Marvel’s Thunderbolts explores broken heroes facing their demons in a darker, character-driven chapter that dares to go deeper than typical MCU fare.

Marvel is in a rather strange situation, never seeming to be able to recapture its audience and the MCU craze over the last few years. While every release was an obvious financial success, regardless of its quality, the trend seems to have reversed. Despite the immense success of Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel has struggled to find any real traction for its Phase 5, which ends with Thunderbolts*. Yet the deadlines for the next two Avengers are approaching, and the pawns must be placed one way or another if the studio is to have any chance of repeating some of the same magic of the first Avengers.

In the midst of these heroes, we meet the Thunderbolts, the team no one chose, yet who find themselves collaborating against Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), their ex-boss. Bringing together Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), ex-Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), this dysfunctional team must find a way to stop a certain Bob (Lewis Pullman).

Fearing that Thunderbolts might be compared too closely to a certain Suicide Squad on the opposing camp, director Jake Schreier gives his characters far more psychological substance than is customary in this kind of film. Each member of the team doesn’t come from a glorious past, or rather, each dreamed of being a hero before an inevitable descent into hell that each of them represses as far as possible within themselves. And it’s precisely this asocial isolation and inner turmoil that the filmmaker seeks to bring these anti-heroes face to face with their evils. Surprisingly, this gives Thunderbolts a freshness and relevance that Marvel has long been craving. Even if Schreier remains constrained by a strict narrative framing, we sense that the film wants to show that it’s more than what we think on the surface. By using the interiority of morally controversial characters as a source of problems and almost as the main antagonist.

In order to maintain cohesion in an ever larger and more complicated Marvel universe, Schreier gives the film two central faces on which the two pillars of the film can rest. On the one hand, continuity with the MCU’s past with Bucky, and on the other, the humanity of these themes with Yelena, who represents a strong, charismatic leader on whom the other characters can rely.

Still constrained by a Marvel aesthetic that’s always meant to be straightforward and intelligible, and often insipid as a result. Thunderbolts does have the merit of being creative during several fight and comedy scenes, with clever lighting effects, a few well-placed frames and, above all, a fine management and use of sets in its final act. The Marvel comic tone is starting to become predictable in both its rhythm and punchlines, but rather than relying solely on catchphrases, Schreier puts his actors’ faces to the service of the script and manages to come up with some good ideas.

Even if Thunderbolts is still a Marvel movie, with all the constraints and artificialities that go with it, Jake Schreier gives his story substance, a common theme for his characters that goes deeper than simply saving the day and helps weld them together. It doesn’t take much, but it’s still one of the most interesting Marvel of recent years.