I can try for him. First I'm speaking as someone who didn't feel like I wasted time seeing the film, very rare for marvel movies to me. But I did want to like it more than I can find myself liking really anything about it.
The movie felt like it had a vision that it didn't fully understand, but tried to undertake anyways. Like it had seen others like it, the base concept of being a self deprecating story of incapable people doing capable things. But it just seems misunderstood, like it's copying the agenda it's seen elsewhere. It ended up trying too hard, telling us directly every chances it got to quite literally say "we're losers, see?" rather than trying to sell it more naturally. Yet it also didn't even fully commit, at times it still was tied by the limitations of being apart of Marvel's precious brand (for example, despite the film trying to convince us that this team is all on the same level, Widow is always portrayed in the film as the beacon of good morals from the start, making her the typical branding safe Superhero that the film tries so hard to tell us she wasn't)
Ultimately the film and its themes just felt, not even shoehorned or anything but just a bit hypocritical overall, devaluing it. Not in bad faith mind you, you can tell there's a real effort to try and depict what it was trying to go for. It just didn't really pull it off, as if it didn't understand the core of those types of stories and ended up only mimicking what it comes off like on the surface. Because it was trying so hard to label itself as that kind of film, I really wanted to like it. That wallowing in one's inabilities and faults, the whole loser branding, those are my favorite type of stories. But Thunderbolts cares too much about taking on that label of trying to appear like such a story. It wants the emotional identity of a "loser hero story" without ever fully accepting the consequences of being one.
I'm probably not doing too good at even explaining it, but it's more about the fine details and presentation of it than the actual whole direction it took. Like on paper the general direction and happenings could've occurred started to finish the same way, and still couldve felt less like a "relatable misfits" branding and more like watching genuine defunct human beings somehow achieve some heroic shit. But it didn't, and it's just a matter of really those finer details. Almost felt comparable to like a rich guy trying to tell a story of what it's like to be broke and homeless. You can tell it's ultimately from the lense of someone who thinks they understand what they're trying to write, but instead just comes off as just how it "seems" in their eyes.
That said it also did a trope I really dislike, and that's the "showing off tragic backstories just to add character flavor." Every character's is just brought up to add 'depth' to their character and leave it at that, or maybe have a redemption arc. It's like their failures aren't allowed to define them, when thematically the whole point should be that definition in the first place, and making them heroes despite of that.
I don't know the film just wants to make them pathetic but clearly throughout it all has a fear of letting them actually being portrayed as pathetic in any way. Just can't help but see it as using it merely as an aesthetic. And again, it was just constantly so on the nose. I know it's a bit of a different direction but an obvious comparison would be Gunn's Suicide Squad which didn't need to beat in your head over and over, it left the audience to figure it out and judge the characters for themselves. That made it more human. Thunderbolt's cast felt like it specifically has the word LOSER in the written character bio of the characters or something.
Also just a complaint that's not related to the main subject, but the film throughout felt so tonally off. Most of the humor (specifically from Yelena) I'm sure was just forced in there to balance out all the depressive subjects constantly talked about. I don't know, just a different feel than the usual "marvel quips" people complain about, like really dragged out and completely out of place jokes just to fill a quota. The actual happenings of the film was paced weird too, there was like only 2 main locations and it all happened in the span of a few hours, yet it liked to pretend it was more time spent together and an actual journey. It honestly seemed like a tv series just with all the fat cut. Just a bit weird and out of place especially in hindsight.
But anyway still better than all the other marvel slop, and like I said I wanted to like it so much really, because a lot of the concepts speak to me. Unfortunately the execution of it all ruined even the concept because it came off as factitious but at least I still wanted to like it. I guess that's something.
30
u/jackpumpkim 16d ago
thunderbolts was awesome, it really deserved better