Thunderbolts review: Marvel finally makes sense again

Luca Fontana

29.4.2025

Translation: Katherine Martin

Thunderbolts was billed as filler. Instead, it’s turned out to be a paradigm shift for a Marvel Cinematic Universe that had lost its way. Gritty, honest and broken, it’s stronger than many of Marvel’s recent films.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers in this review. Everything mentioned here has already been revealed in trailers. Thunderbolts hits theatres on 1 May.

Even before the first lines of dialogue, Thunderbolts tells us everything we need to know. The iconic Marvel fanfare kicks into gear – then breaks off. Instruments disappear one after another, leaving silence in their wake. An emptiness that weighs heavily on your shoulders. A blackness darker than darkness itself. Thunderbolts steps right into this gaping wound.

It catches me off guard.

When Marvel announced Thunderbolts, it felt like filler. A film centring on characters that nobody had on their movie wish list. Yelena? Ghost? Walker? Red Guardian? Granted, they’re all likeable. But main characters?

And yet, what I saw wasn’t a tired attempt to spice up minor-league sidekicks. Instead, it pulls together a darn strong rock band. It’s a fun film that both hurts and heals, often at the same time. Most importantly, it’s a film that finally gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe a new direction.

Broken souls on a mission

Perhaps that’s the key to its success. Thunderbolts isn’t a flashy adventure à la Captain Marvel or Doctor Strange. Unlike those films, it doesn’t have a grandly staged, polished story with only surface-level emotional conflicts. This movie is a hell ride for broken souls.

Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker are all carrying greater burdens than they’d ever admit. And Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is sending them all on a mission that’s nothing more than a trap. A death trap. For them.

What initially seems like any another secret operation soon turns into a descent into the darkest recesses of their past. Each of them bears scars – some visible, many not. They’ve all made mistakes, have blood on their hands or have been broken by something. That’s what makes Thunderbolts so strong. The film doesn’t preoccupy itself with what its broken heroes can do (skills that Yelena pithily sums up as «punching and shooting»).

Instead, it focuses on who they’ve become – and what they might still go on to be.

The plot is woven together cleverly enough for it never to come across as a mere construct. It’s not about chasing a MacGuffin or saving the world for the hundredth time. It’s about something much more intimate: survival. Not in the literal sense, but in an emotional one. Who knows whether something akin to a new home can emerge from hopelessness?

It never feels like a cheap move to make this dysfunctional group of all people into a last hope. Not even for a second. You see, Thunderbolts understands something that the MCU has recently struggled to grasp. It’s not superpowers or costumes that make us care about characters. It’s their scars. And trust me, these antiheroes have plenty of them.

Sentry and the black hole inside us

Thunderbolts is never superficial. There’s something else bubbling away beneath the tough exteriors, punchy lines, superbly staged fights and stylishly deployed sarcasm. A darkness that can’t simply be erased.

All of the characters in this film carry this emptiness inside themselves. A dull, all-consuming silence, fed by broken promises, guilt and unfulfilled longing. It’s not the kind of depression that screams out to be addressed. It’s the quiet kind. The kind that drains your energy before you even realise it.

That’s why the choice of antagonist seems so in tune with everything else. Sentry, alias Robert Reynolds, is a comparatively new character in the Marvel universe, introduced in the early 2000s. His powers – comparable to the strength of a million exploding suns – are almost beyond measure. But this very power is inextricably linked to a dark force within him: the Void. For every good deed Sentry performs, the Void counters with an equally destructive one.

The hero is a prisoner of his own emptiness.

Thunderbolts doesn’t turn this into a hidden motif or subtle allusion. The metaphor’s obvious – and just as intentional. It’s the idea of depression as an abyss, a black hole that swallows up light and hope. This is exactly where the film’s quiet greatness lies. There isn’t any cheap pathos to the metaphor. No contrived melodrama. Instead, there are small gestures, cut-off glances and just a little too much hesitation before a hand is extended: «I’m still here.»

No one embodies this fragile balance as impressively as Yelena Belova. Florence Pugh, who’s fantastic yet again, makes Yelena not a cynical action heroine, but the emotional centre of the film. Her way of surviving the darkness isn’t heroic. It’s human and vulnerable. Full of defiance, but with a warmth that flashes up again and again, just when all seems to be lost.

Maybe that’s the real truth of this film. It’s not about overcoming the darkness. It’s about enduring it. Facing up to it for a while. And someday, somewhere, maybe finding a little light in it.

Absolute cinema: Marvel’s hefty counterstrike

Even so, Thunderbolts doesn’t get bogged down in the heavy stuff. Despite all the darkness, despite all the emotional scars, something unmistakable remains. That rough-and-ready, wild, good-hearted rock band vibe that hit us right in the feels without warning when James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy came out in 2014.

Only this time, instead of five whacky space adventurers finding each other, it’s broken misfits who’re half carrying each other, half questioning each other and growing in the process. Thunderbolts is loud, messy and funny. Sometimes sad, often hilarious and always funny. And so chaotic that it’s almost beautiful.

This might be down to the raw talent that’s been assembled both in front of and behind the camera. Marvel has certainly been trumpeting it. In its trailer, it celebrates the crew – Beef director Jake Schreier, Midsommar star Florence Pugh, The Green Knight’s cinematographer, Hereditary’s production designers and the composers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once – with the tagline «absolute cinema».

This is, if you’ll excuse my French, f*cking brilliant.

Why? Because it’s a glorious potshot at legendary director Martin Scorsese, who once described Marvel’s superhero films as «theme parks, not cinema». The comment spawned the «absolute cinema» meme, an ironic response to this very paradox. The idea that a tongue-in-cheek appreciation of pop culture, never pretending to be as serious as it is, can sometimes be more genuine than anything with lofty artistic pretensions.

This is exactly what Thunderbolts plays upon in this trailer. It’s frank, cheeky and pulls no punches. I love it.

And yes, you notice that DNA. The rough edges that take Thunderbolts far away from the usual blockbuster glitz. There’s a wild, unpolished heart beating there. It’s there when Yelena fires off a dry, cynical line. It’s there when Red Guardian goes into full midlife crisis mode, oscillating between heroism and self-deprecation. And it’s there when Winter Soldier’s just trying to get by somehow. None of it feels scripted.

It just feels alive.

Like a damn loud, damn worn-out, but damn lovable rock band that storms the stage, even when nobody’s asked them to. It’s why you want to get knocked down with them. And get back up again.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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