Did the MCU and Disney (Gasp) Actually Learn a Lesson? Your ‘Thunderbolts*’ Review

From PJMedia.com

“Righteousness without power is just an opinion,” explained the villainous Elaine Benes Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Now that’s a helluva piece of writing!

Of course, it was followed a little later with dialogue about a girl pooping her pants while playing soccer. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is synonymous with many things of late, but consistency ain’t one ‘em.

‘Tis par for the course of the MCU, far and away the world’s most lucrative film franchise. (And by a Galactus-sized margin, too: The MCU has netted nearly $32 billion, almost triple the total of the next-biggest franchise… which happens to be “Spider-Man.” You might be noticing a trend.)

WARNING: This column will discuss spoilers for “Thunderbolts*,” the 36th chapter in the MCU. If you’re planning on watching the movie, please put this column away: The flick is way more fun if you’re coming in fresh. The twists and turns, especially at the end, won’t land the same if you already know the big reveals.

I’m serious about this. PUT THIS COLUMN AWAY. Pretend it’s JB Pritzker in a speedo: Avoid all eye contact and look away!

Okay?

Everyone’s been forewarned? 

Alrighty, let’s proceed.

The height of the MCU was 2019, when the three films it released that year — “Captain Marvel,” “Avengers: Endgame,” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home” — earned a combined total of over $5 billion. That’s just insane! At that point, the franchise was basically printing money.

And the MCU’s corporate masters, the House of Mouse, couldn’t resist trying to print some more.

The secret to the MCU’s original success was its consistency and coherency. The actors who anchored its “universe,” most notably Robert Downey, Jr. (the irascible Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man), were serialized in each other’s movies, creating an interwoven world. 

It was a soap opera with capes.

What happened in one Marvel movie had grave ramifications in the next. Fans were compelled to watch everything, lest they fall behind — including flicks featuring superheroes they had never heard of before. It exploded the value of Marvel’s intellectual properties, because it made superstars out of D-listers. The MCU now had a roster 15+ deep of characters who could headline a movie!

From 2008’s “Iron Man” through the end of 2019, its films (mostly) delivered. Obviously, I’m not comparing Groot to “The Godfather,” but for what they were — escapism adventures with zany heroes and dastardly villains — fans seldom left the theater feeling disappointed. With funny quips, cool CGI, and just enough emotional heft to keep you hooked, the franchise was firing on all cylinders.

Not anymore.

It was a combination of factors. The first was the COVID pandemic wreaking havoc with the MCU’s filming schedule. Suddenly, they were unable to plot, pace, and release new chapters when they wanted; its tightly-woven storytelling grew increasingly scattershot. For years at a time, key plotlines would remain unresolved.

There was a lot of wasted motion.

The second problem was the aftermath of the “Endgame” storyline. Not unlike a Spidey villain, the MCU found itself caught in a web it couldn’t escape. In “Endgame” (spoilers!), half the people on Earth magically returned after being “blipped” into dust. It made the stakes gloriously high in the “Endgame” climax, but it shattered any semblance of realism in the MCU. 

When it first began, the MCU told stories about a universe just like ours, but it happened to have superheroes like the Hulk, Captain America, and Thor. After the blip, the movie universe was no longer relatable. 

It was too big a break with reality.

Also problematic were the heroic sacrifices, deaths, and/or “retirements” of key heroes in “Endgame,” especially Iron Man, Black Widow, and Captain America. The two men were the franchise’s most bankable stars, and Black Widow was its #1 female lead.

That left the MCU with mighty big shoes to fill. And those shoes weren’t filled wisely.

This brings us to the third problem, which dwarfed the other two: Disney’s meddling and corporate interference.

COVID didn’t just wreck the MCU’s filming schedule; it also coincided with the streaming boom and the birth of Disney+. Launched on November 12, 2019, the House of Mouse suddenly had a new profit model.

The MCU’s old profit model revolved around the strategic release of films. Typically, you’d pace ‘em out, target holiday weekends, and plan accordingly. 

Under the old profit model, the MCU made over $5 billion per year! It was built and hardwired for the old model.

But streaming doesn’t work like that. You need to give people something different to watch each week. It’s a profit model that prioritizes volume and newness over scarcity and quality. 

And thus, the MCU began pumping out TV shows, one after another. Major plotline advances — such as the Hulk having a full-grown kid, or James “Rhodey” Rhodes (a.k.a. War Machine) being a secret alien, or the unraveling of the multiverse — were all revealed on Disney+ television shows.

A few of the shows were excellent, particularly “Loki” and “WandaVision.” A few were meh.  And a lot of ‘em were just dreadful: “She-Hulk” didn’t just feature the Abomination; it was one.

At around the same time, MCU fans began to notice a trend: All the white males were being replaced, either with women or “people of color.”

Sam Wilson, who is black, replaced the old Captain America, who was white. The Hulk’s cousin, Jennifer Walters, became the new (She-)Hulk. Riri Williams, a black college girl, is Ironheart, the new Iron Man. Kate Bishop is the new Hawkeye. Shuri, the sister of the old (male) Black Panther, became the new (female) one. Samuel L. Jackson used to order around the Avengers; now it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Even Thor was briefly replaced by Jane, his ex-girlfriend, and ceded Asgard’s leadership to a lady named Valkyrie. 

(But the new Black Widow is still female, of course. We don’t wanna make things weird!)

Some changes were rooted in Marvel Comics history and make sense. But others seemed painfully, cloyingly gratuitous — i.e. liberal virtue-signaling gone amuck.

One Disney+ TV show, “Ms. Marvel,” featured the first MCU heroine who’s Muslim. Her name was Kamala Khan, she’s a high school student, and her mosque was being harassed by Islamophobic U.S. agents. Another TV show featured a deaf Native American girl. And the less we could say about She-Hulk twerking with Megan Thee Stallion, the better.

“Ms. Marvel” led to a crossover in the 2023 MCU film, “The Marvels,” that absolutely nobody was clamoring for. The film was the MCU’s first-ever box-office bomb and was the lowest-grossing movie in franchise history. By some estimates, it lost over $230 million. 

“She-Hulk” was another disaster. It cost a quarter of a billion dollars to produce! That came to $25 million per episode. Believe it or not, it was actually more expensive to make than “The Avengers!”

The show about the deaf Native America girl was Disney+’s least-streamed MCU TV show. Nobody wanted to see it. But because it featured a minority woman (who’s handicapped, too!), they made it anyway. At least, that was the impression of the fanbase: Disney cared more about “representation” than good storytelling. 

It seemed far too calculated to be accidental. 

At first, fans were pissed. That was bad. 

But then they stopped caring. And that was way worse.

This was the backdrop of the latest MCU offering, the “Thunderbolts*.” No wonder it opened to the second-worst numbers in MCU history! Without any A-List superheroes (except maybe Bucky Barnes, whom we’ve known since the very first “Captain America” movie), the film looked about as appetizing as a two-day-old shrimp cocktail.

But “Thunderbolts*” is gonna be a hit. Unlike the recent MCU drivel, it’s REALLY GOOD. The word of mouth on this flick is gonna be phenomenal.

It’s funny, fast-paced, and has just enough fresh paint to feel new and different. The fight scenes work. The dialogue works. The jokes will make you smile.

Don’t overthink it: “Thunderbolts*” is a fun way to spend an evening.

The plot is something we’ve all seen a million times before: A goofy gang of misfits must learn how to work together, trust one another, and save the day. But in movies like this, the plot is less important than the set pieces and/or misadventures along the way.

There’s the new Black Widow, actress Florence Pugh, playing the assassin Yelena Belova. In an ensemble movie, there’s always one person who glues the group together, and Pugh is the straw that stirs the drink. She’s as cute as a button and oozes empathy — even while beating the [expletive] out of you.

Next are a bunch of knockoff super-soldiers: The O.G. is Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who’s the 100+ year old ex-best friend of Captain America. Then is John Walker, who was given the super-soldier serum in the Disney+ TV show, “Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” (He’s played by Wyatt Russell, who’s dad, Kurt Russell, was Peter Quill’s dad in “Guardians of the Galaxy 2.”) Finally, there’s the drunken Russian papa Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), who has a potbelly, bad teeth, and was given a Soviet knockoff serum. Harbour is a hoot.

The other member of the team is Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), the phasing-through-objects villain from “Antman and the Wasp.” She wasn’t a particularly memorable villain, but hey, at least she’s not another super-soldier.

And to wrap it all up, there’s a dude named Bob. He’s quirky, neurotic fruit-loop, perfectly played by Lewis Pullman, who’s a dead ringer for his famous dad, actor Bill Pullman, who once saved the world from an alien invasion in “Independence Day.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, looking suspiciously like Tulsi Gabbard (right down to the silver hair streaks!), plays the soon-to-be-impeached CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She’s the baddie, but she reminds us of Elaine Benes, so we still sorta like her.

For some reason, Bucky Barnes is now a congressman. He was a Hydra agent for 70 years, an international terrorist, and he murdered Tony Stark’s parents, but about a decade ago he said he’s sorry and went to therapy. I guess that makes him electable? (Interestingly, in the MCU, Barnes is from New York City, so there’s a non-zero chance he won the seat from AOC.)

Anyhoo, Elaine Benes needs to destroy the evidence that’ll send her to jail, so she sends her henchmen to torch an old base and kill each other off. But then: shenanigans galore!!

The henchmen become friends, inexplicably bond, and decide to work together.

(Well, not the Taskmaster. She was shot in the face and killed right away. But she was also ugly and had gnarly scars, so the least photogenic one had to go. Those are the rules.)

Our pal Bob is the movie’s MacGuffin. He’s neurotic, depressed, and prone to blackouts, but he’s (secretly) been given the super-hero serum, too. Only his version was thousands of times more powerful than everyone else’s.

Now, he can fly. He’s stronger than the Hulk. He has telepathic powers and could easily overpower every superhero all at once. When he battles all the heroes, he rips off Bucky’s metal arm and sends ‘em all scampering.

But beneath all those godlike powers, Bob is still Bob. Deep down, he hasn’t stopped hating himself. He doesn’t believe he deserves happiness or friends. The physical and emotional abuse he suffered through as a child has fractured his psyche. 

You see, the good side of Bob is a superhero called the Sentry. In the words of de Fontaine, he is “Earth’s mightiest hero.” (Not sure if it was intentional, but he looked uncannily like Homelander on “The Boys.”)

But the bad side… is called the Void. (Cue evil music.)

He’s a dark and sinister demon, who “blips” anyone he sees, transforming souls into shadows. One minute, they’re there; the next, they’re a black smudge on the sidewalk.

Unlike all too many MCU films, “Thunderbolts*” doesn’t descend into a 30-minute CGI-bloated finale, where the special effects overwhelm common sense and/or character development. Instead, the opposite is true: The special effects are minimalized, as the plucky gang of antiheroes sift through the blackened recesses of Bob’s mind — and in the process, they’re forced to go eyeball-to-eyeball with their own trauma.

Turns out, depression can’t be cured by beating it down. Or by running away. Or even by drowning your demons in the deepest, darkest swamp pits of your mind — physically grabbing it by the throat and smashing its face.

It only made the Void bigger and stronger.

What ultimately defeated the Void was faith: Faith in each other, faith in ourselves, faith in life, and faith in good.

Hooray! Group hug!

The good guys regroup and go to give Elaine Benes a piece of the mind (“Why I oughta…”)… when she surprises ‘em with an impromptu press conference, presenting ‘em to the world as the new Avengers.

(Which, of course, they accept, because $$.)

See what those sneaky Marvel dudes did? They snuck in a secret Avengers movie!

These kinds of movies are amusement park rides: Either you dig the thrills or you don’t. And I did. So did both my boys, age 16 and 18. (My wife stayed home and watched something with subtitles on Netflix. She thinks superhero films are stupid.) Honestly, it was the best MCU movie since “Endgame” (although we really enjoyed “GOTG 3,” too).

But it wasn’t just this movie that got us excited: Finally, the MCU has set up a longform plotline that’s understandable and interesting. The post-credit scenes tie directly to the upcoming “Fantastic Four” movie, and that movie is directly tied to “Avengers: Doomsday” in 2026.

Starring… Robert Downey, Jr. as Doctor Doom. 

It’s too early to know if the MCU has actually learned its lesson, righted its ship, and will focus less on “representation” and more on actually telling good, cohesive stories again — even when the protagonist is of the wrong race or gender. 

Just. Tell. Good. Stories.

This was one good movie; now they’ve gotta follow it with another. When you’re (re)building an interconnected franchise, consistency is crucial. You can’t burn the audience after finally getting ‘em to trust you again, or you might lose ‘em for good.

But I hope they’ve figured it out. Life’s better when the MCU doesn’t suck.

GRADE: A-

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