I thought about going with “Thunderbolts* Is Not Depressing for a Movie About Depression”, but that felt a bit too awkward.

Thunderbolts* opened here in Finland today, jsut before Walpurgis, the second biggest Holiday in Finland, right after Midsummer. For context, I have largely given up on Marvel movies. I will go see individual movies. I liked Deadpool enough to go and see that, and I also saw Dr. Strange 2 because it was the return of Sam Raimi into directing, and I saw Guardians 3, because James Gunn. Otherwise, I’ve been avoiding the franchise. Also, I have never seen any of the Disney+ series. This does mean that I might not have full context on everything. For example, I did not know US Agent is a character in the MCU and I only knew of de Fontaine from the mid-credit scene in Black Widow (I think, I might be forgetting something).

Before I get to the heavy stuff, a few general comments about the movie. It is in general quite fun. I enjoy villains and anti-heroes more then pure heroes (with some exceptions), so this works nicely for me. I also found it refreshing that they didn’t feel the need to go hard on action sequences. Those exist, sure, but since these are low-powered (or no power) characters, these sequences reflect that. It doesn’t feel like many of the Marvel movies from the earlier phases, where the fight choreography would often be ready even before the director was even chosen, so much of the movie had to be built around those. This way works much better.

I would have liked to see this as R rated. We are talking about villains here. Let them be brutal. Let them shed blood and crack some skulls. But no, it has to be PG-13.

Alexei feels a bit much at some points He is still a nice foil to the brooding of the other characters in his enthusiasm about the whole superhero team thing.

All in all, Alonso Duralde called this a team for 2025, which feels apt. We, as a society, really, really need to overcome our differences and come together in order to save ourselves and find community (which is the answer more often than one would think).

But let’s go to the heavier stuff.

Yelena is not doing well. She is working all the time and not enjoying herself doing that. As she describes her life and her feelings, you can tell that she is suffering from depression.

Now, I haven’t suffered from depression. Sure, at time I’ve been feeling down, I have felt stressed out and I have felt very tired at various times in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever been really depressed. However, I have seen it. People very close to me have suffered from it. It is insidious. Something in your brain is just not balanced correctly and you feel like there’s no hope and that you have no worth. Witnessing this is in itself very bad, but I can’t even start to imagine how bad it is inside someone’s head.

The cures are not good. Basically you are chemically leveling you mood in a way that saves you from the lowest points, but also cuts of your ability to get to the highest points, so it feels like you can’t enjoy life to the fullest. Yet, you do it, because otherwise existence would be unbearable. It doesn’t make any of this easier, if there’s someone close to you telling to snap out of it or something. As that person close to them, you still want to do something and you feel helpless, because you really can’t, except try to be available and implicitly remind them that they are humanbeings worthy of being loved and someone does care. And I have never been good at being emotionally available.

But Yelena doesn’t have anyone. The nature of her work is such that there is just no opportunity to form the kind of network one would need in her situation.

So, when de Fonta ine lures her into a trap with other villains, each of them having a mission to kill one of the others, she and her newly found allies must find common ground to same themselves. And Bob who had been left for dead in the lab they were trapped in.

Each of them carries their own traumas, but Yelena feels she has something in common with Bob. Bob also feels that overbearing weight on him when his brain decides that the chemicals in it are not going this way. Yelena must confront her darkest traumas.

Well, that got dark.

Spoiler territory starts here.

The final answer is hugs.

No, not kidding. When Bob becomes The Sentry and loses control to his dark side, which leads him to start disappearing people in New York. Yelena realizes that the disappearing people are actually trapped in their worst memories, which Bob can tap into. So, she must go and face her deepest traumas in order to find Bob in side The Sentry. The rest of the team follow. When they eventually find Bob inside there, they manage to take him to the lab where he was made into The Sentry, where he must confront his dark side.

And as Bob tries to beat his dark side into submission, his dark side is not responding as one might hope he would, as it is just growing stronger, so Yelena hugs Bob and the others follow her example.

That’s a nice ending for superhero story. Especially for Marvel, who definitely need to branch out with their movies, considering that DC has found success with refreshingly different takes on their characters outside of the canon, why wouldn’t Marvel try that as well? They have great characters, who are choked into submission by the needs of the overall story, which just doesn’t seem to serve any purpose anymore or be of any interest to anyone. Fucking Fantastic Four…