Alright, Marvel. Sit down. We need to talk. Again.
It’s 2025, and we just got handed Thunderbolts — another slick, VFX-laden, slow-motion-saturated, over-marketed slab of reheated superhero casserole that somehow thinks putting Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan in leather jackets will distract us from the fact that you’ve made this movie 12 times already.
Let’s call it what it is: a Big Studio Franken-film stitched together from old MCU carcasses and held upright by the trembling legs of CGI spectacle. The plot? A group of antiheroes with trust issues are tricked by a shadowy boss lady (hi again, Julia Louis-Dreyfus) into doing something “dangerous” and “morally gray.” Sound familiar? That’s because it’s Suicide Squad (but with extra gloss), Guardians of the Galaxy (but depressed), and The Avengers (if they all needed therapy).
Except now it’s called Thunderbolts — because apparently, adding an asterisk at the end makes it feel "edgy."
Here’s the cold, hard lightning bolt of truth: audiences are tired. Tired of the same slow-mo group walk. Tired of the brooding monologues over Hans Zimmer-lite soundtracks. Tired of one-liner quips after every punch. Tired of every final battle being a blurry mess of sparkly explosions set against a suspiciously purple sky.
Marvel, we get it. You’ve got the money. You’ve got the tech. You’ve got enough Oscar winners to form your own United Nations. But do you have anything new to say?
You spent years teasing a “morally complex” Thunderbolts team, only to hand us a plot where redemption is earned through punching harder and working as a “found family” under a manipulative boss in fabulous coats. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it. Heck, we’ve even memed it. And no amount of surprise cameos or multiverse bait can mask how cookie-cutter this formula has become.
Even the title screams "We've run out of ideas." Thunderbolts? Sounds like a rejected XFL team or a 2003 PlayStation 2 game about futuristic dodgeball.
And sure, early reviews are “positive.” But so were the early reviews for Eternals and Quantumania — and we all know how that turned out. The only thing truly dangerous about this movie is how dangerously close it pushes the MCU toward total creative bankruptcy.
So here’s a radical pitch, Marvel — try stepping away from the endless green screens and invest in some actual storytelling. Audiences aren’t asking for the moon; we just want fewer interchangeable action sequences that look like they were copied and pasted from your last five movies. And while you're at it, how about crafting character arcs that feel genuine and earned, instead of ones that read like they were whipped up by ChatGPT circa 2021 on autopilot? We’re not allergic to spectacle — we’re just starving for substance.
You’ve had your multiverse phase, your time-heist phase, your grief-is-powerful phase. Maybe now it’s time for the new phase — the “Let’s Stop Repeating Ourselves” phase.
Until then, Thunderbolts feels like exactly what the name implies — loud, flashy, and ultimately just noise.
Thunderbolts drops May 2 in theatres. If you’re into déjà vu with explosions, this might be your thing. If not? There’s a world of actual originality waiting outside the Marvel dome. Choose wisely.