Deep into what Marvel calls its fifth phase, the studio’s 36th film, Thunderbolts, unfolds in a post-Avengers era. The star-studded supergroup has disbanded, with its scant vestiges becoming fixtures within U.S. government bureaucracies; even the Winter Soldier is now a suited congressman. More proof that President Ronald Reagan was on to something when he quipped that a government bureau is the closest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this Earth.
Much of the setup is familiar, echoing what we’ve come to expect from Marvel’s recent entries. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, easily the strongest acting talent in the cast, plays Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, the morally dubious director of the CIA. (All the makings of a great Seinfeld episode.)
In this post-Avengers America, national defense has grown reliant on superheroes, somewhat echoing Europe’s long-standing dependency on the American military. With the real heroes gone, who will avert disaster? Even the new Captain America, Sam Wilson, is bereft of real powers. A power vacuum looms in Washington, D.C., a gap de Fontaine attempts (unsuccessfully) to fill by engineering her own superheroes through fatal human trials. To evade scrutiny, she recruits a cadre of C-list superheroes to clean up her mess. When they realize they themselves are extensions of her disaster, and that their final mission is to kill each other, the rogues reluctantly unite.
Enter the Thunderbolts: a band of misfits accustomed to mercenary work rather than heroism, each carrying their own emotional baggage — basically Marvel’s riposte to DC’s Suicide Squad. As with most Marvel films, Thunderbolts struggles with tonal identity. To its credit, the film’s humor lands effectively, primarily thanks to the comedic gifts of David Harbour, who plays the ex-Soviet Red Guardian — a USSR nostalgist who, alongside his adopted daughter Yelena (Florence Pugh), communicates exclusively in a cartoonish Russian accent. Whether intentionally comedic or unintentionally absurd, their sarcastic banter remains among the few redeeming qualities that kept me from sleeping through half the film.
But this humor poses a challenge. Thunderbolts isn’t strictly a superhero comedy; DC’s Suicide Squad took that route and fared much better. Instead, Marvel tries balancing this slapstick tone with a sombre exploration of depression and trauma. A dark humor take on clinical depression is something perhaps only the Irish can pull off (see The Banshees of Inisherin). Consequently, attempts at genuine emotional moments consistently fall flat. One entire scene midway through the film features Yelena screaming at her foster father in a grating accent, admonishing his parental shortcomings. Yet it’s hard to care, as the film never earns this emotional investment. Any serious rapport it tries to build is continuously undermined by comedic interruptions.
It isn’t until the third act that the villain is revealed: The Sentry, a Superman-like deity who is burdened by crippling depression and severe mood swings. In one memorable Seinfeld episode, George Costanza ponders whether Superman, among his superpowers, would also possess super humor. Thunderbolts doesn’t address that directly, but it suggests instead that clinical depression, when paired with superpowers, becomes super depression. Under this condition, The Sentry’s alter ego, The Void, emerges to envelop all of Manhattan in a supernatural shadow. As if board-certified psychologists, the ragtag superhero squad ventures into The Void’s subconscious to diagnose his depression and save the world.
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Given the film and franchise’s penchant for wanton levity, such weighty themes simply don’t resonate. It’s akin to Monty Python suddenly pivoting to a sketch about colon cancer awareness.
Clocking in at more than two hours (especially tedious when factoring in obligatory post-credit scenes), Thunderbolts adds little to the broader MCU beyond introducing The Sentry into its already crowded roster. Characters such as Ghost, who can vanish through walls, and the Winter Soldier are criminally underused, serving mostly as cannon fodder, leaving everyone else to sort through their emotional baggage. If Thunderbolts is a harbinger of Marvel’s future, there’s little worse for mental health than these formulaic films themselves.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds an MBA from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.