic Four, Doomsday, and Secret Wars on the horizon, we’re all eager for the big titles. Thunderbolts feels a little like unfinished business — the last step before the main event. I might have felt more intrigued if half the cast’s names hadn’t already been announced in that Doomsday cast reveal video.

Maybe I sound like an old graybeard shaking his fist at the clouds, but I can’t help but imagine an alternate timeline where I didn’t know the next four movies and completely lost my mind at a post-credits scene here. It’s naive to expect that today — but it colors how we experience a film like Thunderbolts, sitting on the edge of bigger things.

Throughout it all, Yelena — always a bit anti-Marvel, ever since she mocked her sister for being a poser — carries the movie. At one point, she even asks, “What’s the point?” Thunderbolts quietly wonders the same thing: Is the MCU too big for a whole movie dedicated to side characters like these? The answer, refreshingly, is yes — they are side characters. They’re not the Avengers, even as the climax (set in and around Avengers Tower) evokes the Battle of New York and nods to the 2012 film’s working title, “Group Hug.”

They’re not the Avengers… not yet, at least. And even with bigger MCU events on the way, I hope we don’t hold that against them.

Thunderbolts is the most solid the Sacred Timeline has felt in a while. It’s an adventure befitting of its overlooked title characters. And while the filmmakers struggle to balance their darker themes with snappy comedic energy, the result is still a good kind of downer — filled with characters I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing again.

Verdict: Better than okay, not quite great — but real good.