Thunderbolts* Review: A Bold, Soulful MCU Outing That Actually Feels Something

Hype Malaysia

30-04-2025

When Marvel first dropped the Thunderbolts marketing, they lined the team up like action figures on a Wheaties box — blank stares, geared up, and ready to save the world before breakfast. It was comical.
It was also a lie.
If Thunderbolts makes one thing clear, it's that there are no golden white smile shine poster boys here — no Cap, no clean-cut saviors. These aren't your usual hopeful Avengers; they're bruised, bitter, and barely holding it together, stumbling through the rubble of their own lives more than standing for any greater cause.
Well, Thunderbolts* — mind the asterisk, will ya — is here to corral the tail end of Phase Five (which, let's be real, has started to feel like a logistical nightmare of its own). After years of Marvel juggling multiverse threads like flaming swords, this is a team-up movie that doesn't care about preserving timeline purity because this time it's busy digging its guts into something messier – to great effect!
Now, the aspect that we've always loved about the MCU is how it blends characters from different corners of its sprawling universe — tossing familiar faces into unexpected team-ups and seeing what sparks fly. Thunderbolts takes that idea and pushes it into darker, weirder territory. It posits: what happens when you throw together a bunch of super-soldiers, Red Room operatives, a disgraced SHIELD experiment, and one mysterious man who doesn't even know who he is?
The premise? This is a world where the Avengers are no longer a functioning force post-Endgame. The golden age of clean-cut heroes is over, and in their place, we've got morally flexible power players like Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (say the full name — she insists). And even she's teetering on the edge, staring down impeachment. That's how messy things have gotten.
So when the world needs saving — it doesn't call on gods or legends anymore. It scrapes the bottom of the barrel. The Thunderbolts aren't here because they're the best choice. They're here because they're who's available.
More than any Marvel project before it, Thunderbolts feels like the studio's bold experiment, a risk — though it does have its fair share of calculations. You can practically feel the intention behind the talent they brought on board, a deliberate effort to capture a certain vibe. This was made especially clear in one of the film's trailers, where they didn't just showcase the cast and crew, they made a point to highlight their past work — stars from Midsommar and A Different Man, the writers and director of Beef, the cinematographer from The Green Knight. It was as if they were planting a flag, leaning hard into that A24 vibe, — that it wasn't afraid to get messy, intimate, and emotionally charged.
We see this thematic weight from the very start, with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) standing atop the towering Merdeka 118 building in Kuala Lumpur, the second tallest skyscraper in the world. Here, at a breathtaking height, Yelena muses about that emptiness, about something that's deeply wrong with her.
'I thought it started when my sister died, but now it feels like something bigger… Just the void…' she says before taking a plunge, and parachuting to a nearby building.
At its core, Thunderbolts is about loneliness. It's about grief. It's about the strange, hollow feeling that lingers long after the dust has settled. In Yelena's case, that hole has been deepening over time — across her two previous appearances, we've seen her grappling with loss, identity, and disillusionment. The death of Natasha, her surrogate sister, devastated her. That grief pushed her into a spiral, culminating in a misguided quest to kill Clint Barton, the man she was led to believe was responsible. But even after that reckoning, the emptiness didn't go away.
And as the story unfolds, Yelena's past starts to unravel in fragments — each one a bruised reminder of the things she's had to do, and the things done to her. It's not just Red Room conditioning or the missions she carried out; it's the quieter guilt, the repressed memories, the nagging question of whether she's anything more than what she was trained to be.
Almost every character in Thunderbolts is wrestling with it in their own way, attempting to outrun or outsmart the emptiness inside them. And the film doesn't shy away from sitting in that discomfort. It lets it simmer,
And when the rest of the cast finally ends up in the same room, it becomes painfully clear — these are the rejects. The leftovers. The ones who didn't fit neatly into the winding machine. Hell, even their own employer, Valentina, is actively trying to get rid of them. John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Bob (Lewis Pullman) — yes, even Bob (not the builder, though he's about as lost) – are all byproducts of larger systems that chewed them up and spat them out. There's a deep sense of abandonment threaded through their dynamic.
The film spends a lot of time lingering with this very human emotion — and through that lens, the characters slowly unravel. We see it in John Walker, still shackled to the failures of his short-lived stint as the government's handpicked Captain America, desperately trying to prove he's more than a cautionary tale. We see it in Ghost, whose very body phases in and out of reality, as if her trauma is trying to physically eject her.
Even Red Guardian — a grizzled Russian Santa with a jolly front — aches for the glory days of the USSR. Back when he mattered. When he wasn't just a relic. His bravado is a mask, just like everyone else's. No one here is 'fine,' and Thunderbolts doesn't try to pretend otherwise — it lets its characters sit in their damage, wear it plainly, and fumble through the wreckage together.
On the contrary, we have Bucky — someone who's lived with the void longer than anyone else on the team. He's felt the emptiness of being a weapon, the guilt of actions he couldn't control, the loneliness of outliving people he once knew. But unlike the others, Bucky has already walked through the fire. He's distanced himself before, sure, but now he's come out the other side with just enough clarity to recognize the same pain in others — and maybe, just maybe, help guide them toward something better.
On a side note, Congressman Bucky is both hilarious and odd, which they do acknowledge. The movie doesn't dwell too long on the logistics, but the sheer absurdity of 'The Winter Soldier' conducting political shenanigans is a sly wink at just how far he's come. It's played for laughs at times, but there's something poetic in it too — that someone once weaponized by the state now holds a position of power within it, which he uses to try and take down Valentina.
While Bucky's transition from assassin to congressman provides a bit of comic relief, the true political driving force in Thunderbolts is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). She's the embodiment of a more cynical, manipulative version of Nick Fury, a character who once represented hope and unity but now feels like a far more exploitative figure.
Where Fury was a visionary trying to assemble a team of heroes to defend the world, Valentina is trying to fill the hole left behind by the Avengers to suit her own agenda, regardless of how morally compromised it might be. Her motivations remain murky, but it's clear that she's cunning, shrewd and a master puppeteer. She's just as much a part of the problem as the solution.
And then there's Bob (Lewis Pullman). As the only newcomer among the ensemble, Bob doesn't arrive with baggage we've seen before, but he carries plenty of it all the same. He's the wildcard — not just for the team, but for the audience too. We don't know what he's capable of, and neither does he. But what Pullman brings to the table is this subtle, haunted energy, the kind that doesn't demand attention but earns it anyway.
He starts as a blank slate — a man adrift in his own body, with no memories, no context, and no idea why he's even there with these misfits. While the rest of the team is drowning in past sins, he's haunted by his own history. It's not just that Bob doesn't know who he is, it's that he has drowned out his past and looked for a better life, suppressing the traumatic memories that have plagued him.
What's smart about how the movie handles this is how it personifies the Void — not just as a feeling, but as an actual presence. Comic book fans will recognize this as the dark alter ego of the persona that Bob will become. But here, it's more than a lore-accurate twist; it's a brilliant way to make that character resonate.
This struggle against the Void is, in many ways, a direct metaphor for dissociation — a psychological defense mechanism people use when the weight of trauma is too overwhelming to process. The Void isn't just a mental state for Bob; it's an emotional disconnect, an attempt to detach from the self in order to survive. We see this reflected in the way he suppresses the painful fragments of his past, choosing to forget rather than confront. It's a coping mechanism that many people who experience trauma use — running from the parts of themselves they fear will break them.
But as the film unfolds, that emptiness starts to calcify. Bob doesn't just question who he is — he starts wondering why he feels so hollow. The Void is no longer just something he's avoiding — it becomes something that actively shapes him, as if it has its own life force. This shift is reminiscent of how, in real life, avoiding mental and emotional pain can lead to it festering. By pushing down trauma or self-doubt, we give that emptiness power — and in doing so, it begins to control us.
Then… something shifts. When Bob finally taps into his full power, it's not just a revelation — it's a release. That hollow ache inside him fills, and the rush is intoxicating.
At first, it seems like a breakthrough — Bob finally stops running and allows himself to embrace the Void. But this isn't just a moment of clarity. It's a release of all that suppressed pain, anger, and fear. Instead of healing, he taps into that darkness, amplifying it. He doesn't learn to live with his emptiness — he seeks to become it. That hollow ache, instead of being confronted and processed, fills him with a dangerous sense of omnipotence.
Bob's god complex isn't just arrogance; it's rooted in something far more tragic. It's not a celebration of power, but a desperate attempt to fill the emptiness with something that will make him feel whole. The Void becomes his identity, and in trying to control it, he becomes consumed by it. This is the dangerous outcome of embracing the emptiness without first learning to confront and understand it. It's a warning about what happens when we allow trauma and suppression to define us, instead of using them as a stepping stone toward healing.
Bob's journey is a reminder of what happens when we don't face our inner demons — we risk being overtaken by them. Embracing the Void without confronting its roots can create a monster, someone who is no longer seeking answers but control.
Under Jake Schreier's direction (fresh off his acclaimed Beef), Thunderbolts adopts an emotionally raw language, much like his earlier work. In Beef, two strangers spiral into a destructive feud, driven by loneliness and repressed anger. Here, the same emotional core drives the team's journey: wounded people trying (and failing) to heal through external action. Whether it's Bob's transformation or the team's collective chaos, it all stems from that same yearning for meaning.
These stories understand that rage and sadness aren't just reactions; they're symptoms of deeper gaps. Whether it's ordinary people road-raging across the streets of Los Angeles or people who can't fly grappling with an emptiness who calls himself a god, Schreier shows a fascination with what happens when wounded people try (and fail) to heal themselves through external action. No amount of fighting, winning, or dominating can truly fill the hollowness inside.
Much like Steven Yeun and Ali Wong's characters' toxic feud in Beef, the emotional bond between these broken characters becomes the key to overcoming their spiraling wreckage. The only thing that might save them is learning to lean on one another.
It's not a clean or easy process — these characters are far from perfect, and they don't magically fix each other's brokenness. But there's a raw kind of solidarity in their shared emptiness. A quiet moment of vulnerability, the film shows that even when people are at their lowest, there's some form of comfort in knowing you're not alone in feeling that way.
But that's not to say Thunderbolts is all doom and gloom. The film knows when to let in some light, when to let characters breathe. Yelena's awkward humor, Bucky's quiet moments eating his dinner with his arm in the dishwasher, and Bob's naive confidence — they're all parts of the same emotional stew that the film keeps simmering on low heat.
The action sequences are messy in a good way — scrappy, desperate, more about survival than spectacle. It fits the tone of the movie. These are not Avengers who can fly or face off with alien invaders, and they acknowledge that at one point. They're not polished or inspirational. They're tired, wounded people doing what they can with what little they have left.
Sure, we've also got the CGI sequences of the darkness enveloping Manhattan, but it's done to great dramatic effect where we care about the people of the city and why the Thunderbolts are basically screwed. But it fits directly into the central themes. These feel almost too raw — it's not about showing off flashy moves, but about struggling to stay alive, to push forward despite the odds.
And just when you think you've got a grip on the movie's physicality, Thunderbolts throws you into something more surreal — a moment that veers into the psychological. One sequence (you'll know it when you see it) breaks reality open in the most grounded way possible. It's not Doctor Strange's astral kaleidoscope — it's a claustrophobic, practical descent into a fractured mind, where rooms fold in on themselves and broken windows become mirrors into trauma. It's trippy, but not detached. It feels real because it's rooted in character — not spectacle.
What really sells the moment, though, is the score. Son Lux's haunting compositions don't just underscore the action — they elevate it. There's some background in particular that evokes strong memories of the Everything Everywhere All at Once climactic scene — that same aching sense of existential unraveling, of staring into a void that's both terrifying and oddly serene. It's sonic chaos that somehow feels intimate, and in that moment, Thunderbolts taps into something quietly transcendent.
Still, Thunderbolts isn't without its narrative stumbles. One recurring issue is its tendency to over-explain. Nearly every time a new character enters a scene, someone feels the need to rehash past traumas or recap earlier events — even if we've already seen them unfold. It's a symptom of the film's ensemble structure, but it occasionally grinds the momentum to a halt. Or maybe that's because we already knew their backstories…
We didn't expect to leave a Marvel movie reflecting on pain and silent grief but we did. That matters. In terms of storytelling, Thunderbolts dares to be something smaller, messier, more personal within this vast cinematic universe. And perhaps that's what makes it quietly revolutionary.
By the time the credits roll, Thunderbolts doesn't leave you with the kind of clean, triumphant victory Marvel often leans on. Instead, it leaves you with a strange, bittersweet feeling: the void might be a looming presence, but maybe it's not as lonely when you have people around you who understand it too. It's introspective, and for once, the emptiness feels less like a problem to be solved, and more like a shared experience.
We may not be super-soldiers or Red Room assassins, but who hasn't felt like a misfit in their own story? Who hasn't tried to bury the ache or wear humor like armor? This movie doesn't just ask us to understand its characters — it asks us to see ourselves in them. To recognize that the void some of us carry might never fully go away, but that doesn't mean we have to face it alone.
We've been craving for the MCU to return to form, and even though it's been on shaky ground, projects like this and Daredevil: Born Again are testaments to the greatness that can come from being grounded in humanity. It's not the powers, not the fights, but the reminder that we are human. We have been broken, But even then, the broken can find solace in one another.
In that way, the film doesn't just reflect a new kind of MCU story. It reflects us. All of us trying to make sense of the chaos, patch up what's broken, and find some meaning.
Even if it's not a Wheaties box, it's still a seat at the table — and sometimes, that's enough.
Thunderbolts* is currently playing in cinemas.
*There are two post-credits scenes. The final one in particular is exciting— don't leave early.
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