Thunderbolts*

🎵 The song for this post is Nonsense, by Sabrina Carpenter. 🎵

I saw Thunderbolts yesterday. Here are a bunch of reactions I had. First section contains no spoilers, second is spoilertacular, be warned!

(see other art crits if you like me reacting to art)

No spoiler section

Why did I watch this?

I didn't even know there was a new Marvel movie out. But two very, very different sources on my feeds endorsed it: the first is a TikToker and YouTuber I like who's whole deal is comics lore:

And the second is someone I've followed on Twitter for over a decade now, who I consider encyclopedic about movies. Additionally, he seemed almost reluctant to endorse it, which makes the endorsement even stronger:

I agree with them: this movie was good! I'm glad I saw it! I think if you come away from this hoping to see it, great.

But also: I would urge you to consider Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a genre-ey fun movie that I liked a bit more and that got way less recognition. But hey, if you want a "go to the movies" experience that's more easy viewing than Sinners, or just miss when you liked the MCU, check out Thunderbolts.

The following sections are other reactions, besides "I liked it!"

The Disney franchise "B-Team hypothesis"

I heard a theory that I unfortunately can't remember the source, but it goes like this:

Critics (and I) loved The Mandalorian Season 1, but with the exception of Andor, every other Star Wars series on Disney+ failed to make much of an impact or say anything, feeling like a waste of the franchise. Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, The Acolyte, The Book of Boba Fett, hell, even later seasons of The Mandalorian landed with a plop. How did the flagship Disney+ launch show happen to bottle lightning in a way they couldn't recreate later?

The theory I liked was: all the career-climbers and ambitious executives were busy working on Rise of Skywalker, being made at the same time. While the bigwigs weren't looking, the "B-Team" was just kind of allowed to do their own thing, and left to their own devices, they made an actually fun and interesting bit of sci-fi.

The Mandalorian didn't cast superstars: the biggest was Pedro Pascal, and even he has mostly exploded into superstardom after The Mandalorian. Even then, they barely used him like a star: he was hidden behind a helmet the whole time. As for the rest of the supporting cast, these strike me as similarly inspired, more by questions of craft than sheen or marketing. These were people who were at the top of their game, but only if you care about the game of "making art:" who else but Bill Burr has the Bill Burr energy that enriched that character? Prior to learning that she was a political liability, Gina Carano was an incredibly fresh and welcome presence. Your evil Imperial researcher is Werner Herzog!?! Has anyone in history ever not wanted to look at Carl Weathers? They found a way to put Giancarlo Esposito in a villainous role that looks intimidating and feels different, even after the poor guy only got "big boss" villain roles for the decade after Breaking Bad.

These are not choices by people looking at audience polling; these were inspired by craftspeople who are following artistic judgement. Contrast with The Rise of Skywalker: after The Last Jedi became a cultural cause for the loudest, most obnoxious little shits on the Internet, the Skywalker crew folks gave those dipshits everything they wanted. They hired J.J. Abrams again who did The Force Awakens (more of an homage than an original piece, which is his whole thing). They sidelined all of Rian Johnson's new characters like Rose Tico, and retconned most of his compositional choices (Rey is actually from Force nobility!). They made it clear that FinnPoe was never, ever gonna happen. They brought Palpatine back from the dead! It was all so stupid!

When I refer to the "B-Team," I don't mean in craft, rather, the org tree. Disney's franchise strategy, of focus-grouping a canon Star Wars movie while the other team was just allowed to make a cool new property, reminded me of when Burger King went hard on marketing while Wendy's went hard on their food: Wendy's eventually unseated Burger King's number 2 spot this way. Marketing and selling are so, so important, but at the end of the day, you do have to deliver the goods to the customers, since they're not eating your marketing.

So the "B-Team" hypothesis is this: when Disney is putting all their might behind something, its ceiling is "average," and the expected value is "sucks." When they don't have all their career-climbers in place, the floor is still pretty low (e.g. Ant-Man Quantumania) but the ceiling is a lot higher.

You also see this in the MCU: when it was starting, Iron Man was miles away from Marvel's most marketeable superhero, and Robert Downey Jr. was mostly known for his fall from grace from the 90's. Chris Evans was, at most, the poor guy who played the Human Torch in that awful F4 movie. Nobody had heard of Chris Hemsworth. Who was the early MCU star who flopped hardest? The biggest star they'd ever cast: Edward Norton!

After the first Avengers, I don't know who was clamoring for another Thor movie after Thor 2: The Dark World, so they gave it to a guy who made a comedy where he plays Hitler and a vampire TV show. Thor: Ragnarok was an absolute surprise hit, and when it came time to follow that up, you know the career-climbers and studio heads got more involved in its sequel, which sucked. Similarly, if you're promotion-minded and following audience polling, you probably didn't attach yourself to "the Black hero's" movie. Black Panther is one of the MCU's biggest successes, and the follow-up couldn't live up to the first (in fairness: I can name 3-4 reasons for this, that probably wasn't "the career climbers got involved." And commercially, it's still one of the better box office performers for that phase of Marvel). Did anyone ever expect Guardians of the Galaxy to be one of the most consistently spectacular adaptations for the screen from the world of Marvel comics?

All this to say, I think Thunderbolts has "Disney B-Team" energy: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes is the closest thing this movie has to an established star or marketeable character, but everyone else gets to make bolder choices. David Harbour didn't nail it as Hellboy, and to be honest I'm not sure I myself love him as Red Guardian, but the man fucking commits, and after a decade of safe Whedon-esque quippy dialogue between beautiful people, it does feel good to see the comic relief character go ham. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the most talented comediennes in our lifetimes (Seinfeld and Veep? For decades? Baby, that's talent), so we finally give her real screen time and agency in this MCU role. After a decade of lazy and disposable MCU enemies ("poor people deserve to eat, and imperialism is wrong! now: time to murder children"), the villain in this feels like Disney throwing us a bone instead of jangling a formulaic set of keys. US Agent! I love watching a little jerk that seems to really get why people become little jerks: because they're sad, insecure pieces of shit, for whom there is a path to empathy, but they have to earn it, dammit.

I can see why "choosing craft when it matters" is rare for Disney. Most companies these days are run not to serve customers or fulfill their promises to them, but to be financial instruments and work gameable market forces. The Burger King vs. Wendy's story I linked above was from 2012: that was the Obama administration, and enough of the electorate was still grounded somewhere close to truth. These days, the Burger King strategy wins. Consider successful businesses like Joann's Fabrics or Instant Pot getting gutted and looted by PE firms for immediate returns (1, 2). Meanwhile, Netflix is also redefining "movies" to be content slop that is almost designed to be ignored, a gross insult to the craft. It makes sense that Disney feels inclined to play the safe game. But these "B-Team" plays are a reminder: you gotta make art, dammit.

Bonus: reaction to a poster outside the theatre

Putting this behind an expandable because it's not really about Thunderbolts

Only including this at the top section because it's technically spoiler-free from the movie, but I had a reaction seeing this poster, for what looks like a shoot-em-up movie set in the John Wick universe starring Ana de Armas:

Will it work this time? Here I mean "action shooter starring a Hispanic-coded woman." Zoe Saldana is able to pick her projects and arguably the most commercially successful Brown woman in Hollywood ever, certainly dominating the silver screen for the past two decades. But nobody remembers Colombiana:

And I've always felt Jane the Virgin was one of the best shows in television history, so it's been weird to see its stars book so little follow-up work. Justin Baldoni got himself embroiled in a major scandal, and Jaime Camil got a few follow-up gigs (largely voice like Coco and Bojack Horseman, but also a few Mexican movie flops). But Gina Rodriguez herself? Also a scandal or two, but the first major project I learned about was Ms. Bala, which was pretty widely panned.

I'm not saying it can't work: Ballerina seems to be bringing in all the major talent, I think Ana de Armas uplifts every project she works in. But after The Marvels being the biggest flop in the last decade, and Batwoman getting shelved, and Halle Berry's Catwoman being considered one of the biggest flops of its era, right up there with Jennifer Gardner's Electra... idk, I want these movies to succeed so damned much, but the data is harsh.

Spoiler time. You've been warned!

Other pieces mash-up

Bob and Void are extremely Madeline and Badeline in Celeste. The climax of the movie where Void is taunting Bob, and Bob tries to "kill" and harm Void, and they heroes have hug him to keep him from hating himself and his depression is extremely Madeline "it's okay to be scared" and hugging Badeline.

Void's little universes of hell and pain are a little bit the horror movie Cube ("we have to traverse a bunch of horrible, trapped rooms meant to torture us") but more Everything Everywhere All At Once ("an all-powerful being creates little hells because they're succumbing to nihilism, represented as a pure black, and making it everyone's problem. The solution is to be Loved out of it").

Aesthetically, parts of this movie reminded me lightly of the game Control. Much of that game is telepathically throwing furniture and objects and people in brutalist and office settings, and most of Void's attacks felt very similar in the private hells. Void's nihilism taking over from the inside and spreading to people it "infects" is a bit like "The Hiss."

Everyone's all about the following themes

"Man, Superman is scary as shit, huh?" Sentry is the latest all-powerful God hero. Homelander from The Boys and the show Invincible look at this. One-Punch Man looks at this.

"Men who get lonely or feel disempowered do terrible damage when they acquire power." This was Spot in Beyond the Spider-Verse, who gets called "monster of the week" and later gets overpowered and lashes out at all the people he feels were ignoring him. This is "Rusty" in Deadpool 2. This is Credence in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It's usually an unassuming and depressed guy, and the heroes have to reach out and remind them they're lovable and not alone and it's not worth destroying everything.

I think this is a cultural cope for the alt-right? Artists responding to the political movement spawned by GamerGate. I also think it's the urge we have now to make every villain have some kind of Sad Backstory instead of letting anyone just be evil (thinking of how Disney made a prequel for Cruella Deville where her parents were tragically killed by an accident involving misbehaving dalmations. Just... c'mon guys. She was fine).

A party that doesn't trust each other a great party indeed

I played tabletop RPGs with some very wonderful people in the 2010s. You can see the various characters I made to get a sense of how varied and imaginative the games were, but watching Thunderbolts brought the game I piloted "Fin" for to mind, since it had a chemistry the other games lacked: our characters hated each other. There were three of us, and while the other two had collaborated before, they met my character under extremely confusing, antagonistic circumstances, and our working together was forced. So: we kept threatening to kill each other, and my character kept trying to break away and escape while the other two had to keep them from doing that, while all three of us had to had to solve a big mystery and carry out operations.

On one hand: the real magic of D&D and games like it is getting to solve problems with your friends. But also: all drama is made of conflict. Stakes! And within a party is a great place to put them.

This is part of what made the Guardians movies pop, and why Civil War was an especially entertaining Avengers title. Thunderbolts pushes this a little to the extreme.

Asshole Shep

I never finished Mass Effect, but there's a narrative around it that I loved. I remembered it as "the Asshole Shep" run, but now I know it's called a "Renegade run." Much like "Nuzlocke Run" in Pokemon, this challenges the player to play the game a specific way. If you're not familiar with Mass Effect, you play as Commander Shepherd ("Shep") and over the course of the game you have many, many choices to decide how he responds verbally to the other characters. Among your choices, there's usually a cocky or entitled option. "Renegade" asks you to play the game and always be the most insufferable, self-assured, annoying little bastard you can.

What's funny about this is the rest of the game carries on as normal, so: you still end up saving the universe, preventing genocides, subverting evil plots. But you're also just such a fucking asshole about it.

US Agent reminded me of this. There are very good reasons why most authors make their leads likeable, and/or have likeable characters moving the action as heroes. But what if a show's least likeable people did everything heroic? What if the most likeable people were horribly ineffective at their jobs?

In life, I sometimes struggle when the likeable people at my job suck at them.