Thunderbolts Review: Marvel’s Misfit Team Delivers Thin Plot and Florence Pugh’s Star Power

by Tom May 4, 2025

Marvel’s Thunderbolts arrives with the weight of high expectations, and a cast stacked with returning fan favorites, but despite a few bright spots, this antihero team-up lands somewhere in the middle of the MCU pack. While Florence Pugh’s performance as Yelena Belova continues to be a standout, the film’s muddled tone, clunky exploration of mental illness, and flat humor make it feel like more of a checklist than a cohesive story. Thunderbolts is competent, occasionally fun, and sure to please die-hard fans, but it rarely justifies its own existence beyond advancing the larger Marvel machine.

Thunderbolts Review: Marvel’s Misfit Team Delivers Thin Plot and Florence Pugh’s Star Power

– “Thunderbolts” is a new Marvel Studios film that spotlights heroes who emerge from the shadows of more well-known counterparts, and in doing so, attempts to reinvigorate the franchise.
– The film’s ensemble cast, led by Florence Pugh, provides solid performances while battling Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina, who seeks to destroy evidence to protect herself from a Congressional investigation.
– Criticisms of a drab visual palette and some underwritten characters, “Thunderbolts” trys to offer an engaging story that harks back to the early days of Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The film, directed by Jake Schreier, brings together a ragtag squad of morally gray heroes including Yelena (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). On paper, it’s an exciting premise: a grounded, gritty Marvel movie about redemption and accountability, devoid of the usual galaxy-spanning stakes. But in execution, Thunderbolts is a story in search of structure; overstuffed with characters and ideas that never quite gel.

Florence Pugh is the glue holding the movie together. Once again, she brings wit, warmth, and complexity to Yelena, balancing deadpan snark with genuine vulnerability. Her performance elevates every scene she’s in, and she’s the only character whose emotional arc feels fully realized. Whether she’s awkwardly bonding with Bucky or facing down her own internal demons, Pugh consistently sells it. If Marvel plans to build future phases around her, that’s a decision worth getting behind.

Unfortunately, the rest of the ensemble doesn’t fare as well. Bucky is present but underused, reduced to a few brooding glances and gruff one-liners. Ghost is given intriguing setup as a haunted, unstable presence, but the film never follows through in a satisfying way. And Taskmaster, already a divisive character from Black Widow, remains little more than a silent enigma. There’s an air of “just checking in” with many of these characters, as though the film is more concerned with slotting them back into canon than giving them real narrative purpose.

Tonally, Thunderbolts struggles most with its handling of mental illness and trauma, which it clumsily frames as both theme and plot device. The story attempts to explore how broken people cope with past sins and systemic manipulation, but does so with a mix of shallow dialogue and overwrought metaphors. Rather than committing to a serious portrayal of grief, PTSD, or emotional isolation, it opts for vague flashbacks, teary confessions, and, jarringly, some truly misplaced jokes.

And about those jokes: Marvel humor fatigue is real, and Thunderbolts does little to reinvigorate the formula. Quips often fall flat, and scenes meant to be comedic relief are more awkward than amusing. There’s a running gag involving “sad rooms” that’s so bafflingly staged and written, it feels like a parody of Marvel’s own tone-deaf moments. The script seems unsure whether it wants to be a grim redemption tale or a snarky buddy comedy, and ends up straddling both in a way that satisfies neither.

Visually, the movie is competent but uninspired. Action scenes are fine, with quick cuts, lots of grunts and grapples, but lack any standout choreography or memorable set pieces. The CG is serviceable, but with a budget reportedly hovering around $200 million, it’s fair to expect more than drab corridors and indistinct cityscapes. There are hints of style in certain flashbacks and character moments, but they’re fleeting, quickly buried under exposition and setup.

Ultimately, Thunderbolts seems most interested in being a Marvel movie rather than telling a compelling standalone story. Its biggest moments often rely on cameos and callbacks, and there’s a nagging sense that the film is less about its own plot than planting seeds for future projects. For fans who cheer every time a familiar face appears, that might be enough. But for anyone looking for a tighter, character-driven action movie, Thunderbolts doesn’t quite deliver.

Thunderbolts isn’t a total misfire, but it feels like a missed opportunity. Florence Pugh is electric and deserves better than the disjointed ensemble she’s saddled with. The film flirts with deeper ideas but never commits, and when it tries to be funny, it stumbles. For diehard Marvel fans, there’s enough connective tissue to stay engaged. For everyone else, it’s a passable, forgettable entry that squanders a promising cast and concept.