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Spoilers Thunderbolts* grade and discussion thread

How do you rate Thunderbolts*?

  • Total voters
    40
Gaith said:
Well, but a recap video is 1) free, and 2) a lot shorter than watching all of, say, Hawkeye.

I liked the first episode of Hawkeye, but was so unimpressed with the second I bailed on the rest of the season then and there, so I didn't see Yelena appear in it. Anyhow, reading up on Wiki, it sounds like having seen her bits of that show would make Thunderbolts more confusing, not less. Yelena had a dog? What happened to it? What about her nascent friendship with Kate Bishop? And she wasn't just doing hits for Valentina, a theoretical good guy, but was a contract for Kate's (Fisk-employed) civilian mother, too? So... Yelena was a straight-up villain for a while? But John Walker, the first person in history to receive the Medal of Honor three times, is positioned as the bad apple of the bunch for killing one adversary (and, yes, bit a bit of a jerk)? And Valentina, despite all her attempted murders-by-hire (successful, in Antonia's case), gets to keep her job instead of being arrested by Walker on the spot? (Seems like a bit of a double standard along gender lines, maybe?)
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Couple of points.

The dog isn't Yelena's, it's Kate's.

And yeah John Walker kills one adversary...by brutally beating them to death with his shield in front of dozens of witnesses? (I can't even recall but was the guy even armed at this point?)

Anyhoo Hawkeye remains one of my favourite MCU tv series alongside WandaVision.
 
Starkers said:
The dog isn't Yelena's, it's Kate's.
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Wiki: "Inside Anna's house, Belova becomes a victim of the Blip and is restored to life in 2023, hoping to talk with Romanoff, but eventually learns of her death. Belova goes on to get a dog named Fanny and work as a contract killer for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine."


Starkers said:
And yeah John Walker kills one adversary...by brutally beating them to death with his shield in front of dozens of witnesses?
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And that contradicts what I wrote... how?
 
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Thunderbolts* worldwide earnings to date (5-14-2025): $273,954,868 against a $180 million dollar production budget and $100 million dollar marketing budget (according to Variety), so it has still no fully made its investment back.
 
Starkers said:
Couple of points.

The dog isn't Yelena's, it's Kate's.

And yeah John Walker kills one adversary...by brutally beating them to death with his shield in front of dozens of witnesses? (I can't even recall but was the guy even armed at this point?)

Anyhoo Hawkeye remains one of my favourite MCU tv series alongside WandaVision.
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(from memory)

John decapitated an unarmed man, trying to surrender, in front of a live TV camera.

The problem, was the televising, not the murder.
 
Thunderbolts*
Yelena: "My sister Natasha died; I miss her so much, I'm depressed!"

Endgame
Natasha: "My sister Yelena died, but I don't talk about her or the legion of other freed former Widows; the Avengers are the only family I have."

:p
 
I always love seeing the behind-the-scenes production of creatively difficult sequences and this one is particularly fun. The level of collaboration between production design, stunts, and special effects is fascinating to watch. Once again, I'm thrilled to hear Charlie Kaufman invoked when describing these scenes. And I'm especially happy that Production Designer Grace Yun called them Voidspaces. Vindication! :D

Also, Lewis Pullman connected two dots for me that I hadn't consciously noticed: Bob's initial contact with individuals (Yelena, John, Val) lead to brief visits to their respective shame rooms without them disappearing. But when he loses control of his powers, overwhelmed by his own trauma, he then directly nullifies each person, leaving behind the eerie shadows, and sending them permanently to the Voidspace (until the Thunderbolts are able to pull him out of his darkness).
 
Nerys Myk said:
It's comics accurate. We like that right? Yellow/gold is always tricky. Especially when it's the dominate color.
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Yes, it is comics accurate. And in context of the story, it is supposed to be out of place and over the top compared to the other characters in the MCU. Val was obviously going for comic book style.
 
Anwar said:
But BNW did build it up, we knew Sam was a Counselor who helped folks with emotional issues and we got a good character analysis of Ross throughout the movie.

It's like people forget that the way to stop a being like the Hulk, any Hulk, is by appealing to the Humanity in them and NOT respond with violence.
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For me it was the absolute ridiculousness of Sam taking on a full fledged Hulk, and that Ross basically ends the movie in the same stage of character development as the beginning with little to no acknowledgement of how he treated Sam throughout the movie. The "talking down" part as an idea is fine to me--in fact, the strategy is one that has a long history in Hulk comics.
 
I resubscribed to Disney + and watched the first 3 episodes of Falcon and Winter Soldier tonight. It's amazing how Thunderbolts humanized John because I think the show is saying I should dislike him for taking the shield but I really don't. It is doing a decent job filling in the gaps if his character though.
 
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