KWIF: Thunderbolts* (+1)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Some weeks are more fruitful than others. Some weeks are just a full kick in the fruits.

This Week:
Thunderbolts* (2025, d. Jake Schrier - in theatre)
Superman: The Movie (1978, d. Richard Donner - DVD)

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We're all aware (every single last damn one of us) that the Marvel Studios' output post Avengers:Endgame has not felt nearly as exciting as the 10 years that led into it. It was a pretty monumental achievement up to that point, building up a shared universe and a roster of beloved characters leading into an epic two-part event that gave a pretty satisfying sense of closure to the whole thing, even as it teased that it would be carrying on.  In their hubris, the studio thought they could just do it all again, build up a new roster of favourite heroes and build towards something epic once again. But they weren't banking on a few things... the pandemic, the streaming wars, and superhero fatigue (as well as a certain someone being arrested for assaulting his girlfriend) all collided, contributing to softened (or obliterated ) box office attendance.

"Phase 4" of Marvel was overconfident in its plans and the audience's appetite for them. Seven films, eight Disney+ series, and two specials felt like a bombardment even to the avid fan, and to some, it seemed too much like homework, despite maintaining a generally high-level of quality. "Phase 5" has been Marvel's wobbliest because of late stage course corrections and casting shake-ups, but also because it's stories been so utterly reliant on what has come before.

Quantumania required you to have watched prior Ant-Man movies as well as Loki season one. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 was the third in a trilogy but also needed you to recall the events of Infinity War. The Marvels had the Captain Marvel movie as well as the Ms. Marvel, and Wandavision streaming series all as pre-requisites. Deadpool and Wolverine  assumed you were familiar with the majority of the Marvel output from Fox. The latest Captain America sequel asked its audience to recollect the events of the much ignored 2008 Incredible Hulk film as well as the Disney+ Falcon and the Winter Soldier show. Marvel effectively leaned in to whisper in its audience ear and dare them to keep up, not realizing that they seemed to be turning people off as much as they were turning them on.

Thunderbolts* is not immune. It stars characters previously introduced in Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the difference is it doesn't fully rely upon you having seen those pictures to understand the characters... well, most of them.  

At the center of the picture is Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). What you need to know about her is her sister died, and she's been depressed. She feels aimless and disengaged from the world, and is looking for meaning and connection. She reaches out to her estranged father Alexei Shostakov "The Red Guardian" (David Harbour), whose pep talks leave something to be desired. She's working black ops cleanup for a horrible woman,  Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the CIA Director who facing a senate impeachment trial (revolving around the illegal activities she has Yelena cleaning up). Yelena wants a change.

On her next assignment, Yelena is sent to take out a rogue operative, "The Ghost" Ava Starr (Hannah John Kamen), only to face off against one-time Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell) who is there to kill her, and then the Taskmaster shows up to kill John while The Ghost is there to eliminate Taskmaster. As they melee they begin to realize they've been played and find themselves in Valentina's deathtrap, and must rely upon each other to escape...along with test subject Bob (Lewis Pullman) who is awakened from his containment chamber.

Rescued from their predicament by Sergei and Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) they form an unlikely alliance to take down Valentina, only to find out that the experiment done on Bob has turned him into an unbeatable "super-man", who Valentina wants to use as the ultimate weapon for ultimate control, only Bob has a darker side that comes out and it could threaten everything.

Yelena's not the only one unsatisfied with her life. The film nimbly uses Bob's psychic abilities and his darker half to provide insight into some of the other characters' dark states.  Bob's history as well is one of trauma, substance abuse and bipolar disorder. 

I was not expecting a Marvel film to center so specifically around depression like the Thunderbolts* does, addressing it from the first impactful moment. It's a story about a group of people looking for a way out of the darkness and looking for purpose and finding at least something to grab onto, which is, in part, each other.

This is Yelena's movie.  Even though it is a ensemble picture, Florence Pugh is clearly the star. Marvel chose wisely in putting her front-and-center. Pugh is one of the best actors under 30 working today. She is one of the most emotive people on screen, her expressive face can convey joy, pathos, fear, whatever better than almost any other performer. She's an absolute powerhouse in a tiny body.  I believe a Marvel movie has only ever once brought me to tears (Peter's dusting in Infinity War) but I teared up three times in Thunderbolts*, all of them triggered by Pugh's performance.

Harbour is big and brash and loud comic relief as the over-eager, self-aggrandizing Red Guardian, which can be a lot but thankfully is in mostly the right dosage in this ensemble. Louis-Dreyfus delivers both a funny and boo-hiss worthy performance, while Stan provides the stabilizing backing board to the whole piece, making it feel very integrated with the MCU just from his presence. Russell's John Walker was a pretty difficult pill to swallow in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but here navigates between light and dark much more nimbly, and showing real big screen presence without stepping outside of the character.  Hannah John Kamen's Ghost is perhaps the most underserved character in the film (next to Olga Kurylenko's Taskmaster) but her presence in the ensemble is welcome.  Louis Pullman's Bob has probably the most difficult job, being the only first appearance character of the bunch, and he navigate Bob's multiple personality disorder tremendously well...from his nearly hapless civilian to the above-it-all Sentry to the scary-as-hell Void.  Seriously, the Void is probably the scariest villain Marvel has introduced yet.

There is a climactic sequence in the third act in which Yelena, Bob and the team have to confront a manifestation of trauma, and if the film let me down at all it was in not exploring the traumas of every Thunderbolt in the film... I don't think it would have eaten up much time but it certainly would have provided more insight into the secondary and tertiary characters.

Thunderbolts* has been well received because it's a Marvel movie that puts its characters at the centre and lets the situation build around them, rather than building a team only to have them stop a tangential enemy. It's confidently scripted to be self-contained and not aggressively easter-egging the audience or distracting them with set up that's going to pay off in some other film some other time.  Yes, there is a post-credits sequence teasing something more, but it does so in a way that deftly extends the film at hand and doesn't feel like a random aside. 

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Richard Donner's 1978 production of Superman is a minor miracle in its own right. So many things could have gone wrong (and many things did go wrong) but a lot of things went very very right, starting with the casting of Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman. Reeve's very gifted physical performance distinguishing Clark from Superman is the best special effects in a film full of them. Reeve gives Clark a clumsiness that just borders on slapstick without teetering over into it. His tall, broad-shouldered, beefed-up frame, in Clark's drab suit, oversized glasses and greasy combover turn a beautiful specimen of a man into a slouching, slumping, oafish character that not only do you not want to make eye contact with, but you wish to actively forget about him.

Thus stems the conflict of Clark's love triangle with Lois and his superheroic alter-ego... he's too good at making himself invisible, whereas Superman's putting it all out there and Lois is completely ready and willing to take it all in. Superman's penthouse apartment rendezvous with Lois, leading to a heavily flirtatious interview, is the best scene in this movie, and it establishes a real connection between the two characters. Unfortunately the film does not pay off this connection, and actively separates the two characters for most of the third act.  It should also be noted that the two only meet in the second act of the film, as the first act is split in two parts, one on Krypton and one in Smallville, both dealing more with Kal-El/Clark/Superman's parents than with the character himself.

The first 40 minutes of this quite bloated movie is spent on establishing Superman's backstory, his lore, and it's all quite decently told (I like the Krypton piece quite a bit, Marlon Brando's Jor-El is a commanding screen presence, even if the actor was kind of checked out and reading his lines off screen). The second act establishing Metropolis, the Daily Planet, Superman's supporting characters and his nemesis Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is the meat of the movie.

It all slumps pretty direly in the third act as it sets off on the journey of enacting Luthor's land-grab plot, which involves a complex scheme to trigger the collapse of the San Andreas Fault. Surely in hatching his scheme a do-gooder such as Superman would get in the way, so Lex figures out how to stop him and hatches another elaborate scheme to eliminate his problem, with Kryptonite.

The third act is all shenanigans, as Luthor executes his schemes, and the result is Clark disappears, Lois is off on her own, and everything is set outside of Metropolis. It culminates in Superman saving the day, of course, but Lois is killed in the process...so Superman flies as fast as he can reversing the rotation of the Earth which turns back time so he can save Lois. No, I'm not sure how it works either.

Despite being a Superman fan as long as I can remember, I've not only never loved this movie but I've never even really liked it. The opening segments on Krypton and in Smallville could be truncated or even eliminated altogether. The film only really feels like it starts when Clark enters the Daily Planet building, and then screeches pretty much to a dead halt once it tries to establish a plot.  

I hate the spoken word poem Lois recites when she is flying with Superman, I don't much like Luthor's bumbling henchman Otis (Ned Beatty) and the logic of this film's turning back time has always drove me crazy.

There are parts of Superman: The Movie I like, but generally I find it pretty tedious and it's never been what I've been looking for in a Superman movie. I've yet to get a Superman movie that delivers what I want out of a Superman movie, which is for it to feel like a good story from the comics. It seems like directors and the studio are always too afraid to do that.