How excited are you for “Thunderbolts*,” the latest superhero supergroup from Marvel? If you don’t already own a closetful of back issues, the answer might be: Not very.
Over the past few years, Marvel has been speaking directly to fans with movies like “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” while wider audiences have begun feeling left out and bored. The last time Marvel introduced an ensemble to theaters, in 2023’s uninspiringly titled “The Marvels,” the studio suffered its first box office bomb.
What a pleasant surprise, then, that “Thunderbolts*” manages to recapture some of Marvel’s early magic. Though it owes a big debt to James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy, and its core characters feel a bit randomly thrown together, “Thunderbolts*” succeeds thanks to a well-chosen cast, a not-so-formulaic script (from Marvel veteran Eric Pearson and “The Bear” showrunner Joanna Calo) and an undercurrent of sincerity from indie director Jake Schreier (2012’s lovely “Robot & Frank”). Finally, a Marvel movie that’s funny, engaging and — once or twice — even moving.
Every ensemble cast has a star, and here it’s Florence Pugh as Russian-born mercenary Yelena Belova. With her bleach-damaged hair and trauma-damaged psyche, Yelena is trapped in perpetual teen angst: Her Russian-accented lament, on repeat, is “Oh my Guuud.” Sent on a suspicious mission by the cheerfully amoral politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, stealing the movie), Yelena winds up joining forces with a cut-rate Captain America named John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and a flickering presence named Ava (Hannah John-Kamen, slightly sidelined). The team finds a boisterous mascot in Yelena’s dad, the Soviet has-been Red Guardian (David Harbour — another show-stealer), and acquires an anchor in the always-noble Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).
There’s one wild card, an ineffective drifter and former drug addict named Bob (Lewis Pullman). With that backstory, he’s not your usual Marvel character, and his emotional weakness will lead the newly minted Thunderbolts into some fairly intriguing territory. Remember the Avengers tower, site of two earthshaking Marvel battles? The now-defunct building shows up here, too, but thankfully the movie’s climax takes place somewhere else entirely. Let’s call it — without spoiling too much — a subconscious realm, one our misfit heroes know too well. It’s all a bit fanciful and even borders on psychobabble, but I’ll take that over another frantic search for a mythological MacGuffin any day.
Finally: What about that little asterisk in the title? Like a lot of superhero in-jokes, it’s too much to explain and basically serves to pump up fans for future Marvel installments. For the first time in a while, average moviegoers might feel a little pumped, too.
