![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-2025-05-15T062155.946.webp?resize=691%2C1024&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cThunderbolts*,\u201d the latest offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, seems like awfully familiar territory. In the film, a group of assassins, criminals, and burnouts band together to form a ragtag group of do-gooders looking for redemption. There are definitely shades of the MCU\u2019s \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy\u201d in play. Or how about that Sony-controlled \u201cSinister Six\u201d movie that may never materialize? Actually, the real template seems to be \u201cSuicide Squad\u201d from the DC Extended Universe. That was the crummy team-up of also-ran villains that had the hook of Margot Robbie playing Harley Quinn. \u201cThunderbolts*\u201d can\u2019t even boast Robbie\u2019s Harley, but it also isn\u2019t saddled with Jared Leto\u2019s miserable Joker, so it\u2019s roughly a draw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For all the emphasis on the team effort, there is an unadvertised clear-cut lead. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the adopted sister of the late Black Widow, is starting to feel bored with an unfulfilling life of black ops work. She visits her father, Red Guardian (David Harbour), but he isn\u2019t much help. He loves her very much, but he\u2019s never been the best father, and he mostly wants her to help him advance his own shambled career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yelena takes an assignment in the base of a mountain, but it\u2019s a trap. She\u2019s ambushed by the molecularly unstable Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), seen here for the first time since 2018\u2019s \u201cAnt-Man and the Wasp.\u201d Then the two of them are ambushed by disgraced soldier U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), seen here for the first time since the 2021 Disney+ series \u201cThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier.\u201d Then they\u2019re all ambushed by Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), seen here for the first time since 2021\u2019s \u201cBlack Widow,\u201d and if this group is the Suicide Squad, then she\u2019s the Slipknot. Also present is an amnesia-stricken stranger named Bob (Lewis Pullman), but there\u2019s not much time to learn his story, as the mountain is about to be incinerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pulling the strings and trying to cut off loose ends is CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Much like Amanda Waller of \u201cSuicide Squad,\u201d she\u2019s a morally-compromising government official who\u2019s a little too eager to sacrifice her own people. She\u2019s in the middle of an impeachment and wants to eliminate four of her most embarrassing assets. So she assigned them all to attack each other, with a follow-up plan to blow up the whole mountain anyway. Even though they don\u2019t like each other, they work together to escape. With some help from Red Guardian and the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), frustrated that he can\u2019t stop the dangerous de Fontaine as an elected official, they form a team temporarily known as the Thunderbolts, named after Yelena\u2019s pee-wee soccer team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
de Fontaine still wants to eliminate the Thunderbolts, but she\u2019s intrigued by escaped test subject Bob. He unwittingly has tremendous superpowers, and with the right molding, he could be the best asset to the U.S. government since The Avengers. The problem is that he\u2019s also capable of tremendous destruction and could also be the biggest threat to the world since Thanos. He\u2019s so unstoppable with his ability to instantly turn victims into lifeless shadows that the Thunderbolts have to try to get him to choose to stop attacking people because they are in no way a match otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s an admirable emphasis on mental health in \u201cThunderbolts*,\u201d with the movie taking sensitive looks at Bob\u2019s repressed dark side, Yelena\u2019s uncertainty about her place in the world, and everybody\u2019s past traumas. It\u2019s why a lot of people have been won over by this movie, and I\u2019m glad they\u2019ve been able to find something of value here. But all I saw was the MCU realizing that they had too many directionless minor characters, so they consolidated them into one unoriginal, uninteresting movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
*The asterisk in the film\u2019s title is because the MCU wants fans to call the movie something different once they\u2019ve seen it. I\u2019m not getting behind that nonsense, and I hope the practice doesn\u2019t catch on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThunderbolts*\u201d is rated PG-13 for strong violence, language, thematic elements, and some suggestive and drug references. Its running time is 126 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThunderbolts*\u201d By Bob Garver \u201cThunderbolts*,\u201d the latest offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, seems like awfully familiar territory. In the film, a group of assassins, criminals, and burnouts band… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"13","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDVcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjUtMDUtMTVUMDYyMTU1Ljk0Ni53ZWJwP2ZpdD02OTElMkMxMDI0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTW92aWUgUmV2aWV3ICYjODIxMTsgVGh1bmRlcmJvbHRzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.O42dGz10f5dN5VPhyMiesGRPsIaRcGN5D8xGfuzrflwMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":55712,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-2025-05-15T062155.946.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[11489],"class_list":["post-55711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-thunderbolts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55713,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55711\/revisions\/55713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}