Thunderbolts: The New Avengers (DVD film review)
From the description, the Thunderbolts are Marvel’s equivalent of DC Comics ‘Suicide Squad’ with a touch of ‘The Boys’. We get introduced to them via Yelena Belova (actress Florence Pugh) travelling around the world deposing of all things OX Project for a client. In her downtime, she goes and sees her father, the Red Guardian (actor David Harbour) who would give his all to work for her boss. Later in the story, I don’t think this happened recently but a memory stirred up.
The client in question is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus) as head of the CIA, who is likely to being impeached but is giving an argument that the government needs its own team of super-beings now the more independent Avengers are all gone.
Yelena wants something more rewarding and public to do after her next mission which ends up for a free-for-all amongst four super-humans and fighting amongst themselves until they realise that as part of the clean-up operation, they are also expendable and have to work out how to escape a fiery furnace. Oh, one of them gets killed. I’m not entirely sure who but she looked a bit like Madame Masque. There’s also a matter of Bob (actor Lewis Pullman) who was added to the mix and even he doesn’t know why. With the elevator damaged, they have to continue to work together to break out.
The reason why I’m being so vague about who this non-team is is because they are barely named, only demonstrate their powers. I recognised John Walker’s costume but the others I don’t know. You learn as you go along. Bob is also called Sentry when he is powered up. Oh, the Winter Soldier aka Bucky Barnes (actor Sebastian Stan) is also added to the mix as the team grows. de Fontaine wants Sentry to kill them all but he stops short of that and then things get worse. She also starts to change her mind when out on the streets, these Thunderbolts save lives from falling debris.
I think towards the end of the film I was getting a tad punch-drunk with all the fights going on. Even the stops for some conversations didn’t help much neither. In many respects, this is more a problem with the plot structure or how the creators think they are giving more to the readers to having endless fights. It supposedly works in the comicbooks and then forget this is faster medium and a real fight can be over in minutes that can’t be represented on the printed page. All of this is mixed in with giving the cast enough screen time to justify their fees.
Considering all the carnage that was going on in New York, you do have to wonder where any of the other surviving super-heroes were and why weren’t they helping out? This can also apply to any of the super-hero realities but just toning it down to the main focus was often the way to see things and not question that aspect.
Something occurred to me with the length of the credits. Going CGI was supposed to cut the number of people working on a film and yet its just seems to be forever increasing. Yes, there is a time factor involved in scheduling and such but that does stop the number of people involved.
At least the film is watchable which is the main thing and there are two items in the credits that you need to stay watching for.
GF Willmetts
January 2026
(pub: Marvel Studios, 2025. 1 DVD 121 minute film and no extras. Price: varies. ASIN: BUA4033701)
