The Asterisk That Struck: Thunderbolts* Puts Marvel’s Misfits Back in the Game

We dive into Marvel’s scrappy, sharp-edged team-up—equal parts bruised knuckles and tender hearts—that doubles as a stealth rebrand…and a reset.

There’s something audacious about slapping an asterisk onto a Marvel title and daring audiences to ask, “Wait—what’s the catch?” With Thunderbolts* (PG‑13, 2h06), Marvel finally answers that question with a film that’s fun, wounded, weird, and—most crucially—human. Released May 2, 2025, it’s a tighter, moodier cousin to Marvel’s usual four‑quadrant sprawl, built around characters who are tired of being Plan B…and a studio that clearly wants to prove it still has a Plan A.

If you’ve missed the headlines, the asterisk wasn’t an oops; it was the point. Director Jake Schreier (who brought thorny pathos to Beef) pitched the asterisk as a cheeky breadcrumb, and it pays off in the end credits when the “Thunderbolts” label tears away to reveal what Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has been engineering: a shiny new brand for a very old idea. Consider it Marvel’s wry wink at a franchise in the midst of a midlife pivot.

The lineup: walking scars with wicked timing

The team is a murderers’ row of inherited complications. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova leads with her usual sardonic bite; Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes brings 100 yards of regret and a left hook; David Harbour’s Red Guardian grumbles, then steals scenes; Wyatt Russell’s John Walker is a clenched jaw in search of absolution; Hannah John‑Kamen returns as Ghost, flickering between control and collapse; and Julia Louis‑Dreyfus’s Val keeps smiling as she moves pieces across the board. (Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster and Lewis Pullman’s Bob—yes, that Bob—matter more than you might think.) It’s a cast that looks “B‑team” on paper and plays like an all‑star unit on screen.

Pullman’s Bob is the swing: a gentle soul wearing the world‑cracking potential of Sentry like a hairline fracture—an idea the film handles as metaphor and threat. Critics and fans have noticed; the aggregate says this isn’t just good “for late‑phase Marvel,” it’s good, period, with an 88% Tomatometer and 93% Audience Score at the time of writing. That’s the kind of consensus Marvel used to take for granted.

“Careful who you assemble”: the mission, no homework required

Plot essentials, spoiler‑light: our disgraced almost‑Avengers are ensnared in a trap of Val’s making and dispatched on a mission that forces them to confront the parts of themselves they’d rather redact. It’s heist‑ish, road‑movie‑ish, and therapy‑adjacent in a way that risks earnestness and somehow earns it. To its credit, the movie doesn’t require a PhD in the MCU to follow along; it rewards memory without punishing casuals, a feature not a bug for a franchise facing audience burn‑out.

And Schreier understands that “team‑up” only means anything if the team actually feels assembled. His action has a deliberate clarity—he and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo prefer prescribed angles over jittery shorthand—so you can track who’s chasing whom and why. When the film does go maximal, it’s because the emotions have earned the volume. (Palermo’s interview about building tension through 1.3x anamorphic, IMAX‑friendly framing, and stunt‑viz rehearsals is catnip for craft nerds—and explains why so many sequences play cleanly instead of collapsing into noise.)

A leap that sold a movie

About that opener you’ve seen teased in the trailers: Yelena on the ledge of Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, the world sliding out beneath her. Florence Pugh didn’t just act the vertigo; she jumped—multiple times—while rigged, in a stunt that became the film’s calling card. It’s part bravura, part branding, and it works because Pugh sells both the steel and the shake. The production chose drones and real cameras, shooting on location to keep the sensation tactile; the result is a set‑piece that feels like skin and steel, not pixels.

The sound of doubts, and the beat of hope

Hiring Son Lux for the score is a wonderfully left‑field flex. Their music—skittering percussion, aching strings, synth lines that sound like memories trying to reassemble—mirrors the Thunderbolts’ inner noise. The soundtrack dropped two days before release, and it’s a mood on its own, but in context the cues nudge the movie toward a space more A24‑adjacent character study than corporate monolith. If you vibed with Everything Everywhere All at Once’s sonic restlessness, you’ll hear the kinship.

The Marvel math

Let’s be real about the ledger, because Marvel certainly is: Thunderbolts* didn’t rattle the money cage like the old days. Its domestic gross landed around $190.3M, with a worldwide haul of ~$382.4M—solid by normal‑people standards, soft by MCU math. Call it a critical win and a commercial shrug. If you missed it in theaters, the film hit digital on July 1 and Blu‑ray/4K on July 29; a Disney+ drop is being reported for August 27 (from regional promos), but Marvel hadn’t formally announced that at the time of writing.

So…does the asterisk matter?

Yes—because Thunderbolts* is less about “Can the MCU still explode stuff?” and more about whether it can wring meaningful stakes from characters who don’t want to be symbols anymore. The asterisk signals a film that’s suspicious of hero worship and interested in repair. The big swing is Sentry—a human catastrophe with the temperament of a stray dog—running headfirst into people whose actions have been defined by either orders or guilt.

There’s a darker, desaturated palette at play—Ebert’s critic noted the “turn on a light” problem—and, truthfully, the film’s first stretch can feel like contractual table‑setting: hearings, handlers, a game of “who reports to whom.” But once the band is actually on the run together, the story breathes. The car‑chase rescue that stitches Bucky into Yelena’s orbit hums with clarity, and the film’s late‑act pivot trades empty CG escalation for something messier and more human. It doesn’t fix Marvel; it remembers what used to make Marvel work.

Performances that bruise nicely

• Florence Pugh (Yelena): The engine. Her humor is a pressure valve; her grief is the fuel. The movie hinges on whether Yelena believes she deserves more than penance.
• Lewis Pullman (Bob/Sentry): The surprise. He folds godlike power into apologetic body language, a study in how shame turns strength into a threat—to self and others.
• David Harbour (Red Guardian): Punchline machine with a dad‑bod beat; underneath the boasts is a soft plea to be taken seriously this time.
• Wyatt Russell (John Walker): A man trying—and sometimes failing—to trust himself not to break things.
• Sebastian Stan (Bucky): Worn down to the grain; the movie smartly uses him less as a quip machine and more as a moral compass that occasionally points toward “don’t.”
• Hannah John‑Kamen (Ghost): Underwritten, yes, but when the film lets her sit in a quiet beat, you wish it gave her more.
• Julia Louis‑Dreyfus (Val): The smile of a brand manager who believes consequences are for the unbranded.

It helps that Schreier and his writers (credited: Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, with earlier rewrites by Beef’s Lee Sung Jin) keep the jokes from sounding like boardroom banter and let the characters’ damage dictate the humor. The balance isn’t perfect, but it’s tangible.

Craft that chooses clarity over chaos

Palermo’s work is quietly radical for a modern mega‑movie: a preference for camera placements that respect geography and allow performance to do the heavy lifting. There’s a refreshing restraint to the coverage—no frantic safety‑net cutting—and when the IMAX‑scaled moments arrive, they feel earned, not algorithmic. His Filmmaker Magazine breakdown about using 1.3x anamorphic, shooting previs on iPhones, and hauling Alexa 35s onto drones for the KL jump contextualizes why the movie reads as physical even when the VFX volume swells.

The spoiler‑y elephant (or rather, the asterisk) in the room

Light spoilers below. Marvel outright embraces the asterisk in‑text: that end‑credits bite formally rebrands the team, and a cheeky “The New Avengers” stinger sets the table for the next phase without feeling like homework. You can argue the semantics of who gets to be an Avenger—and the film does—but the pivot works because the Thunderbolts have done the emotional labor the brand demands. It’s a reveal that doubles as commentary: if the old club is closed, build a new one with people who know they’re broken and show up anyway.

What doesn’t land

• The opening twenty minutes carry a whiff of obligation, as if the movie needs to file paperwork before it can be itself.
• Ghost (and to a lesser extent Taskmaster) deserved an extra scene or two to let their interiority breathe.
• The “gray” look will bug anyone who craves comic‑panel pop; the palette is thematically coherent, but a hair more chroma wouldn’t hurt.

What lingers

• Pugh’s ledge‑step—nine takes of managed terror—anchors the movie’s appetite for real‑world physicality.
• Pullman’s gentle, haunted Bob reframes “saving the world” as learning how not to implode it when you’re in pain.
• Son Lux’s score threads vulnerability through spectacle; their cues sound like self‑doubt learning to breathe.

The verdict

Thunderbolts* isn’t the second coming; it’s the first sign that Marvel remembers how to make a movie about people first, powers second. The action is legible, the jokes feel earned, and the core is beating, not branding. The box office may read as a shrug, but the film itself isn’t one—it’s a hand extended, a little shaky, to anyone who still wants to cheer for this universe but needs a reason beyond continuity. On that front, the asterisk does the heavy lifting: it’s not a footnote; it’s an invitation.

Watch it if: you miss the days when Marvel movies felt like thrillers with personalities; you want a team‑up that treats trauma as text, not window dressing; you like your heroics with scuffs, not sheen.
Skip it if: you want wall‑to‑wall quips or pure sugar‑rush color. This one prefers bruises that heal honestly.

As for what’s next: the film already hit digital (July 1) and physical media (July 29), and reports peg a Disney+ debut on August 27—useful if you plan a rewatch to catch all the sly setup before Marvel’s next tentpoles roll in. Whatever the release channel, Thunderbolts* earns its asterisk. It’s the rare franchise entry that knows the difference between a patch and a repair, and—better yet—chooses the latter.

Key sources for details in this review include Marvel’s official film page and soundtrack announcement, Rotten Tomatoes’ current scores and synopsis, Box Office Mojo’s final grosses, ABC News’ coverage of Florence Pugh’s Merdeka 118 stunt, Filmmaker Magazine’s craft interview with DP Andrew Droz Palermo, RogerEbert.com’s review, and reporting on the end‑credits rebrand.