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Remember the days when Marvel couldn’t make engaging villains? Now they have a whole movie full of them, and it looks like their best offering in years. This is the gleefully nuts 1st trailer for Thunderbolts.
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) confesses to her sympathetic washed-up superhero father Alexei (David Harbour) that she feels lost and unfulfilled, despite her job as a hitman for CIA agent Valentina De Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). On a covert mission, Belova crosses paths with John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), both working as covert agents.
Alongside a mysterious man named Bob (Lewis Pullman) who doesn’t understand how he got there, the motley crew is brought before De Fontaine, who explains that only bad people truly exist in the world. Intercut are scenes of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) working in the US government before donning the Winter Soldier garb once more.
As each of the morally dubious vigilantes works through their own issues, they’re forced into a mission more dangerous than any of them could have every imagined.
Thunderbolts (2025) – source: [Marvel Studios]Marvel Studios’ recent films have often felt overwrought, struggling under the weight of the sprawling cinematic universe each new piece must fit into. Thunderbolts feels like the first film that attempts to lead with thematic resonance, allowing worldbuilding to naturally flow rather than the other way around.
Many of these characters felt like extraneous pieces of the IP they were introduced in. There was a collective eye-roll as the public thought, “well, now they’ll have to make a spinoff about *x*, oh great”. This meta-relationship sells the “spare parts” theme of the film better than any writing ever could. The 1st trailer, interestingly, is quite low on spectacle, letting the mental states of the lead characters guide the plot.
The character work feels more raw than the goofier portrayals throughout much of Stage V. Pugh and Harbour, specifically, have a warmth and relatability that sell underdog heroism more than any quippy sass-master ever could. Louis-Dreyfus continues her snide overlord shtick to perfection, while wild card Pullman imbues “Bob” AKA Sentry with a puppy-dog charm masking a sinister underbelly. For those who don’t know, Sentry is essentially schizophrenic Superman in the comics. Brief shots of Bob’s mask slipping provide the trailer’s most spine-tingling moments.
The visual department has also stepped up its game, with the action having a grounded and sparser palette it than recent CGI fests. It feels like a very conscious deconstruction of a franchise that has tried to top itself so often that its spectacle has lost all meaning. If the 1st trailer is anything to go by, Thunderbolts could signal an ideological change in Marvel far beyond any storyline pivots. A marked return to character could be just what the doctor ordered for Marvel to reign supreme over 2025’s box office once more.
Directed by Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts will be released theatrically in the US on May 2, 2025. The movie stars an ensemble cast led by Sebastian Stan, Florence Pugh, and Lewis Pullman.
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