‘The greatest Marvel offering in years’

The last thing in the superhero franchise “is the scarmed, scarmed fun, with the feet on the ground”, with a “charismatic” Florence Pugh in its center, writes Nicholas Barber.

Since Avengers: Endgame came out in 2019, the subtitle has felt much more appropriate than the study could have liked. It is not that Marvel Hac has not been successful in the 2020s, but he is no longer releasing an uninterrupted chain from box office successes, nor is he keeping the public invested in a story that crosses them all. That particular game has come to an end.

Marvel films that have worked better since the end of the game are those that have moved away farther from the pattern established by the so -called “Infinity Saga”, the first 22 deliveries in the franchise, which revolved around a fight against the helpful Janos of Super Villano. Deadpool & Wolverine classified by R of last year did not use almost any character from the main cinematographic universe of Marvel (MCU); The Postmodern Spider-Man: No Way Home paid tribute to Spider-Man’s films that are hurt by Marvel Studios; And Marvel’s latest movie, Thunderbolts*, also has its own different identity. That is not to suggest that it is not part of the MCU. In fact, one of his intelligent touches, which is specific, addresses how gloomy people feel in a world where Iron Man, Thor and Captain America are no longer there. But the director, Jake Shreier, and the screenwriters, Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, have come with a rebel version of the genre of superheroes that makes it the most refreshing MCU sacrifice in years.

The key is that, instead of trying to be as bright and expansive as infinity saga movies, Thunderbolts* is very funny, scruffy, with the feet on the ground. It is not the epic history of industrial titans that save the universe, much less the multiverse; It is a comedy -dyed box on secret agents of Bungling that are considered a responsibility for the same company that used to use them. It is not a new scenario: after Bourne’s identity, there were innumerable action films in which the rejected spies dodged their old managers. But Thunderbolts* stands out because it has a complete group of such skewers: a lot of depressive and dysfunctional loners who must work together and cannot stop complaining about it. What is especially unusual of the film, in terms of Marvel, is that its premise would be viable if the characters hide overlapping. And, in fact, they are not all so overlapping compared to Captain America and Thor mentioned above. Part of their attractiveness is that they can be killed by bullets and trapped in Roman with closed doors, which makes them long that they relate that the Nordic gods.

There is a lesson there that the creators of disappointments such as Eternal and The Marvels should have learned. They are not the powers of the characters what they tell; They are your personalities. In Thunderbolts*, those characters are Yelena (Florence Pugh), a Russian murderer who was the adoptive sister of the black widow of Scarlett Johansson, and is now deeply miserable about all meaningless violence in her life; His adoptive father, Red Guardian (David Harbor), a torn neighborhood that is nostalgic for his days as a national hero; The winter soldier of Bionicoico (Sebastian Stan), who was Captain America in World War, and still seems uncomfortable in the 21st century; John Walker. The confused and conflicting Bob (Lewis Pullman), another attempt to create a substitute for Captain America; and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), which is a scientific experiment that went wrong, but unlike the other characters, it is not very well defined beyond that. In several ways, everyone is connected with one of the most memorable slippery villains in Marvel, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a businesswoman with all the brittle confidence and condemning an excellent hope of the reliable.

La Fontaine, apparently, has been several black operations related to superheroes. Now that her political opponents are approaching it, decides to destroy all the evidence of their shaded companies, including the people who took them. And so it is that Yelena and the ethers change from trying to kill others to try to stay alive. They become a kind of equipment, but they are not sure or not called the rays, so the asterisk in the title means that it is only a position marker name until they can think of something better.

A small inconvenience is that most the rear stories of the characters are in other films, and in a television series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, instead of in Thunderbolts*. Another drawback is that the search for the gang through the Fontaine troops represents most of the films in the execution time, so there are no longer many established pieces that house the trailers. On the other hand, superhero movies are rarely closely focused, and rarely progress so sewn of a scene on stage, without stopping breathing, and no mouth jump at different ends of the earth. Captain America: Brave New World, who left in February, was similar to Thunderbolts* in which he revolved around Washington DC’s policy, and continued from the Falcon and the winter soldier. But that movie was a messy extension, while it is so perfectly drawn that you can get the yeast and enjoy the white walk, you are a Marvel nerd or not.

The underlying problems in Thunderbolts* are as focused as the narrative. The Characters All have to deal with the shame and trauma of their trubled ptests-And This theme is a there from the opening scene to the final requirement Battle, which is slightly Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending Mind-Bending and Mind-Bending and the amazing and hallucinating, amazing, amazing and hallucinating amazing and amazing, amazing and amazing amazing and amazing. Eternal Sunshine of the impeccable mind. In the middle, the guilt of the characters, explored in some moving and surprisingly brutal sequences, as well as in some very well written comic scenes, edited and with skilled performance.

At both extremes of the spectrum, Pugh offers an performance that would win its awards if it was in a superhero movie. She offers her drilling lines with the expert time, especially when she disputes and jokes with Guardian Network. But it can also radiate raw emotions, and everything while maintaining a decent accent and a steering wheel through its acrobatic struggle scenes. When it comes to that, that is why Thunderbolts* is much better than most Marvel post-Endgame movies. It is not just because it is a spy thriller with a rude heart over adorable and adorned antiheroes. It is because he has an actor as charismatic as Pugh in his center.