Thunderbolts* - SPOILER Talk!

Yeah, I don't always do a spoiler talk video, but you all clocked in for my spoiler-free reviews, so you know what? Let's talk spoilers. And that's my spoiler warning for the Thunderbolts movie. If you haven't seen the Thunderbolts yet, Thunderbolts, there's no the. Nope, it's just Thunderbolts. Rest assured, if they ever reboot Thunderbolts, it will be the Thunderbolts at that point. But yeah, spoiler warning, if you haven't seen Thunderbolts by now, that's your spoiler warning. You might not wanna watch this video unless you don't care, in which stick around. And this isn't gonna be a play-by-play, it's just me talking about some spoiler-ish things that I couldn't talk about in my spoiler-free review, which is, that is to say, all right, we're gonna talk a lot more about Bob. All right, so Thunderbolts starts out with new Black Widow, Florence Pugh, she's on a mission. And she's kinda, you know, bored with life, just routine at this point. Elaine sends her on this mission in which three other folks are there all trying to kill each other. She's there, Ghost is there, Johnny Walker, red, white, and blue labels there, and fake Taskmaster, rest in peace. I like the fact that in my spoiler-free review, I alluded to the fact that Taskmaster bites it. Though, if you look at the promotional material, Taskmaster's kind of in the background on the posters, isn't really in the trailers much, except one trailer briefly. I feel like most everyone was like, I think Taskmaster bites it. Taskmaster unceremoniously just gets shot through the mask, shot in the head, done. My heart does go out for the actress, though I feel bad for her. She was probably like, oh, I get to be a part of the MCU, the biggest IP in cinematic history. Little did she know, she was playing a butchered version of the character that's comparable to Deadpool in X-Men Origins Wolverine. But the MCU's in such a weird place now, where it's like, I feel like they could bring in an actual accurate Taskmaster and have it totally work in the lore. Here's this guy with those abilities, and he's the new Taskmaster now. So Julia Louis-Dreyfus has sent them all there on kill missions for each other. She just wants them to wipe each other out, and then little do they know, this vault that they've broken into is actually an incinerator that's going to incinerate all of the evidence, including the survivor, the bodies of whoever's dead after that fight. And Bob, Bob just kind of rises from the grave in this vault and is just like, I'm Bob. Luckily, I rose from the grave when you all were here. Otherwise, I might've starved to death before I figured out my powers. Would Bob starve to death? Does he eat? Because he's pretty godly. Anyhow, I'll get there. So they all have to work together to figure out how to get out of this room, which at first I was like, is the whole movie going to take place in this one building? Is it like Dread, but in an incinerator that will then become other rooms and folks are gonna come in and try to kill them, but it's this one building? Not gonna lie, I would've been totally cool with that. On the way up, Bob gets lit up by a bunch of bullets. He drops to the ground and, well, he gets right back up and then flies up and crashes. That point is Bob has powers that Bob doesn't even understand yet. So Ghost, Yelena, Johnny Walker, they all get picked up by Red Guardian in his tacky limo and this is when the film hits its stride, folks. Military's coming after them, Bucky takes him out, he still has his gun that shoots little landmines and blows cars up. The chemistry and the dynamic between Red Guardian and Bucky, Winter Soldier. I love that. It cracked me up. It felt like Red Guardian has some sort of hero worship for Winter Soldier. Kind of reminded me of Civil War, the comic book. There's a scene in the comic book where the teams are taking on heroes, villains, anyone will stand with them and Punisher just blows away these villains, just kills them all and Cap decks them, it's pretty much like, you get out. And someone says, you gotta understand, Cap's probably the reason Frank Castle signed up for the military in the first place. I kind of felt like Red Guardian has that kind of hero worship for the Winter Soldier. Winter Soldier's probably this myth, this legend he heard about as a kid, as a young adult, and there he is, now he's working with him. It doesn't expressly say that, but I like that. That's my headcanon anyway. I would totally be down for a Red Guardian and the Winter Soldier movie. I'm just saying. There's a scene where Bob is honing his powers with Valentina and he blows a glass of water up. You're like, okay, he's honing his power, he's getting a feel of him, he's not quite gonna, oh. Okay, so he's sentry now. The Thunderbolts have this action sequence where they beat some ass and she's like, okay, I left the door unlocked, just come on up, we'll talk. They're up in her office, the old Avengers Tower, Stark Tower, Avengers Tower, now her office, I guess. But they're there and there's Bob with his new outfit, his new blonde hair, his powers that he can completely control. Felt that was fast-tracked as hell, man. This movie did in 10 minutes what Smallville took 10 years to do. Take a seemingly normal person with powers he doesn't really know and turn him into super powerful demigod man. Only he has more powers than Superman. It's like he has Superman powers from Superman the movie and the sequel. Invincibility, super strength, flight, heat vision, teleportation, and telekinesis. All the Kryptonian powers of Superman the movie and Superman II, the theatrical cut, not the Donner cut, crushed into one person. No cellophane logo power, missed opportunity. So he fights the Thunderbolts, beats their asses, in which a couple of them probably should have died, but after they retreat, he very quickly realizes, like, wait a minute, you don't have any power over me, lady. Why do I have to listen to you? I am the most powerful thing the MCU's seen at this point. I do feel like that's kind of buzzing getting to the end of the movie, by the way, but sorry about that. We're gonna jump back, but to have him as part of the new Avengers, I feel like he'll just win. He doesn't even need to be a part of a group. Will he realize that again? I don't know. Point is, there's a kill switch in his head and she's gonna hit it, but he stops her and then her assistant hits it and knocks him out. Next point of business for him should be getting that thing out, whatever that kill switch is, but then you see him become Dark Link, a much bigger problem in which he just looks at people and points at them and they turn into shadows on the ground and the shadow starts spreading from him throughout New York and the people are just turning into shadows and you realize at a point, they're not dying, they're being taken to some sort of shadow realm where they face their demons. Yeah, it looked pretty scary, but in retrospect, it looks like he's doing some good for New York. He's making New Yorkers face their demons. This is 2025 New York, man. They need some of that there. You think at the end, when it all got resolved and everyone came back, was he like, see, you're welcome guys. Now you can proceed with your lives without the demons of your past controlling you. So Yelena goes into the shadow and she's facing the demons of her past in which she gets to confront Bob, in which the rest of the Thunderbolts end up there. They all had their trauma rooms. They had to deal with, but we didn't get to see it. I would have liked to have seen that though. I would have liked to have seen a little more of that. That would have been kind of epic. Like I get it, you want to flesh out Florence Pugh's character for the audience because she's a main player in the MCU going forward. However, Bucky's the one I'm most attached to. He's actually one of the ones carrying this movie for me. He and Red Guardian, like I said. Seeing him face some of those demons of the past that we know about, we haven't seen all of. That could have been pretty sweet. So it all kind of gets taken care of in Bob's mind. Cause you know, they talk about their problem. How you can't bury it down. You have to face your demons. You got to face your fears. You got to face your past. Everyone comes back and within a couple of minutes, the movie is over. It ends. In which they become the new Avengers. That's another thing. Are they though? So a problem I have with the MCU right now is a problem they can definitely fix going forward. It just takes a conversation. It takes having the people in the room and the guardrails in place. It feels like that's how the MCU initially got it done. They're losing that. It feels like now more than what happened in the past, writers are able to take characters in certain directions and the next writer is able to be like, I don't want that or we can't do that because I need the character to go here. So just kind of undo it. Like Bucky, who was a congressman in Captain America, Brave New World. In this movie, he's not. He only lasted one term. Why? Because you can't have a congressman out there being part of a Thunderbolt. I don't know if it is a case of a writer wanting to do one thing and the next writer didn't, but that's what it comes across as. That's what it feels like. That's how I'm processing it because we've seen this before. Disney's Star Wars has done a lot of that. I want them to not do with the MCU what was done to Star Wars. So at the end of the movie, when it's announced these are your new Avengers, I have that thought of, well, are they? Are they going to be in the next movie? Or the next MCU movie, is that going to go away in between movies like Bucky's political career? So there are two post-credit scenes I feel like they should have been reversed. Maybe I'm a little biased, but the first one is Red Guardian getting someone's cereal and the, well, new Avengers, the Thunderbolts, they're on the Wheaties box. He's putting it up to his face, kind of trying to show that he's on the Wheaties box. The second one's the important one, which I'm not going to front. I watched the YouTube bootleg of it. It's on YouTube. Well, that and people told me what it was. Point, I didn't stay for it because after the MIG credit scene, I was like, okay, I gotta get home. I want to beat traffic. I'm in a parking garage. I don't want to be in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get out of the parking garage when everyone exits this theater at the same time. But yeah, it's on, well, half of it's online. The first part I heard about, and that's, I guess Sam Wilson is suing the new Avengers for the rights, you know, the copyright, the name Avengers. Is that happening? But a multidimensional ship enters orbit and they're like, all right, on screen. You see a ship and it turns and it's the four. It's the Fantastic Four logo. Reed might be like, hey, we need a place to crash. Galactus just played ping pong with our earth using our world as the ball. A post-credit scene that actually felt like it meant something, that was meant to point to the next thing that we should be excited for. In the end, yeah, I felt like I went a little hard on my review for Thunderbolts, but it's like this. Thunderbolts is a fun team-up MCU film on a smaller scale than we're used to for the MCU, largely carried by the chemistry between two characters in particular, Red Guardian and Bucky, that also has flaws that have become frustratingly common MCU flaws. Mentioned them in my spoiler-free review, out of place humor, conflicting tone. It's a fun time and a flawed time. Both can be true, as they said. But yeah, I enjoyed Marvel Suicide Squad. I don't just call them that for the singular fact that they're essentially the B-Squad of the respective cinematic universe getting together to make a movie, but rather the flagship heroes are gone, there's no one to save us, a group of misfits get together to form a group to save the day, then one of them has this super shadowy evil dark side that takes over, becomes a sky shadow instead of a sky beam, and they gotta deal with that now. All set in motion by some evil government villain lady who is the actual villain of the story. And cherry on top, both have David Harbour. Is it the best MCU movie since Endgame? Well, let's see how high that bar is set. Since Avengers Endgame, we've had Spider-Man Far From Home, Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man No Way Home, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Thor, Love and Thunder, Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Lost Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Deadpool and Wolverine, Captain America, Brave New World, and Thunderbolts. I mean, some standouts in there, but the bar's not quite as high as it used to be, let's be honest. Dude, actually, this concludes phase five, I guess. Phase five was Ant-Man and the Lost Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Deadpool and Wolverine, Captain America, Brave New World, and Thunderbolts. Doesn't even really feel like a phase, it just feels like in between time. All right, so Thunderbolts, have you seen it? What did you think about it? What's your favorite team-up movie? Whatever it is, whatever you think, comment below, let me know. 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