Thunderbolts*

MCU movies have not been high on my priority list for watching in the past couple years, and with good reason. I'm not saying anything new or controversial when I say the post-Endgame lull has been long and arduous to get through. MCU movies felt like homework unto themselves (to say nothing of their companion TV shows), churned out with little thought or care to capitalize on superhero movie-mania. Rushed CGI. About nine separate "introductions" to the multiverse. Storylines started and left dangling. When Thunderbolts* dropped and everybody said it was a return to form and the MCU's answer to James Gunn's Suicide Squad, I REALLY got nervous. Trying to get back to the basics never goes well, and a comparison to Suicide Squad is a good way to get me to run in the other direction. I loathed that movie. So, I came into Thunderbolts* apprehensive at best. I'd like to think that maybe set the bar low enough that I could be surprised, but I don't think it's that; I think Thunderbolts* genuinely succeeds on its own. But I don't think it's a return to form ... and I mean that in a positive way. The strongest element of Thunderbolts is how it doesn't want to be a standard MCU movie. Yes, fights happen, and yes, there's a big bad, this isn't a Wes Anderson movie. What sets Thunderbolts* apart is that the action and comic book aspects aren't the draw. This is a character-driven movie first and foremost, perhaps the most character-driven movie in the MCU. Through a series of events, the group is brought together and forced to work as a team, a group consisting of people with broken hearts, guilty consciences, and looking for a fulfilling purpose in the world besides being lackeys and assassins. Yelena is still grieving her sister; John Walker's failure as Captain America 2.0 has led to his marriage breaking up; Red Guardian is running a limo service; Bucky, unmoored from the Avengers, is a congressman and feels woefully out of place. They are all dealing with guilt and feelings of inadequacy and uselessness beyond what they can do as enhanced people. The only member of the group who gets short-changed is Ghost; they don't take much time to delve into her as a character. Is it because they did so much of it in Ant-Man & The Wasp? Perhaps. But it still leaves Ghost feeling like the fifth wheel in Thunderbolts*. She gets to be important in action scenes, but not so much in the emotional journey department. That emotional journey is the key to what makes this different from previous movies, what makes this less of a return to form and more of a new era. MCU movies are no stranger to emotional journeys -- Tony Stark starts Iron Man as a cocky and proud merchant of death until he sees the realities of what he does, and Captain America; The Winter Soldier is all about duty and patriotism and the dark side of both. But previous movies externalized those journeys; Cap seeing that Nick Fury was willing to put the world into a police state to keep it safe made him question whether he should be fighting for his country or the ideals it was supposed to represent. Stark had to have shrapnel jammed in his chest to make him consider the human cost of his business. Thunderbolts* turns the journey inward. Yelena and Bucky and the rest don't feel alone because they don't have a bad guy's ass to kick; they feel alone because having an ass to kick has been the only measuring stick they've ever had by which to determine their own sense of self-worth. They've never lived for anything but someone else's fight, and now, they're questioning their own purpose and value, and reckoning with the guilt of a life spent as human weapons. The big bad of Thunderbolts* isn't a person; it's their own self-doubt and guilt. Thunderbolts* is basically an existential crisis played out as a comic book movie. I must commend director Jake Schreier for crafting Thunderbolts* into what it is. There's a lot going on in this movie, but it never feels bloated or drags at all. It is two hours, but it is accomplishes a lot in its two hours. He allows true emotional moments to occur and gives them a moment to breathe, as well as knowing when and where to place humor without getting too MCU-quippy. Visually speaking, Schreier also pivots away from some of the worst MCU tropes, like the 27 edits in 7 seconds habit. There's a fight scene early on in a hallway that looks like it was done in one take, shot from above. Any other MCU movie and this would be a blur of cuts that would rob the fight of its weight and impact, but here, it's like visual poetry. But it all still feels like an MCU movie, just with enough of the director's own imprint to make it stand out. This is what the MCU needs more of: telling thoughtful, intelligent stories that don't rely on sky beams and global Armageddon. I don't want the pendulum to swing entirely the other way, because that's how we get hacks like Rian Johnson "subverting expectations" with unearned rug-pulls and condescending smartest-man-in-the-room trickery for the sake of it. But this kind of working within the framework while still doing something different is exactly the kind of shake-up the MCU needs. Hell, just give me more of real human beings in these costumes reacting to the world around them as real human beings and not just punch-machines. This is the kind of movie that will get me, and others I imagine, excited for MCU movies again.