Thunder Butts

Like a lot of geeks and weirdos, I was excited to see new MCU movie Thunderbolts* (2025). Not enough to see it at the theater of course, but enough to get jazzed when it showed up at the library.

It starts with Florence Pugh as the new Red Widow attacking a lab in a skyscraper. She kills a bunch of guards, and sort of accidentally the scientist trying to tell her that Valentina had it all wrong. Then she blows the place up. All the while, she is internal-monologing about how bored and dissatisfied with this life she is. 

Valentina is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a government official who has been doing off the books research into creating new Avengers. Now she is being impeached by congress, including newly elected representative, Sebastian Stan, Bucky Barnes. To cover her tracks, she has her agents, like Pugh, going around blowing up all her clandestine labs, and killing all participants. 

On one of these missions, Pugh meets up with: 

• U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), a cutrate Captain America (from Falcon and Winter Soldier)
• Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), a skilled fighter (from Black Widow)
• Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who can phased in and out of her physical form (from Ant-Man and the Wasp)
• Bob (Lewis Pullman), apparently an amnesiac, bipolar mental patient in hospital gown

They figure out that Louis-Dreyfus has sent them all to kill each other off, then be incinerated. Somehow, Bob manages to get them all out (except Kuruylenko, who John-Kamen kills right away). They are picked up in the desert by Red Guardian, David Harbour, to Pugh's dismay. He runs a lino service now, so he has plenty of room.

That's the setup, pretty much. Harbour and Pugh reminisce about her Pee Wee soccer team, the Thunderbolts, who never won a game. That became the name of this team, because they are a bunch of losers and second-raters. 

Meanwhile, Stan is trying to turn Valentina's secretary, Geraldine Viswanathan, to his side, using a little humanitarian appeal, a little sex appeal. He tracks down the Thunderbolts, and joins them.

But what about Bob?

I enjoyed this, although (or because) it's pretty silly. It was clearly made with (the) Suicide Squad in mind. I'm a little annoyed with the Valentina role, because I remember her as the Contessa from the 1970s Steranko's run of Nick Fury - a sexy super-agent. But why not? If you want an amoral sleazy wheeler-dealer, she fits pretty well. Her dialog is pretty fun, all political BS and buzzwords. At least, I assume this was supposed to be satirical - a lot of the movie is like that. Is it written tongue-in-cheek or sincerely?

I don't mind the type of MCU movies that are cynical and silly. Some of them I like a lot. I would like them to try a different tone sometime. Any different tone.