Examination of “Thunderbolts *”: Marvel defines the low expectations, meets them

JOKEY, MOody and Middling of Marvel “Thunderbolts *” Returns the successful franchise to geeks. Only the public caught up in the 35 films in the cinematographic universe (plus a dozen mini-series) will recognize each face of this new supergroup of Miscits, each previously introduced in stories with more famous heroes who have now taken their pay checks and returned home.

Directed by Jake Schreier (“Paper Towns”) According to a script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, he raises the following support players: Yelena (Florence Pugh), The sarcastic slave sister of Black Widow, and her discouraged father Alexei (David Harbor)); Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamed), the unstable scientific experience of “Ant-Man and the Wasp”; John Walker (Wyatt Russell), an imperfect soldier demoted to be Captain America; and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Formerly in the brainwashing of Captain America, who is now a first -year member of the Congress.

The film offers no background frame, but the plot is simple enough for you to have the idea. These bizarre side characters were rewarded by their own quest: a team against the corrupt director of the CIA Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who calls them “defective losers”. Valentina tries to genetically modify human test subjects to create her own fighter nicknamed the “Golden Guardian of Good”. (Yes, its ideal is white, male and blond.))

Marvel's real objective is to crush the brand with a punk-rock snark. The Thunderbolts, so appointed for Yelena's childhood football team, are encouraged to curse and murder more than you expect in a PG-13 film. I tend to hate the way these four quadrants films invent the bad subhumans – robots, extraterrestrials, bugs and others – so that the vouchers can hit their brains without a moral tizzy. It turns out that it is difficult to encourage human carnage too. Here, Yelena, a Russian assassin from Dour, kills two apparently decent stupid scientists in the first minutes and pleasant: “You can never aim S—.”

Art movies would be Classified for less. But a feeling of inolitic protects “Thunderbolts *” as a protective armor. This makes hearty laughs by flattening the Russell walker – a tragic veteran of Afghanistan confused by the government's inconsistency on the moment when he is authorized to kill – in a parody of authoritarian and paternalistic privileges. For 17 years, Marvel films have dominated the box office and it is the first to feel really teenage. Disordered, depressed and provocative, he even seems to have told the hair team to throw their combs.

It is above all the story of Pugh, an intelligent decision when it gives one of the best performances I saw in a super costume. Technically, her Yelena Maussade opens the film in a hooded sweatshirt – Call it from the chic detention room. To settle the tenor, it destroys a whole medical laboratory in Kuala Lumpur while deploring its boredom. “Maybe I'm bored,” she sighs, parachutic from the top of a skyscraper.

Pugh, with his line readings of Droll and his furious blue eyeliner, plays the apathy better than anyone; She is convincing even with all the exhausted passion for her body. Most of the film is in dull and plush tones that correspond to the mood of Yelena. (“Your light inside is weak even according to the standards of Eastern Europe”, his father Tuts.) I am not sure of the percentage of his own waterfalls, Pugh actually performs, but that would be well in tone if she was rolling the eyes to the camera and said that she did not do any of them. His seventy fighter sequence looks like abstract art: an aerial pan in black and white austere of his shadow which fights against the servants in a corridor. There will be a few other moments of visual fear – say, a limousine standing on his nose – but only this blow sucks in beauty.

The Valentina of Dreyfus has arisen intermittently in the franchise over the years and now has a crowd of white hair that makes it look like Tulsi Gabbard. (Gabbard inadvertently made the compliment, presenting itself at its confirmation audience in a white costume that looked like Teaser images of Dreyfus, which Reddit users joked It looked like a difference game.Geraldine Viswanathan) Grimly responsible for destroying any negative proof against her, including independent mercenaries like Yelena. Meanwhile, the Valentina inquisitor (Wendell Pierce) is a sly and ineffective smile, delightful of his ability to write the perfect memo, while the member of the Bucky Congress tells journalists that he is “very worried”. It is questionable that he makes a burlesque of Susan Collins Or is simply out of its depth.

The events take place over two days and are quite contained. The first half of the film finds our riffraff in the process of joining its forces to escape the death trap of Valentina; The second is a parable on mental illness where metaphors take command on the plot. Between the jokes, we speak of confidence and trauma. Sometimes jokes are On the trauma, like when Yelena said to a fragile ex-toxicomaniac called Bob (Lewis Pullman) To manage her dark thoughts by pushing them all along, advice so dark that she pins. The film feels more inspired by the nightmarish fuel of the PSA after school than by the comics, as in a neat sequence where the characters enter a labyrinth -shaped room of their own miserable memories. He plays strangely near a Knock-Off of “All everywhere at the same time“- There is even a similar whirlwind- but it is easy to imagine a child who is moved by this literalization of the fights beyond your own despair.

Longtime Marvel fans will know Bob by his two other identities: the sentry, a quasi-descend guy and the void, a morve that makes him pass in a way he describes as a bipolar episode. In his large and powerful summons, he can destroy everything around him, tracing civilians in shadows as easily as a windshield beats a butterfly. It is the nihilism of Hasbro, but it works because Pullman carries his strength in a loose way; He is able to show us that a broken guy like Bob needs therapy more than the ability to throw a nuclear right hook.

There is obviousness in the fights. As a character notes, none of the protagonists fly, they all strike and shoot. But the jokes are fast and the Russian accents of Yelena and Alexei are appreciable. “Thunderbolts *” barely wins by his own rules of play. He laughs at himself before doing so, adding an asterisk in his title – an index that they prefer to call the film something bigger but does not feel worthy. Really, the whole film looks like an asterisk. Don't expect me too much, he said. We just kill time until next summer star “Avengers: Doomsday.”