Movie Review : Thunderbolts (2025)

In what now feels like an alternate timeline, Marvel was consuming contemporary cinema the way Galactus consumed planets in Fantastic Four. Not because people only cared about superheroes, but because that’s what theaters kept serving, like Subway only serve wet sandwiches. This culminated in Infinity War and Endgame, a six-hour corporate funeral pyre where one-third of the planet showed up to cry, clap, and briefly believe they’d experienced something resembling catharsis.

And then Marvel tried to do it again. Disney unveiled a plan to make the MCU eternal, which immediately killed any appetite for it. The pandemic accelerated things, sure, but pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus had already warned them: you can’t step into the same river twice. Nobody wanted to wade back in. Five years later, the MCU is at death’s door, and Thunderbolts feels less like the gurgling sound a sink makes right before it empties out.

Thunderbolts (a.k.a. Not Suicide Squad) follows Black Widow’s little sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who is now freelancing for the CIA because assassins need side hustles too. Her boss (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gets cornered by Congress and responds the way any rational bureaucrat would: by pitting her entire roster of superpowered mercenaries against each other in a Hunger Games of diminishing box-office appeal in order. not to get scolded. Shockingly, they don’t kill one another.

Instead, they decide to form one big dysfunctional family unit, travel back to America, and adopt a mysterious human plot device (Lewis Pullman)

So yes, this is Marvel’s version of Suicide Squad, except nobody here is technically a criminal. Yelena and her overly enthusiastic dad (David Harbour) are deemed not hero material because they’re Russian, which in Marvel logic is the same thing. Their real crime is failing to believe (or to understand, whatever) in the American Dream, and the movie treats that like a felony.

Exploitation by a rogue politician is the official excuse, but the underlying problem is simpler: the titular Thunderbolts are unheroic because they don’t pass the cultural vibes check. In this universe, being a superhero is about saving people sure, but it’s also about looking like the brochure for U.S. values. Just ask Captain America knockoff John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who was discarded for the cardinal sin of being an asshole in public.

OK, that detail is pretty clever, but it’s the only one. I swear.

I’d love to tell you Thunderbolts is goofy and flawed in interesting ways, but the whole thing just reeks of corporate insecurity. After a while you can smell executive meddling the same way you can smell Axe Body Spray in the club. Florence Pugh opens the movie with a voice-over that explains everything like we’re watching at the same moment like a jaded private eye. Later, Yelena’s dad literally shouts "WE ARE ANTIHEROES!" from a limousine, as if Marvel worried the audience might not pick up on the nuance.

The thing is, antiheroism actually matters. Relatable badasses how adults reconcile good intentions with glaring personal flaws. But in a movie where everyone already has superpowers, you don’t need to say the word "antihero" out loud, you just need to actually struggle with something. Fight the establishment. Protect people you don’t care about. Stare down your own darkness. Instead, Thunderbolts externalizes that darkness into a literal, dime-store mascot the team can drag around and eventually beat up.

Because in Marvel movies, you’re not allowed to be tormented. Inner turmoil isn’t something to explore, it’s just another bullshit CGI enemy to kill.

There’s something about Lewis Pullman

Which brings us to Lewis Pullman, the aforementioned human mascot. He’s easily the best thing about Thunderbolts and, ironically, the closest the movie gets to an actual antihero. Pullman plays him with this discreet, harmless stoner energy, like the kid in high school who somehow always had weed but never seemed to know where it came from. That charm is what allows him to double as Inner Darkness Man, the literal embodiment of everyone else’s unresolved issues.

Sure, the script telegraphs his vulnerability with the subtlety of a car alarm, but at least he has one. He’s the only character who isn’t a walking PowerPoint slide of obvious traits. Pullman actually gets to wrestle with… wait for it… an inner struggle! In the context of this movies, it’s almost disorienting, like seeing raccoon reading Dostoevsky or a James Gunn movie without a cheap pull-at-your-heartstrings soundtrack, but that Pullman fellow is interesting.

Which shouldn’t be surprising given who his dad is. Nothing against Florence Pugh, I think she can shine in the right context, but turn poop into gold, that she cannot do. But maybe it’s something Pullman might be able to someday.

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Not gonna lie : Thunderbolts is an absolute shit show. Two hours of ugly grey-and-yellow sludge that feels less like a movie than a panicked ransom note from Disney executives begging you to keep the lights on. The fact that this cost $180 million to produce is almost performance art.

Even if it lands one click away on your favorite streaming service, you deserve better. Even if you’re tired, drunk, and only want something brainless, you still deserve better. Because if you cave, even once, they will never stop. Marvel will keep churning out that kind of stuff until the sun burns out, and Thunderbolts is proof they’re already practicing for the end times and that thing make almost 400 millions in profit.

1.7/10

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