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Geek Tyrant
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
THUNDERBOLTS* Concept Art Offers Alternate Versions of Red Guardian's Suit — GeekTyrant
New concept art for Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts* has surfaced, giving fans a glimpse at a grittier, more tactical take on David Harbour's Red Guardian. Shared by concept artist Aleksi Briclot on Instagram, the design veers away from the bold, comic-inspired look we saw in Black Widow and leans into something a bit more covert. 'I went for a darker vibe,' Briclot explained, showcasing a suit that ditches the bright reds for a muted black with subtle crimson accents. Even the signature chest star goes full black, adding to the stealthy tone. It's a sharp contrast to the bulkier, more traditional version Red Guardian ultimately wears in the film. Briclot described his approach, saying the goal was 'less Santa Claus' and more 'Spec Ops.' It's easy to see how this iteration would've suited a darker, more grounded tone for the team-up film—one that feels more Mission: Impossible than Avengers. While the final costume stuck closer to Harbour's original look from Black Widow , it's fun to imagine what might've been if the creative team had opted for something a little more shadow ops.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Robert Downey Jr's FIRST LOOK as Doctor Doom LEAKED from 'Avengers: Doomsday' sets
The first look of Robert Downey Jr as Marvel's newest supervillain, Doctor Doom, has been leaked online. A new photo from the sets of Avengers: Doomsday has revealed what appears to be Downey Jr in full costume as the infamous Doom. The photo, which is quickly making the rounds online, shows a figure clad in metallic armour with a dark green hood and matching cape — instantly recognisable to comic book readers as the classic look of Victor Von Doom. — sm_leak (@sm_leak) This is the first picture of the actor in character for the highly anticipated film. The costume itself has fans buzzing. With its intricate armor, cloak, and faithful design, many are calling it the most comic book-accurate adaptation of the supervillain seen on screen to date. Unlike previous interpretations that saw doom in a suit, this practical armour has fans waiting to see the final output on the big screen. Social media reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. One fan wrote, 'An actual suit instead of mocap is badass. I'm sure they'll use CGI at some point but kudos for this.' Others echoed the sentiment, praising Marvel for leaning into a tangible, physical design rather than relying entirely on post-production effects. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like New Container Houses Egypt (Prices May Surprise You) Container House | Search Ads Search Now Undo Avengers: Doomsday is expected to usher in a new era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Doctor Doom reportedly being positioned as the next major overarching antagonist following Thanos. RDJ playing the villain after his decade-long run as the superhero Iron Man have fans increasingly sceptical about the plot of the film that will end the multiverse saga. The film will also see the return of several familiar faces, including Chirs Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Strom, Anthony Mackie as Captain America, Sebastian Stan as Bucky, Paul Rudd as Antman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Thing, Simu Liu as Shang Chi, Florence Pugh as Yelena, Lewis Pullman as Sentry, Danny Ramirez as Falcon, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, David Harbour as the Red Guardian, Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Pedro Pascal as Mr Fantastic and many others . In the film, the Avengers, Wakandans, Fantastic Four, New Avengers, and the X-Men reportedly team up to fight against a new threat - Doctor Doom. According to reports, several superheroes will reportedly meet their end at the hands of Doom. Hemsworth's Thor is also rumoured to meet his end in the film, after the actor posted an emotional farewell post on playing the character for 15 years. With leaks like this stirring excitement, the wait for the film's December 2026 release now seems longer. Check out our list of the latest Hindi , English , Tamil , Telugu , Malayalam , and Kannada movies . Don't miss our picks for the best Hindi movies , best Tamil movies, and best Telugu films .
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I Rewatched Black Widow After Seeing Thunderbolts*, And It Has Me A Lot More Emotional Over Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It's hard to believe, but Fantastic Four: First Steps is the only title left among upcoming Marvel movies before we get our first Avengers movie since Endgame, Avengers: Doomsday. And while I probably wouldn't have believed you if you told me before seeing it, Thunderbolts* is my favorite MCU movie in years, and I have to say a lot of that is thanks to Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova. Never mind the actress already being some of my favorites in movies like Dune: Part 2 or Midsommar, her character is quickly rising in the ranks in the current superhero lineup. And when I rewatched her first appearance in Black Widow, it only made me appreciate her more. I remember digging Black Widow when it came out, but I'll be honest, I've kind of forgotten about it since I saw it. Of course, there's the fact that it probably came out at the wrong time, given the COVID-19 pandemic was still heavily affecting theaters and Disney was experimenting with its Disney+ service, perhaps to the detriment of the movie's performance. But, I need to talk about how seeing Thunderbolts* reminded me to go back to the 2021 release and deepen my love for Yelena Belova further. SPOILERS are ahead for Thunderbolts* and Black Widow. There's a lot to love about Thunderbolts* in my opinion, but the biggest highlight of the movie for me is the relationship between Yelena and her 'dad,' the Red Guardian. My favorite scene was definitely in the third act of the movie when Yelena gets honest with him about how she's been feeling really alone and having a lot of regrets about her life. In response, Red Guardian tells Yelena that when he looks at her, he 'doesn't see' her mistakes. Instead, he remembers who she was as a kid, and how she wanted to be the goalie on her childhood soccer team in order to be the 'person everyone relies on when they make a mistake.' Without that scene in the movie, I just don't think Thunderbolts* would be as good as it is. It had me thinking back to when Yelena and Red Guardian's relationship was established in Black Widow. I remember the two actors being just as funny and grounded in the 2021 movie, and yet I hadn't placed the movie high in my mind to realize this going into seeing Thunderbolts*. So I made it my mission to revisit Black Widow after seeing the latest Marvel movies. When it comes to Marvel movies in order, I had actually forgotten that the movie takes place in 2016 in the MCU timeline, two years prior to the events in Infinity War and the events of Thunderbolts* takes place a little over a decade after Black Widow (with the five-year gap of the snap in between to think about). And after seeing Black Widow again, I think the movie does a good job of establishing an older Yelena who has dealt with a lot more life and loss, and having the context of her upbringing with the Red Guardian and Melina really helped me understand her better. It was so much fun to see how the character was introduced in the movie, because Pugh very much stays true to who Yelena is between them. Oh, and it slipped my mind how quotable Yelena was in Black Widow to the point of actually stealing the thunder off of Scarlett Johansson's MCU sendoff. But the one thing that really caught me off guard is how much Yelena clearly looks up to Natasha Romanoff throughout the movie, even if she's always taking shots at her Avengers position and "posing". While I read it more as MCU banter the first time I saw it, this time I noticed how much that relationship really gives sister energy, and while Natasha kind of brushes Yelena off (as big sisters often do), Natasha means a lot to her. I realized getting to do a mission with her and reunite with their 'parents' is kind of the best thing for Yelena, because she's spent a lot of time alone. Throughout the movie, you see how, while Natasha has kind of lost her respect for her parental figures, Yelena is still attached to them. As she says in one memorable line: "It was real to me." It made me extra sad about the death of Natasha in Endgame, and how in Thunderbolts*, Yelena feels like she wants to make a difference like her sister did, but she's having problems making the transition (inwardly and outwardly). So, when I finished Black Widow, knowing that her second MCU movie ends with her becoming a new Avenger, I found it especially poignant. She still clearly feels the loss of Natasha, now she's going to get the chance to serve with the Avengers and be the person she has always looked up to: her sister! I'm not crying, you are. Disney+: from $9.99 a month w/ ad-supported planYou can stream Black Widow now as I did with a Disney+ subscription. In fact you can check out every MCU movie on Disney+, starting at $9.99 a month for its new ad-supported plan. Go ad-free and pay $15.99 a month or save 16% and pre-pay $159.99 for a Deal While the Thunderbolts* director has suggested the movie isn't a Black Widow sequel, I would argue the new Marvel film wouldn't have worked for me as well as it did if it weren't for the 2021 movie. If I hadn't seen the scene where Yelena and Red Guardian sing 'American Pie' together, I wouldn't have bought into their continued father-daughter dynamic as much, and there's a kind of twisted found family element in the Kate Shortland film that spiritually carries over into Thunderbolts*, I think. The only thing that really bummed me out after seeing Black Widow is how the movie perfectly served Thunderbolts* the chance to feature Scarlett Johansson one more time through the shame rooms created by Sentry. I think it would have been really beautiful if she had shown up for a moment and allowed Yelena to get some closure or something. But, I also understand that Johansson is hesitant to return to the MCU after her long stint, and I was kind of into the fact that Thunderbolts* wasn't packed full of cameos. Because while Yelena Belova kind of sees herself as not as good as Natasha, the fact is she's being given way more to do in the MCU already than her sister was. Sure, it was different times, but I've always felt so conflicted about how Black Widow was handled as a character. She's very much in the center of things going into Doomsday, and I love that for her, but now I'm never getting out of my mind how the character will be constantly missing her sister as she becomes a hero in her own right.
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Thunderbolts* big twist means Marvel wants them to save the MCU. Are they serious?
This article contains major spoilers, so do not read if you have not watched Thunderbolts*. There was always something deeply suspicious about that asterisk, and now the word is out. If you've been to see it during the past week, you'll know that the motley crew of antiheroes and sometime superheroes led by Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova and David Harbour's Red Guardian may well be the New Avengers. The problem is that even with the cat out of the proverbial bag, there's something off here. First of all, the Avengers are supposed to be Earth's mightiest heroes, a crew of idealists and icons who are never happier than when punching the likes of Thanos in the face and delivering heartfelt monologues about sacrifice and teamwork. The Thunderbolts*? They're the last people you'd call if you were being invaded by Chitauri, Ultron, or even a moderately aggressive Roomba. This bunch of emotionally unstable grudge-holders are less 'Earth's mightiest' than 'Earth's most accessible'. Second, Marvel knows this. If Thunderbolts* is about anything, it's about how a group of third-rate superheroes, reformed assassins and sad sacks come together to save the day because nobody else was around. In terms of IP exploitation, this one's up there with that Disney+ series about Hawkeye and the time Marvel thought it would be a good idea to hire Angelina Jolie as a warrior goddess with memory loss, then somehow forget to give her a storyline. Of course, the studio has been here before. Nobody had heard of any of the Guardians of the Galaxy before James Gunn somehow delivered a trilogy of well-received films about a bunch of space idiots shouting at each other in slow motion over staples of 1970s AM radio. Marvel's 1960s heyday was built on the then outlandish riff that superheroes might be just as flawed and existentially constipated as the rest of us. Their imperfections are what make characters such as Iron Man and Spider-Man worth investing in, while Thor is only ever even remotely interesting when he drops the whole invulnerable space god thing and reveals he's really just a lightning-powered metaphor for fragile masculinity. But Thunderbolts* feels different, because this new crew are not so much relatably flawed as completely broken. They're not charmingly dysfunctional – they're emotionally unavailable, morally compromised and in at least two cases (Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes and Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost) a bit bored to be here. There's no sense that they want to be a team, nor that we should want them to be one. The joke in the Thunderbolts* end-credits scene is that Captain America (Sam Wilson) has already been in touch to complain that they're infringing on his copyright. It's as if Marvel has anticipated every brickbat – that Thunderbolts* is a cynical rebrand, that the team have no chemistry, that they're just cosplay Avengers with unresolved trauma – and made sure to get in there first. And yet perhaps this willingness to punch itself in the face before anyone else does is what has led the new film to emerge as one of the best-received episodes in the studio's recent history. It's hard to accuse Marvel of making a cynical cash grab when they seem to be actively undermining themselves for kicks at a time when the MCU has been lurching from flops to reshoots to box office faceplants. It's as if the studio is challenging every critic of superhero films to watch this new one and witness a machine that has decided there is nothing left but to cheerfully eat itself while the world looks on. Naturally, the smart money is on this cavalcade of misfits, also-rans and never-weres finding themselves sidelined when the real heroes roar back in Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. And yet there's a sneaking suspicion that Marvel wouldn't have cast actors of the calibre of Pugh and Harbour if they were only intended to act as narrative duct tape to hold Phase Five together until Spidey and the X-Men sort out their scheduling conflicts. The question now is how Marvel creates a future that lives up to the euphoric buzz of the studio's first decade, while honouring the strange, broken little corner of the universe it's spent the last few years quietly assembling. Like it or not, the Thunderbolts* – sorry, New Avengers – are in the system now. And in the multiverse, nobody ever really gets written out.
The Sun
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Marvel's messy, funny, thoughtful return
MARVEL fans have been waiting with mixed feelings for Thunderbolts*, the 36th entry in the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which closes out Phase Five. After years of superhero fatigue, scepticism over yet another team-up movie and lingering doubts from some underwhelming recent entries, many were not sure what to expect. But here is the surprise: Thunderbolts* turns out to be a solid, entertaining and surprisingly thoughtful film, not perfect, but a step in the right direction for a studio that has been under heavy scrutiny. This latest Marvel outing brings together a group of antiheroes: Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell), all wrangled under the watchful, manipulative eye of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). What follows is a chaotic, action-packed mission forcing these characters, all broken, disillusioned, or jaded, to face their past demons. But the real magic of Thunderbolts* is not just in the fights or explosions (though there are plenty) but in how it tackles the messy, often uncomfortable emotional baggage these characters carry. Darker MCU, but with heart At its core, Thunderbolts* is about trauma. Yes, there are big battles, espionage and lots of snarky banter, but beneath all the Marvel spectacle, the movie quietly explores mental health in a way few superhero films dare to. Characters are scarred, some physically, some emotionally and the script (penned by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo) is not afraid to sit in those dark moments. The film does not turn its back on the characters' morally grey histories, instead, it leans into them. Bucky's lifelong struggle with guilt, Yelena's complicated grief over losing her sister Natasha, Red Guardian's insecure bluster masking deep self-doubt, all these threads are woven through the film with more sincerity than one might expect. And while some of the dialogue can feel a bit on the nose, the earnest attempt to show characters grappling with self-worth, purpose and identity lands more often than it misses. Comedy, chaos and chemistry One of the biggest surprises here is how funny Thunderbolts* is, not in a forced, quippy way, but through the messy, awkward dynamics of a team that probably should not work together but somehow does. The film thrives on its character interactions: Bucky's gruff exasperation, Yelena's dry humour, Red Guardian's over-the-top antics, Ghost's intense awkwardness, all combining into a stew of dysfunction that somehow gels. Director Jake Schreier keeps the pace brisk, but he allows just enough breathing room for the cast's chemistry to shine. Pugh and Harbour are standouts, delivering sharp comedic timing without undercutting their emotional arcs. Louis-Dreyfus, meanwhile, has a blast as the slippery, power-hungry Valentina, adding a layer of political manipulation that keeps things interesting without bogging down the action. Writing choices that might surprise While Thunderbolts* mostly follows familiar superhero beats, some moments genuinely surprise, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in ways that might leave audiences scratching their heads. Certain character arcs unfold in unexpected directions and the movie takes a few bold (if occasionally uneven) swings with its storytelling. Some viewers may find the tonal shifts jarring, but the film balances heavy emotional beats with absurd humour and flashy action and not every transition is smooth. But part of what makes Thunderbolts* work is that it feels like it is trying. It is not just another cookie-cutter Marvel outing, it is a movie that is willing to stumble a bit in its effort to offer something deeper. Give it a chance, be rewarded Thunderbolts* is not flawless, it is messy, occasionally overstuffed and some characters feel a little underdeveloped. But it is also a movie that rewards viewers willing to go in with an open mind. It is not trying to be the next Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, it is content to tell a smaller, more intimate story about broken people trying (and often failing) to come together. Audiences who show up expecting nonstop spectacle might be surprised by how much of the movie focuses on personal stakes rather than universe-ending threats. And those who have been burned by recent Marvel misfires might be shocked to find themselves emotionally invested here. Yes, there are plenty of cool action sequences, but the heart of Thunderbolts* is its exploration of redemption, forgiveness and the messy path toward healing. Decent comeback for Marvel In the bigger picture, Thunderbolts* feels like a course correction for the MCU, a movie that remembers why fans fell in love with these stories in the first place. It does not try to pretend to have all the answers for Marvel's future. Instead, it focuses on its characters, their relationships and the small, meaningful victories that come from facing one's past. With a strong ensemble cast, surprisingly thoughtful writing and just enough humour to balance the darkness, Thunderbolts* is a reminder that Marvel still has gas in the tank and that sometimes, all a film needs to do is ask audiences to give it a chance. Thunderbolts* would not blow everyone away, but it is a decent, entertaining and sometimes even touching addition to the MCU lineup. It is the kind of film where going in with measured expectations pays off: give it a shot and you might walk out pleasantly surprised. Thunderbolts* dares to believe in the possibility of broken people finding something worth fighting for – and that alone makes it worth watching. CAST: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell E-VALUE: 7/10 PLOT: 7/10 ACTING: 8/10
