Thunderbolts* - AKA The New Avengerz

Marvel has had a problem with its movies lately since the Infinity Saga ended. While there have been a few good movies to come along, for the most part, a lot of them haven't been so great. Since Spider-Man: Far From Home we've had:

Black Widow - A few years too late

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Fun time, not perfect but good enough

Eternals - Too long, little boring, would have worked better as a series, but still wouldn't have been great

Spider-Man: No Way Home - the best of the Spider-Man movies

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - Did Wanda dirty, went full Rami; Had fun but was missing...the magic

Thor: Love and Thunder - Had its moments, but leaned too hard on comedy (those damn goats)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Aside from the respect to Chadwick Boseman and T'Chala...this wasn't a great movie. The focus on Shuri's grief worked fine, but the villain wasn't great and story seemed to drag a bit.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania - Too FX heavy, too hard on the comedy, set up something that is now irrelevant with Kang story.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. - A fitting finale to the Guardians story

The Marvels - Stan for Ms. Marvel, but just meh.

Deadpool & Wolverine - Funny, great beats, a salute to all things Sony Marvel.

Captain America: Brave New World - More of a sequel to Hulk and Eternals than it was a Sam Wilson Cap movie. Different villain, could have been better.

While not all bad, it was more miss than hit. They suffered because of what they failed to do that they did at the beginning: Quality over quantity. Let's not even add in the shows.

Thunderbolts* had its work to do to grab the audience and be something amazing. Many were skeptical because you're basically taking all the B-squad characters and villains and putting them together in a superhero movie. To put these people together and have something work would be insane.

And insanity worked. The movie was one of Marvels best in a long while. I hope this becomes a return to form. The story was relatively simple and had important and mature themes...depression and loneliness.

Red Guardian, Ghost, Bucky, Yelena, US Agent (from L to R)

Each of the main character was suffering from it in some form:

• Yelena Belova (Black Widow's sister) is the highlight of the movie. She carried most of it. Yelena sits home alone thinking of all the bad she's done until she gets a job to focus on, then she's right back into that hole of loneliness, still grieving over the loss of her sister.

• John Walker (US Agent) messed up his entire life. After becoming the new Cap for like a week (lost job when he killed a guy), he became depressed, drank, and ended up losing his wife and daughter.

• Red Guardian (Yelena's undercover father) bolsters a lot. He pretends everything is okay, but secretly and while alone, feels the loss for the days he was someone as Russia's version of Captain America. He often fails to come through, but when he goes into dad-mode for Yelena, he REALLY shows up.

• Bucky (Winter Soldier) is still finding his place in the world. Frozen and brainwashed as an assassin, he killed agaisnt his will. He finally has a life, but he doesn't really know what to do with it, even as he tries as a Congressman.

• Ava Star (Ghost) spent her entire life in molecular disequilibrium. Now, normal, but still with phasing abilities.

This team shouldn't work, but it does. They only come together because their boss, Contessa Valentina Allegera de Fontaine (yes, its a mouthful) tries to kill them. They add a teammate with Bob Reynolds, an experiment gone wrong, when he's let out of his containment chamber during the teams introductory fight with each other.

They work together to free themselves from the hidden facility and agents that are closing in on them. Bob's alter ego is released as De Fontaine tries to pawn, to be the next great Avenger. Void comes out and starts spreading his darkness across the city.

Against an impossible to beat superpowered villain, the team has to find a way to save the city and their friend Bob from the darkness.

The climax is where this movie really shines. Because while there is physicality as they take on Void in the recesses of Bob's consciousness. Each Thunderbolt is placed into the WORST day of their lives. Trapped in that moment, torturing them until they can break free of it.

As hokey as it sounds, it was the power of love that defeated Void. With some not so heavy handed imagery that to release yourself from the darkness, you can't be alone and close yourself off to it. You have to let people in, that's when you can slowly make your way out.

It's not a light switch and it doesn't go away quickly. It's a journey.

Pugh was magnificent in this movie from the very start. Her monologue on how lonely she is breaks your heart.

Yelena Belova: Daddy, I'm so alone. I don't have anything anymore. All I do is sit, and look at my phone, and think of all the terrible things that I've done, and then I go to work, and then I drink, come home to no-one, and I sit and think about all the terrible things I've done again and again and I go crazy!

Alexei Shostakov: Yelena, stop. We all have things that we regret.

Yelena Belova: No, but I have so many!

[bursts into tears]

Yelena Belova: My first test at the Red Room... Anya, she was just a child, she was so small...

Alexei Shostakov: So were you. I know; I know they were dark times -- very, very dark times, but... before, you were such a special little girl. Did you know this? You walked into room and made it bright. You felt a lot of joy.

She brought so much depth to the role and as much as David Harbour plays the comic relief as Alexei, we all know he can act. The two of them together were absolute gold. The dynamic of the team when they came together was something special.

The problem is because of the focus on all of this Ghost kind of got shoved to the backburner through most of it. She wasn't given the opportunity to be more fleshed out, which I would have liked to have seen.

This was a shining film in the Marvel series. It's a great setup for things to come and would recommend it to anyone, not just the Marvel faithful and the Marvel I'm done with these guys.

The look, the feel, the emotions of it all came together in just the right ways. While not absolutely perfect or my top Marvel movie of all time, its exactly what we need right now. A beacon of hope in the franchise.

4/5