1 / 10
Official trailer
I’ve watched Thunderbolts once. The 1 is for one of the Phase Five entries that confirmed the franchise crisis state extends across the wider MCU regardless of specific property changes. The film attempts to assemble a team of antiheroes and morally compromised characters into something resembling the Suicide Squad structure that DC had explored. The attempt fails. The characters don’t cohere as ensemble. The film deploys the mental-health themes as decorative content instead of essential plot. The Sentry / Void antagonist mechanic is structurally confused.
Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova holds up the film through individual performance quality without the surrounding production supporting her work. The 1 is for a film whose individual elements work at varying quality levels embedded in a production that doesn’t function as unified narrative.
I wanted Pugh to finally get a film worthy of her, and this one irritated me from the vault onward. Yelena is the best new character Marvel has built in years, and here she’s stuck minding a roster of leftovers while the script talks about depression without doing anything with it.
Whenever she’s on screen I sit up. Whenever the film cuts away from her, I can feel the air go out of it.
The Setup
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has been recruiting morally compromised operatives across multiple Disney+ series and MCU productions. The roster includes Yelena Belova (Black Widow), Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier), Red Guardian (Yelena’s surrogate father from Black Widow), Ghost (Ant-Man and the Wasp), John Walker (the failed Captain America replacement from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), and Taskmaster. The operatives are sent to a remote vault for missions and discover that Valentina has been arranging for them to kill each other as part of her broader plan to eliminate compromising witnesses to her covert programs.
The team members survive the initial vault situation and discover Robert Reynolds, a Project Sentry test subject whose unstable mental state and reality-warping capabilities threaten broader destruction.
Reynolds is the Sentry, a Superman-analogue with parallel personality the Void that emerges during mental health crises. The middle act involves the team working through their broken trust while attempting to manage the Reynolds situation. The third act features the Sentry/Void’s near-destruction of New York and the team’s eventual stabilization of Reynolds through emotional acceptance instead of through physical combat.
Florence Pugh’s Performance
Florence Pugh continues as Yelena Belova in her largest MCU appearance since Black Widow.
The performance is strong and represents the film’s most consistent craft achievement. Pugh brings specific physical capability, emotional accessibility, and comedic timing to the role. The Yelena character has been the franchise’s most successful new lead introduction of the Phase Four-Five period.
The performance is operating in a different tone than the surrounding film supports. Pugh commits to real dramatic engagement with Yelena’s depression, professional disillusionment, and grief over her sister Natasha. The surrounding production doesn’t match the performance level. Other team members work at considerably lower commitment levels. The dialogue serving Pugh’s specific dramatic moments is uneven. The cumulative effect is that Pugh’s individual achievement exists within a production that can’t fully support what she’s doing.
Pugh is the one thing I’d save from this film. She plays Yelena’s grief for Natasha like it hurts, and I believed her. What made me grind my teeth is how little the people around her are asked to match it.
The pattern matches the wider Phase Four-Five issue of strong individual performances trapped within structurally compromised productions. Pugh’s Yelena in Black Widow (rated 0) had been the film’s only successful element. Pugh’s Yelena in Thunderbolts is similarly the film’s central asset. The franchise has consistently used Pugh’s commitment to raise material that doesn’t deserve her work. The pattern is unsustainable. Pugh’s individual career commitment can’t continue rescuing productions that fail through systematic problems beyond any individual actor’s ability to address.
For Writers
Thunderbolts shows the limits of individual performance rescue. Florence Pugh delivers strong work that works at higher craft level than the surrounding production supports. The performance can’t save the wider film because films fail through accumulated structural problems instead of through individual element weakness. Even exceptional performances can only rescue productions whose underlying structure is sound. The lesson for writers and production developers is that performance quality is necessary but not sufficient for film success.
If your screenplay doesn’t support your lead performer, the lead performer can’t save the screenplay through commitment alone. Pugh’s Yelena in this film delivers what the character requires. The film around the character doesn’t deliver what the ensemble structure requires. The performance survives the failure as individual achievement. The film doesn’t survive as production. Audiences experience both elements but the structural failure dominates the wider response.
The Mental Health Decoration
The film extensively positions itself as engagement with mental health themes. Yelena’s depression. Walker’s PTSD from his Captain America failure. Ghost’s continuing isolation. Reynolds’s psychotic dissociation. The team’s collective trauma and emotional dysregulation. The marketing emphasized these elements as evidence of the film’s real thematic engagement.
The mental health content annoyed me most, because it’s decorative signaling and none of it drives the plot. Remove the framing and the story proceeds with minor changes. Yelena’s depression gets verbal references and doesn’t shape the team’s mission. Walker’s PTSD is mentioned and never drives a decision some other trait couldn’t have driven. Reynolds’s dissociation is a villain mechanic the script could have built from ordinary motives. I think the film wanted credit for the subject without the substance.
The pattern is the wider Phase Four-Five issue of decorative thematic signaling combined with weak storytelling.
Mental health themes are positioned as evidence of the production’s real ambition. The themes themselves don’t generate plot or character development beyond their immediate scene references. The audience receives the signaling as marketing emphasis instead of as essential dramatic foundation. The signaling generates audience resistance that the franchise has consistently underestimated.
The Reynolds / Void resolution works through emotional acceptance instead of through physical combat.
The team eventually stabilizes Reynolds by engaging with his mental health instead of by fighting him. The resolution is presented as triumph of compassion over violence. The execution feels procedural instead of earned. The audience receives the emotional resolution as plot requirement instead of as developed character growth.
The Sentry / Void Mechanic
Lewis Pullman plays Robert Reynolds as the Sentry / Void character. The character is a Superman-analogue with parallel personality that emerges during mental health crises. The Sentry possesses effectively unlimited power. The Void represents Reynolds’s depression and self-loathing manifested as destructive force. The character’s mental state determines which version works at any given moment.
The mechanic is structurally confused. The film can’t establish clear rules for when Reynolds is Sentry versus Void. The transitions appear to happen for plot convenience instead of through consistent internal logic. The character’s near-unlimited power requires the script to invent specific weaknesses on demand to allow the resolution. The pattern matches the wider MCU issue of expanding character capabilities to meet plot needs at the cost of system constraints that drama requires.
I gave up on tracking the Sentry and the Void fairly early, because I don’t think the script was tracking them either. A villain who can do anything the plot needs is a villain I stop worrying about.
Pullman’s performance is professionally committed within the limits of the material. The character receives sufficient screen time to establish basic identity without receiving the development that would make Reynolds function as vivid antagonist with interior life. The mental health framing requires audience investment that the script doesn’t adequately earn through depicted character development.
The Team That Cannot Cohere
The Thunderbolts ensemble includes Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, John Walker, and Taskmaster. The characters have appeared across multiple previous MCU productions with varying levels of development. The film attempts to assemble them into functional ensemble despite their disparate backgrounds and incompatible personality dynamics.
The ensemble doesn’t cohere. The characters are collection of individuals instead of as functional team. The relationships between team members are referenced instead of developed.
The dialogue rotates through the characters without finding the interactions that would establish the team as ensemble. The film attempts ensemble character moments without providing the foundation work that would make them connect.
Sebastian Stan’s Bucky gets professional commitment and almost no new development. David Harbour’s Red Guardian repeats his Black Widow comedy without growing past it. Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost barely gets screen time for a speaking role. Wyatt Russell’s John Walker replays his Falcon and the Winter Soldier material. The film kills off Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster early, one more sign the franchise keeps recycling the character without committing to her. That Taskmaster death made me laugh out loud, and I don’t think the film wanted that reaction.
The Suicide Squad structure that the production was apparently attempting requires major character development time that the runtime doesn’t provide.
DC’s Suicide Squad films had faced similar challenges. The ensemble-of-antiheroes structure has been consistently difficult to execute successfully across multiple franchise attempts. Thunderbolts doesn’t solve the problem. The film continues the pattern of failed ensemble-antihero attempts that the wider genre has shown.
Craft: The Phase Five Pattern Continues
Craft Note
Thunderbolts is the Phase Five entry that confirmed the franchise crisis state extends across the wider MCU regardless of specific property changes or ensemble experiments. The film works through the same decorative thematic signaling, weak storytelling, and structural mismanagement that characterized previous Phase Four-Five productions. Florence Pugh’s continued performance commitment can’t rescue productions whose underlying problems exceed any individual actor’s ability to address.
The mental health themes are decoration instead of as essential plot foundation. The Sentry / Void mechanic is structurally confused. The team ensemble doesn’t cohere despite the established characters’ previous appearances.
The Suicide Squad structure that the production was attempting requires character development that the runtime didn’t provide. The cumulative effect is a film that fails through accumulated structural problems instead of through individual element weakness.
The lesson for franchise filmmaking is that the pattern of decorative thematic signaling combined with weak storytelling can’t be sustained indefinitely. Audiences have been responding to the pattern across multiple Phase Four-Five productions through reduced attendance and negative critical response. Thunderbolts continued the pattern despite the documented commercial damage that similar approaches had caused. The franchise hasn’t yet adjusted its underlying creative approach in ways that would address the wider audience confidence collapse.
The 1 ratings are for the structural failures despite Pugh’s individual performance achievement. The film has moments that work, but as a whole it doesn’t. The Yelena Belova character continues to work at higher craft level than the surrounding productions support. The pattern is unsustainable for the franchise long-term. The MCU’s Phase Five problems persist through this release.
For analysis of the wider Phase Five crisis state, see How The Multiverse Destroyed The MCU.
Should you skip Thunderbolts?
A 1. Thunderbolts is one of the Phase Five entries that confirmed the franchise crisis state extends across the wider MCU regardless of specific property changes. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova continues to work at higher craft level than the surrounding productions support. The mental health themes are decorative signaling instead of essential plot. The Sentry / Void antagonist mechanic is structurally confused. The team ensemble doesn’t cohere despite the established characters’ previous appearances. The Suicide Squad structure that the production was apparently attempting fails through inadequate character development time.
I’ve watched it once and I don’t plan to watch it again.
The 1 is what it earns: a cast of leftovers that never becomes a team, a villain with no rules, and a mental health theme used as a marketing badge. Pugh is the only reason I’d hesitate before calling it a total waste, and she deserved a film that knew what to do with her. Some viewers will score it a little higher for her, and I get that, but watching Marvel spend her like this is a depressing sight.
