‘Thunderbolts*’ Lost Millions of Dollars Despite Great Reviews. Where Does Marvel Go Next?
‘Thunderbolts*’ Lost Millions of Dollars Despite Great Reviews. Where Does Marvel Go Next?
Disney's MCU is at an inflection point. With "Thunderbolts*" the latest box office disappointment, will Marvel continue to back riskier stand-alones?
I just saw it yesterday.
It was just okay. I really wanted to like it more than I did.
I thought David Harbour's Red Guardian was his usual charismatic loser-with-a-heart greatness, and Wyatt Russell's US Agent and Lewis Pullman's Sentry were good, but the rest of the cast was forgettable, and Sebastian Stan's Bucky/Winter Soldier could have been cut out of the movie entirely.
Then there's the writing...
There's no emotional center to the story. The characters lumber and tumble from one scene to the next. As asked several times in the movie, why are these guys hanging out together?
Then there's the visual concept: Here you have a collection of great hand-to-hand fighters: A Black Widow clone, 2 Captain America clones, Ghost had an interesting fighting style, but there's barely any hand-to-hand combat to showcase their strength.
Oh sure, there was that fight in the lobby, but....
spoiler
...all that's for naught, as Valentina watches her minions get beat up for a few minutes, before getting on the PA and giving them an invite upstairs.
...which I felt was infuriating as it rendered the best fight scene pointless.
And then there's the sequence where they take down the big bad...
spoiler
... Void/Sentry/Bob. Comic books have never done emotional psychobabble story resolutions well, and it certainly isn't pulled off here.
Was this the MCU movie that got great reviews, and was supposed to take the franchise in a new direction, and revitalize it?
Not on your bloody life!
Sounds like Hollywood accounting strikes again.
They'll make the money back and more on streaming and DVD sales.
Seriously though, shouldn’t the formula be updated to take all revenue sources into account and not just box office?
Yes. It should be updated, but they don't, so that they can underpay contributors - people who often are owed money as a percentage of the formula.
Can we maybe have some other kinds of movies please?