Thunderbolts* (2025)

Cynical Going In, Converted Coming Out—Damn You, Marvel - Thunderbolts* review by griggs

I’m not an MCU regular—at best, I’ve seen three or four of them and only really enjoyed one—so I approached Thunderbolts* with pretty low expectations. Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan were the main draws, and as expected, they delivered. What I didn’t expect was just how much fun I’d have. It works surprisingly well as a standalone, which for once meant I wasn’t scrambling to decode ten years of Marvel lore just to follow the plot.

The first-hour zips along—sharp, funny, and packed with energy. But as it veers toward the final act, it starts to wobble; the pacing stutters, and the tone shifts awkwardly. It all wraps up a bit too tidily, as if someone realised they’d hit the two-hour mark and had to rush out the door, so they quickly finished it, concluding all the storylines at once. The multiverse elements didn’t totally land for me, but they weren’t a dealbreaker. What did stick was the film’s quieter exploration of loneliness and its impact on mental health—handled with more care than I could ever have expected. All in all, it’s a film that might even get me watching more MCU stuff. Maybe.

Entertaining MCU film But Typical. - Thunderbolts* review by GI

The charismatic performance from Florence Pugh, who here establishes once and for all that she is a major film star, is what lifts this new MCU film above the previous outings. I'm not a huge fan of the MCU series and found the Avengers films overlong, bloated and confusing but I get that there is a fanbase that needs feeding. Thunderbolts* is a story of a ragtag bunch of super antiheroes who are all misfits that come together in the absence of the actual Avengers, who have gone on holiday maybe, to deal with Julia Louis-Dreyfus baddie. This band are all full of angst and self doubt or even incompetence as they have to figure out a way to deal with a new super soldier created to allow the baddie to rule the world! There's the inevitable resorting to destroying lots of city buildings and big punch ups (these superheroes always seem to end up slogging it out with each other) to keep fans of this genre happy. Admittedly the first half of the film is the best, with Pugh's Yelena as the dominant character that the narrative follows and there's some well constructed set pieces and, of course, the opening has Pugh performing what is already a well advertised major stunt. But eventually the film drifts into a standard MCU plot and story arc. It's entertaining and David Harbour as Yelena's father offers brash humour. The ending signposts a potential new series which I'm sure will delight fans but I hope we don't lose Florence Pugh in a wealth of these films, she's so good in more subtle narratives.