Cinematic Point Of View

A few quick thoughts about the new Marvel movie Thunderbolts, directed by Jake Schreier.

This was a 10 out of 10 movie for me. It’s one of the best Marvel movies to come along since the original Guardians of the Galaxy or X-Men. It might be my favorite.

It’s a story about anti-heroes coming together to form a family and save the day while also saving themselves. These people are a mess. This world is a mess. It’s a classic comic book plot that’s the perfect story for right now.

The humor, the pacing, the action, and the characters all clicked for me.

It felt like WHY I used to read comic books all the time. The story is big, but not too big. It has a world ending villain, but it’s not a universe-wide story that’s going to take 6 films to feel complete.

There are themes of family dysfunction, failure, regret, abuse, addiction, corruption. It’s a darker ride than I expected, but somehow it manages to keep a well balanced sense of humor throughout.

This well balanced movie meal is brought to you by a cast of real standout performances from Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Yelena (Florence Pugh), Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Robert (Lewis Pullman), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Alexei (David Harbour). Pugh and Harbour alone are worth the price of admission and Russell is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

I went into this movie knowing very little of these characters. I missed the Black Widow movie, but I did catch The Falcon and Winter Soldier TV series, which gave me enough character backstory to hit the ground running.

Also, the soundtrack score by Son Lux is excellent.

This movie was a BIG surprise with a ton of great humor and far more emotional depth than I was expecting. I’m happily looking forward to watching where they take these characters next.

Have you seen Thunderbolts yet? What did you think?