'Thunderbolts*': Making Marvel Cool Again (With a Prestige TV Assist)
Florence Pugh, an A24-approved director and a box office win: the MCU experiment is back in action
Did you hear about the new A24 movie that tore up the box office this weekend? It stars Midsommar’s Florence Pugh and A Different Man’s Sebastian Stan, has amazing cinematography from The Green Knight’s Andrew Droz Palermo and is directed by Jake Schreier, who also worked on the studio’s TV series Beef.
That is what Marvel is hoping at least a few people are thinking right now about Thunderbolts*, the new superhero movie that is not, in fact, a co-production with A24, though a cheeky trailer released a few months ago was eager to blur that line. But Thunderbolts* is performing much more like a Marvel movie, netting around $75 million for the weekend and leading a box office that, miraculously for this day and age, seems to have room for multiple hits at once.
That A24-aping trailer wasn’t just a misdirect. Thunderbolts* earned warm reviews and praise for its performances as well as effects that felt like a cut above the CGI slop Marvel has been criticized for in recent years. Given the precipitous drop in Marvel’s cultural capital of late, even before the brutal reception given to Captain America: Brave New World earlier this year, it was a pretty bold move for one of the biggest, most carefully managed franchises in movie history to try and compare itself to the ultimate clearinghouse for cool indies. The fact that Thunderbolts* got away with it speaks to the film’s quality but also a potential reversal in Marvel’s reputation.
Marvel has tried to align itself with up-and-coming filmmakers who bring a distinct point of view since its very beginning in the mid 2000s; despite a few very notable success stories — Ryan Coogler’s two Black Panther films, Taika Waititi’s two Thor films — this has mostly resulted in frustration among moviegoers hoping to see such auteurs take big swings with budgets to match. If you were excited to see Chloe Zhao follow up Nomadland with Eternals, or to watch Little Woods director Nia DaCosta’s take on The Marvels, you likely left the theater wondering why these promising directors had wasted their time. The peppy, brightly lit Marvel house style, established by Joss Whedon’s Avengers movies and carried forward by Joe and Anthony Russo, found a way to overwhelm any other directorial vision.
That stylistic consistency was good for business, undeniably, but made it hard to expect to find a breakthrough performance on the level of Robert Downey Jr.’s career revival as Iron Man, or even Chris Hemsworth’s star-is-born moment as Thor. So imagine my thrill watching Thunderbolts*, the story of an unlikely group of heroes that manages to make every single one of them a fully realized, appealing character.
It’s not just Pugh and Stan, both of them Oscar nominees whose ability to stand out in a crowded action spectacle is well established. (Stan, unbelievably, has been playing Bucky Barnes for nearly 15 years!) Actors like Lewis Pullman and Wyatt Russell, who have been charming second bananas in other projects but rarely at the center, step into their Thunderbolts* characters with wit and gravitas. Even Julia Louis-Dreyfus, seemingly sleepwalking through her past few Marvel appearances, comes alive in this one.
When the film’s unconventional final act culminates not with punches and laser beams, but rather a well-earned character moment for our heroes, it works because the performances have been given just as much attention as the spectacle. Thunderbolts* is the most human-sized Marvel movie in quite a while, and the actors and audiences alike are reaping the rewards.
TV to the Rescue?
Remarkably for this day and age, Pugh is almost exclusively a movie star; she showed up as her Thunderbolts* character Yelena for a few episodes of the Disney+ series Hawkeye, but I’ll choose to let that one slide. For nearly everyone else involved in Thunderbolts*, though, television has been an essential part of their career.
Thunderbolts* director Schreier is, like the Russo brothers before him, primarily a TV guy, winning an Emmy for his work on Beef. Matt Shakman, the director of Marvel’s July 25 release Fantastic Four: First Steps, directed episodes of everything from One Tree Hill to Marvel’s Wandavision. Between the casts of both films you’ve got two Stranger Things stars (David Harbour and Joseph Quinn), two Emmy winners (Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Julia Garner) and the stars of The Crown, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Veep. You could basically trace the entire history of prestige TV from who shows up in Marvel movies this year.
Marvel’s effort to bring television’s serialized storytelling to the big screen has been a mixed bag, of course — I’m one of many moviegoers who resented being expected to have seen all the previous installments to understand the latest. But the zippy Thunderbolts*, featuring a lot of new characters and mostly spry exposition about what happened previously, suggests that the TV veterans who made it are figuring out how to keep their big, expansive stories from tipping into homework. In one knowing scene in Thunderbolts*, Stan’s Bucky Barnes remarks to a younger character, played by Geraldine Viswanathan, that the battle featured in 2012’s The Avengers must feel like ancient history to her. It probably does, for her and a good bit of the audience. But Thunderbolts* makes it feel okay to leave that history behind and start building something new.
Is superhero fatigue really over? The real test comes in July, with DC’s Superman and then Marvel’s Fantastic Four, both featuring much bigger-name heroes than anyone in Thunderbolts*. But I don’t think I’m the only person feeling cautiously optimistic after this weekend — not just that people still want to see superhero movies, but that they can still be creative enough to be worth the time and efforts of the people who made them.
Closing Credits
Comedies are famously, cruelly overlooked at the Oscars these days, but the Academy Museum and Judd Apatow are ready to make up for it, just a little bit. The director and producer will be the museum’s first-ever guest curator, overseeing an untitled exhibit on comedy that will open at the museum in 2027. Personally I’d love to see a special room dedicated to the culottes from the frequent Apatow collaborators Adam McKay & Will Ferrell-produced Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, but I’d love to hear your suggestions too.
There may not be people throwing popcorn or dressing up to go to the theater (Minecraft audience trends that were stoked by social media), but the Sinners phenomenon — over $200 million worldwide! — is surely at least partly due to viral success. Ryan Coogler’s 10-minute Kodak-produced video, in which he explains the various film formats used on Sinners, has spread like a new TikTok dance craze. I’ve seen multiple people say that watching the video convinced them to buy a ticket in IMAX; even though Thunderbolts* knocked Sinners out of its exclusive IMAX window, Coogler’s film is popular enough that it will be returning on May 15. At 38, Coogler is not exactly a TikTok native, but his miniature film school lesson on aspect ratios and film projection has clearly struck a nerve with younger moviegoers. If you haven’t watched it yet, take a look — and book your 70 mm tickets before they sell out again.