MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*
First off, this movie has nothing to do with the THUNDERBOLTS franchise introduced in the 1990s. The comics-title concerned a handful of long-term Marvel villains led by master evildoer Baron Zemo, who orders them to masquerade as a new team of heroes, in order to perpetrate a "long con" of some sort. However, over time the newly minted Thunderbolts began to respond to the public accolades they receive for their heroic acts, and some or all of them become heroes in truth. THUNDERBOLTS the comic was both a series steeped in the never-ending palimpsest of Marvel continuity, and also one that used the many colorful characters in new and interesting ways. (Note my mention of "color," it becomes important later.)
I suppose these "New Avengers" could be said to follow a very loosely similar pathway. The members of the Movie Thunderbolts are also characters established in other films, though obviously not with nearly as much history as the Marvel villains in the comic. All five members-- Second Black Widow, Red Guardian, The US Agent (though he's not called that here), Ghost, and Winter Soldier-- are borderline MCU players who were not hardcore villains but were nevertheless morally compromised in one way or another. Like the original Thunderbolts, these ne-er-do-wells get gradually beguiled into taking on the role of heroes and are even called "Avengers" by some citizens, which is only possible because so many other "Big-Name Avengers" were killed or sidelined by earlier machinations of the MCU.
Without dilating at length on the way these disparate characters get teamed up, it bears a very slight resemblance to the comic-book Avengers in their first issue, wherein Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp assemble to respond to the threat of villainous Loki. Here, previously established "real villain" Valentina de Fontaine (Julie Louis-Dreyfus) assembles three of the five (including a fourth character who's almost immediately killed off) in order to murder them all, as well as to cover her tracks. But Valentina's a clumsy Big Bad. The sometime SHIELD agent brings her pawns together at an installation that also hosts a mysterious fellow named Bob-- and Bob is the X-factor who unites the first three, as well as Red Guardian and Winter Soldier.
Speaking of the character Winter Soldier, the THUNDERBOLTS creative with the longest track record in Marvel movies, Eric Pearson, often seems to have an eye to replaying the theme of CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER here. SOLDIER was primarily a denouncement of the arms race, or at least the American part of that endeavor. As political critique, SOLDIER was lightweight, but it was a fast-paced, well-mounted adventure movie. In THUNDERBOLTS Valentina is trying to continue the arms race, but she wants to use transformed humans as her arsenal. Bob is one of her experiments, though she apparently lost track of him when she set up some of her agents to be destroyed in an explosion that will also eliminate evidence of Valentina's activities. Instead, US Agent, Ghost and Second Widow escape with Bob in tow, and in due time they learn that Bob is Valentina's attempt to breed her own Superman. But they also learn that Bob is psychologically erratic. Once Valentina guides the young man into becoming a dimestore Man of Steel named "Sentry," he ceases to be her puppet and becomes capable of wiping out the world with his super-powers, the same way the armed helicarriers of SOLDIER were capable of being turned against American citizens.
Pearson's plot is nothing special, but it's at least a serviceable superhero concept, in contrast (say) to MADAME WEB. And THUNDERBOLTS is at least a watchable superhero film with some easy-to-follow action-scenes and even a few jokes that land pretty well. But it's far from being as good as it might have been.
One problem is that, for a superhero movie, it's almost as dispiriting to watch as Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. All the characters are dressed in dark browns and blacks and blues, with little variation. I'm not going to say every superhero flick has to be filled with day-glo hues like the '66 BATMAN, but there should more visual variety than THUNDERBOLTS has. I can't be sure, but the dull palette of the movie may have meant to resonate with the "dark" histories of the Thunderbolts. Of the five of them, three have killed for one reason or another, one (Ghost) became a super-criminal to save her own life, and the other (Red Guardian) is a former Soviet spy who now subsists running an uber service. Pearson's script tries to make audiences like these characters by virtue of their having suffered, and their endgame involves managing to get through to the psychotic Sentry with their own human vulnerabilities. But the most amusing moment in the movie takes place during the credits, where assorted media pundits are making fun of the ramshackle nature of "The New Avengers."
The basic notion of "putting old wine in new bottles" can work when it's done with real insight into how characters can bounce off one another. The AVENGERS comic book began as a tacit emulation of DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE, uniting three of Marvel's heavy hitters with the not-so-momentous Ant-Man and Wasp. Then in the middle sixties Stan Lee, who had added a recrudescent Captain America to the mix, decided to largely banish Thor, Hulk and Iron Man from the regular ranks, putting the Captain in charge of three newbie heroes. Some ruminations by Roy Thomas, Lee's successor on the title, suggest that if Thomas had had his way, he would have been bringing in Thor and Iron Man all the time. But focusing on characters who didn't have their own serials forced Thomas to come up with strong soap-operatic plots for any and all heroes unique to the AVENGERS feature. However, that's not going to be a consideration with any big-budget AVENGERS movies, since at most two can be made in the space of a year.
THUNDERBOLTS includes a post-credits scene heralding the future project AVENGERS DOOMSDAY, which sounds like it's going to be stuffed with more costumed crusaders than one can shake the proverbial stick at. That alone suggests to me that the ersatz Thunderbolts aren't going to get any more development in future than they did in their first outing.
No comments:
Post a Comment