No Heroes Available: “Thunderbolts*” Clip Showcases Marvel’s First Villain-Centered Film
The vibe of director Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts* (more on that asterisk in a second) is very much evident in this brief but potent minute-long clip just released by Marvel Studios. In the clip, we find Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine being encircled and seemingly entrapped by the misfit antiheroes, the Thunderbolts, she assembled for a mission. The formidable triple agent spy, who has practiced the dark arts of her work in Black Widow, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, has a fuller role in Thunderbolts, where she plays a central figure in assembling these very non-Avengers would-be saviors. In the clip, the team has come to make her pay for her various crimes. In the process of letting her know her goose is cooked, she lets them have it, going down the line and verbally abusing Buck Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who she calls “Junior Varsity Captain America,” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), who she calls “Old Santa.” If only Tony Stark were still around, the two of them could have a quip-off.
The clip speaks to the offbeat charm and scrappy vibe that Thunderbolts* is going for, so much so that the talent involved and the entire vibe of the movie had star Florence Pugh say it felt like a “bad ass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie.” The crew of Thunderbolts* certainly speaks to a very different kind of MCU movie.
Thunderbolts* helmer Schreier was the director of the A24-produced, Netflix-distributed gangbusters dark comedy Beef. The Bear‘s Joanna Calo co-wrote the script, while talent from critically acclaimed A24 films fills out the ranks, including cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo from The Green Knight, Minari editor Harry Yoon, and Everything Everywhere All At Once composer Son Lux.
Schreier told Empire he was advised to make “something different.” He added, “There’s a certain amount of that Beef tone in it that does feel different. There’s an emotional darkness that we brought to this that is resonant, but doesn’t come at the expense of comedy.”
The Thunderbolts are made up of Pugh’s Black Widow butt-kicker Yelena Belova, her dad, David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (although to be fair, he’s been a good guy for a while now), Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost (from the first Ant-Man), Olga Kurlyenko’s Taskmaster (from Black Widow), and Wyatt Russell’s John Walker (from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).
Oh, and about that asterisk…it was added to the title to signify that “The Avengers are Not Available.” This is why it’s up to the Thunderbolts to step in. A new poster hammered the importance of the asterisk home:
Thunderbolts* arrives in theaters on May 2.
For more on Thunderbolts, check out these stories:
Marvel Reveals First “Thunderbolts” Trailer Unleashes the Bad Guys on the Worse Guys
Florence Pugh Plays By Her Own Rules in Set Video From Marvel’s “Thunderbolts”
Featured image: (L-R) Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL.
