Thunderbolts* (2025)
Successful Marvel properties (comics, movies, toilet paper, etc) center on the characters. The plot, humor, action, all of it in the best they offer is driven by the characters and their motivations. Since Endgame, Marvel has struggled to pull together compelling characters that propel good plots. Thunderbolts gets the studio back on track, yet much of the meta-story shows they have not learned that much.
Black Widow 2, Captain America's Friend, Private America, Russian Man, and those other two are back in action, sent on a mission by Elaine Benes to eliminate a threat to her business stuff. They really beat the hell out of each other until they discover Bob, who is some depressed guy with Hiroshima powers. On the run, they learn to trust each other and maybe a little bit of therapy, too.
Walking out of the theater, I would say I enjoyed it. I would still say that. It's a movie about something and the characters going through that something. The something is depression, illustrated in the most comic book way possible: stuffing you into a dark void where you relive all your old shames on loop. Has this been done before in movies? Yeah, it's pretty on the nose for memories to show character, but damn effective and interesting to see in terms of a team of assholes.
Like if the Dirty Dozen also fought Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The action here is a little above normal Marvel standards. It's mostly in camera with the punchy shooty, not the wild cuts you normally get as people flip and shoot and whatever. The opening has a lovely overhead of Black Widow 2 taking out a hallway like she was Daredevil or Black Widow 1 in Iron Man 2 but with a better camera.
The humor hits as well. From BW2 being embarrassed by her Russian Man dad or Private America being kinda dumb most of the time, all the jokes feel like things these characters would say. The best jockey of them all is Elaine Benes whose character Valentine Allegro De Fountain seems just over all these costumed nutjobs wrecking shit and wants one of her own.
That leads us to Bob. Bob's a fucking mess. When Bob's first action elicited the reaction "Oh no, Bob helped" from BW2, I laughed out loud even though I knew Bob was crazy strong and also just a little crazy. Not to make light of mental illness, of course. Child abuse and drug addiction are nothing to laugh at and are treated as serious aspects of this damaged character, but choosing to give that character the power of a million exploding suns is kinda fucking crazy for everyone involved. Bonus points for even him realizing this, saying to Elaine "Why would a god take orders?" and her face mimicking the perfect "oh shit."
The best part, though, is seeing heroes save people. Just like, "there's a thing that might kill that person, I'll stop it." And then doing that, ignoring the weird shadow monster that was their team pet who kicked their asses ten minutes earlier. It's refreshing to see heroes work with and help average people. Almost like they thought they were better than us.
That being said, did they all need to get together to flip that big fuckin rock? Private America stopped if from falling on the kid; the kid left. Sure, he might have needed help to get out from under it himself, but the whole team building exercise of flipping the big concrete rock was not needed.
Anyway, if you like good action with heart, check it out.