Fort Kent Cinema Blog
For dedicated Marvel fans, “Thunderbolts” fits neatly into the Marvel Studios timeline. As a continuation, or sequel, it makes perfect sense. However, as a casual fan of the MCU, it took me about 20 minutes to realize that the plot of this latest Marvel entry owes a great deal to the standalone 2021 “Black Widow” movie starring Scarlett Johansson.
Returning to the big screen from that movie are Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexi Shostakov/Red Guardian and Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster.
Also on hand is Marvel mainstay Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier, who has since been elected a U.S. Congressman.
And in a major casting coup, Julia Louis-Dreyfus shows up as an integral character (Finally! An explanation for those random cameos.) With a streak of white hair, she looks like a Cruella De Ville wannabe, but with even more sinister motives.
Her Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, as CIA Director, dispatches Yelena to an underground facility where the girl finds herself at odds with what appears to be a motley group of assassins. Eventually, though, the group realizes they’re caught in a web of deceit hatched by the evil Allegra and decide there’s safety in numbers.
And then they meet Bob (Lewis Pullman). Just Bob. Bob is dressed in hospital scrubs and doesn’t appear to know how he got himself in such a pickle. He seems sweetly dim, almost to the point of comic relief. Understandable, since this movie is the creation of the crew behind the Emmy-winning TV comedy “Beef.”
And then just like that, the huge gates that define the gargantuan space slam shut and the group realizes Yelena’s assignment is a trap and the room is actually an incinerator. Fortunately, one of the four is capable of disappearing through walls and manages to open a gate just as a digital clock on the wall ticks down to zero. Ya gotta love Hollywood.
So now the chase is on. The merry band of misfits outwits a small army outside and makes their getaway. But not before the mysterious Bob somehow goes airborne and then slams back to earth and destroys the heroes’ escape route.
Allegra’s goons capture him and take him to a secret lab in New York City where she can keep an eye on him and learn more about his growing superpowers, including levitation and why he packs a mean left hook.
Marvel Studios is now under new management and it’s clear this scrappy addition is meant to announce where the MCU is headed. You might be surprised.