The Thunderbolts*

[WANQOR Entertainment]

 

THE THUNDERBOLTS*
Movie Review By Pierre Maertin

 

THE INSANE PREMISE/The Bullshit Cake

Do you dear moviegoer(s) know of any serial murderers (in person, on the news, in the history books) who one day they just up and have a conscience problem and reform on their own, all of a sudden making a 180 turn and becoming heroes in the full sense of the word – putting themselves in jeopardy on a regular basis so they can save unknown members of the public or “the public”?

 

How did this fantasy get sold to the masses who ingested it from every pore of their skin? In the 21st Century, just how low is our threshold for accepting these impossible fantasies? How desperate and craven, how devoid of morality have we become that we accept these products like super-charged refreshing beverages?

 

This speaks to mass acceptance in an automation, AI and mechanized age that has ripped mercy, decency, integrity and the chance of existing as “human beings” – think of the psychological premise of Fight Club.

 

 

Now imagine trained assassins, who had to pass psych tests that reveal completely amoral and insensitive to killing and a multitude of other issues pertaining to stimuli, reaction times and a sense of detachment, so the assassin and spy programs can recruit the most lethal, the most “flexible” from us to do an agency’s bidding.

 

Do you know any trained assassins on successful missions who do a 180 and become heroes? This is the insane premise of The Thunderbolts* and also that of James Bond and Jason Bourne, and many others, where somehow, our heroes sneak into the program undetected, they are good apples who somehow pass through the cracks, get medals and awards for murder, clandestine assassinations, even small “massacres” where “the goods of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, then these decorated assassins make a 180 and bring down the system, how real is this premise and what kind of fantasy do we readily accept just because it has a large number of actors in costumes, fast-hand Eddie on the editing platform, music and sound engineering, SFX and artwork, advertising and social influencers?

 

 

THE TITANS (Superheroes Not The Gods)

 

So they ripped off The Titans, WB’s teens coming-of-age series that saw Robin become Nightwing and join up with Wonder Girl, Superboy, Firestorm, Tiger Boy and Raven … so what, dudes?

 

If you are into comic books then the first thing you will undoubtedly notice at the climax of The Thunderbolts is that Marvel completely rips off Warner Brothers’ Titans, where years earlier before The Covid lockdown, Nightwing comes to the rescue of Superboy who is ensnared and trapped by Cadmus Labs and to pull him out, Raven and Wonder Girl plunge him in darkness, which is exactly the same as the Void, where Dick Grayson finds him losing his powers, his self and his life due to the absolute darkness, Dick punches the walls around him and the sunlight powers up Super Boy again.

 

This sequence was poorly developed in Titans yet is basically the basis of the last-minute conflict with the Void (Sentry) versus The Thunderbolts team and how they bring Bob/Sentry back to form while defeating The Void.

 

For a movie with the budget and pedigree of The Thunderbolts to “borrow” whole this setup from Titans is really poor storytelling but more telling is that The Thunderbolts poorly execute the concept just like Titans did.

 

Part of the problem is that this film, like The Fantastic Four reboot of 2015 (with Miles Teller, Michael Jordan, Jamie Bell and Kate Mara) is mired in inaction all the way to the very end when finally Sentry and The Void bring a lame face-off with very little suspense or action to cap off the story.  In the Fant4stic Four we had no action until the finale when our heroes face off against Von Doom in the alternate universe, giving us an action starved superhero flick.

 

Between the opening sequence in the warehouse where members of our future team face-off against each other in a so-so action sequence and the not-so-rousing finale, the film plods along, trudges, limps and can barely muster enough steam to qualify for a movie, let alone an action superhero movie, and not some over-extended tepid sitcom comedy special.

 

 

420 FRIENDLY AND FAMILY

 

I am soooo sorry dear Marvel fans but bringing along Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Vain-Ella Villain of the Weak Valentina doesn’t make the film funny and she doesn’t have the screen presence or the persona to be a villain of high caliber or even a cleverly disguised villain, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Did she have some pull with Disney or were they chanting “420 Friendly and Family” and then thought it would be great to bring in some Seinfeld elements into Marvel?

 

Great if you are making comedies and I would have cast Seinfeld himself as Sentry along with Louis-Dreyfus showing him her bedroom and talking to him about being human while touching and groping him for touchy feelies in a swarm of clever jibes at singles, and dateless and hopeless and in The Void.

 

I guess Disney is making up for the past decade where the media make a circus of those amongst us we stigmatized as “incells” no matter the damage to their psyche, we help the media make a ton of money selling us discriminatory based ideas and toxic labels and then we help them make a ton of money chiding us like little baboons or vermin who need to be spoon fed the “nos-nos” of life. You pay me for the poison and then you pay me for the medicine. Clever way for mindless drones to be constantly emptying, voluntarily, their hard-earned pennies into the magic fantasy till. Do you want to be treated as a mindless drone, dear moviegoer?

 

But this wasn’t supposed to be comedy, last time I checked. So while Disney seems to have forgotten the lessons that burnt Superman III at the box office with Richard Pryor as comedy relief computer genius good hero/almost bad villain, and as we have noted so many times in Superman (Nuclear Man), Antman (Kang the Quackeror), Spiderman (Electro Sparky) and Batman movies, when the villain is not even a good Joker (Mr. Freeze), the film falls apart from scene one.

 

In some instances, it is funny when an actor draws on their “own” thing in real life to inject bravado and “real” into their “global-audiences” movie character, in this instance clearly Julia’s character “Valentina Allegra de Fontaine” is trying hard to communicate via the Fifth Wall to audiences the humor or every day toils in her own compound/hyphenated family name “Louis-Dreyfus”, where Dreyfus is French and the character she plays has a lengthy “French-sounding name” De Fontaine. Dreyfus goes on in a scene where she teaches Congressman Gary the finer points of French “Deux and Deus” because one of them is just like Duh and Duhhh and the former is like Dukes and —-.

 

Did Seinfeld trip through England only to find out American humor or any nation-specific cultural humor is highly restricted to audiences less than global in amplitude?

Dry Fuss or Try Foos or Too Dry to Try?
Honestly, I am into the “I don’t understand Maertin and Martin”
because they is from Mars-Chin.
Have Loki Low-Key throw in an eye ball from the Opera in Berlin
and you will get your Martini Ass-Tee Ice-Tea Spumante Dry, yet not Chez-Kin

 

 

THE SCORE MAN, THE SCORE, GIVE ME THE SCORE!

 

There is no rousing score in The Thunderbolts, there is not even a road music mix track as our friends are shown trekking across the desert in a sequence that could have used the magic of nostalgia music (The Talking Heads We’re On The Road to Know-Where or even better Pinkfong’s Baby Shark, or Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone) or Guardians of the Galaxy kind of themes.   Nope, and the entire film lacks the kind of powerhouse music that fired up The Avengers and Captain America with composers Alan Silvestri and Henry Jackman.  Nope, nada, zip, nothing, no strategy, no core, no heart, no soul.

 

The Thunderbolts is completely flat and feels parched and withdrawn as if its scriptwriters are experiencing the symptoms of being on something – “snow white” maybe?

 

Note: Geeeez Louise, We are not done yet????  Well that was only the first part of our editorial revue of The Thunderbolts^, there are many more “items uhum hmm … concerning issues” to point out in the complete edition of this review and a few more exclusive artwork posters themed in the Marvel-Us style much bigger than what is displayed here and downloadable for personal enjoyment, but you need a silver or gold membership.  Ask us using the contact form if you have any questions or require assistance in signing up. Standard memberships are always free of cost and you can post any comment.  Everyone is welcome!

 

You are all welcome to post your commentary in this section.  A Gold member’s edition of this review will also be published.

[FlashWest_]

to the “I told you so” team of Wang and Maertin, this movie just “beaaaaves” man, it just beaves …

oh well another $35 dollars laid to rest, RIP my milk duds money.

[Author]

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