With half-baked 'Thunderbolts', Marvel again fails to produce a fresh experience

Florence Pugh and company do their best to make it worthy, but time and change can be harsh.

Have you ever eaten an undercooked pizza?

You order it at the restaurant with the high hopes of devouring a delicious combination of bread, cheese, and toppings. It’s like walking into an arena for a concert, only this one is made of dough and flour splashes everywhere you touch. The anticipation is white hot, and then the dish shows up. You pull apart the first piece, and the tip of it sinks like the Titanic.

That’s the food comparison experience of watching Thunderbolts*, the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe addition that would have felt fresh ten years ago. Starring Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, along with a slew of “you may know them from before” actors, it drudges up the seemingly unkillable appeal of a group of misfit toy mercenaries coming together to fight evil… or something resembling it.

Lewis Pullman, son of Bill, plays another character named Bob, just like he did in Top Gun: Maverick. Only this time, instead of being a sweet and nerdy pilot, he’s something else entirely. Spoiling his character’s true intent wouldn’t increase or lessen the allure for the viewer.

Pugh’s Yelena, the sister of Scarlett Johansson’s departed Natasha, is suffering from a deep bout of depression amid her everyday job of seeking and destroying various people and things. Her pops, the Red Guardian (David Harbour doing everything he can) gripes at the Door Dash delivery guy for not leaving the food at the door while eating snacks in his underwear. Stan’s Bucky is a wannabe politician who can’t shake the desire to make things right. Wyatt Russell’s undercooked Captain America still can’t shake the public display of murder that won’t leave his mind or reputation.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ power player wants them all gone, and the bulk of the movie revolves around her endless plight to see that task through to the end. I found it a task to stay awake to the very end of this overlong, tepid adventure film. There aren’t many movies that make me overly sleepy on a Saturday afternoon, but this one accomplished the task. I watched 90% of it fully lucid, and that was quite enough.

The cast is talented enough, but the material is low bar for this overrun genre. To make another food reference, this is the overly dry piece of chicken left on the grill too long on a summer day when the pool is open. You place it on there with the innate desire to make something tasty and fresh, and then it goes bad and loses taste. There’s nothing new here--even the underdeveloped depression angle is never fully fleshed out. It’s a gimmick for the characters to feel some purpose and fight back against something, but the opposition is never strong enough to form a dual-sided plot that gives the film any weight.

Thunderbolts* needed a better class of criminal to heighten the dull aspects of its makeup. Instead of being something worth discovering, it’s an undercooked pizza that the audience will consume, but won’t be writing home about and wish it was better assembled. I’d watch something else, like The Accountant 2 or the universally loved Sinners.

Marvel used to be great. They reinvented superhero movies with a witty blend of crispy dialogue, inventive action, and great casts. It’s been six years since Avengers: Endgame, though, and 98% of their output feels like strenuous efforts to replicate the past. Something fresh would be nice.