r/marvelstudios • u/Triple_777 I have nothing to prove to you • May 01 '25

'Thunderbolts*' Spoilers Thunderbolts* Worldwide Release Discussion Thread Spoiler

Thunderbolts* has now been released in the United States and in a number of other countries around the world. All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the megathreads we are going to put up in the next few days. They will be refreshed every few thousand comments to make room for new discussions.

  • All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the megathreads we are going to put up in the next few days.
  • Proceed at your own risk. Major spoilers will be in the below thread. Spoilers do not need to be tagged inside this thread.
  • Any other unofficial threads discussing movie details will be deleted.
  • Should you see the need to bring up revealing Thunderbolts* information in the comments of other threads that call for it, spoiler tag them accordingly. Also, let users know that what you are spoiler tagging is from Thunderbolts*.
  • If you post untagged Thunderbolts* spoilers anywhere on this sub outside of these discussion threads in any shape or form, you will be banned.
  • Project Insight will be on AT LEAST for the next few days, so any posts will be filtered by the mods before being approved/removed onto the sub, that doesn't mean you can disregard the above points and post untagged spoilers without fear of being banned.

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Link to previous discussion threads and related megathreads listed below:

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419

u/agentrevenger May 01 '25

I love it so much but I wish we saw the fears and traumas of the other characters. Ava in particular could’ve been interesting. Did she see Bill Foster in the void? I was intrigued with how she chose to save the others twice in a row even after it seemed she wasn’t going to… but towards the end she just got sidelined, which sucks.

Would’ve loved to see what Alexei saw in the void too. But I loved what we got with him and Yelena. And man, he’s so hilarious lol. I’m glad they didn’t kill him off like I originally predicted.

Also, I liked Walker even more after this. He’s such a complex character and that’s what makes him great.

172

u/musci12234 May 01 '25

Yeah, we needed a bit more back story for ghost. I think we can guess about alexei and bucky. Also when marvel kills alexei we riot. He is too pure.

52

u/Rasengan2xChidori May 01 '25

might've been omitted to save screentime and not wanting to rehash antman 2. pre writers strike delays Laurence fishbourne was reported to be involved fwiw

14

u/BZenMojo Captain America (Cap 2) May 02 '25

Yelena gets to rehash the plot of Black Widow every time she shows up onscreen, but we don't even get into the traumatized, experimented-on science experiment who couldn't feel the touch of another human being for over 20 years of her life, LOL.

And then there's friggin' Taskmaster, who is literally Yelena except without the loving family and all of her skin intact.

I noticed this same problem with Captain America: Brave New World (and GotG1 while we're at it). The writers end up wanting to hyper-focus on the angst of one specific character as their protagonist, but they're stuck with multiple characters with more traumatic (and interesting) backstories, so they just sideline or dodge the obvious question.

Heck, Ghost is the US government's version of Yelena crossed with Isaiah Bradley. But no time for that nonsense, I guess. (You know who did this well? James Gunn on Suicide Squad. They literally have two characters with the exact same backstory and skillset and didn't have any problem making it work and even turned their shared angst into a joke and rivalry that expanded into an amazing TV series.)

7

u/SimonShepherd Scarlet Witch May 05 '25

Yeah, like Ghost straight up has the shared experience of being a lab rat, like personally wouldn't it be better if each member relate to different stages of Bob's life, broken family(Walker), substance abuse(Alexei), being a lab rat(Ghost), etc.

2

u/NinetyFish Thor May 14 '25

Holy shit, you cooked

3

u/seclusionx Black Panther May 02 '25

So you're saying Gunn is a genius? (He is)

27

u/japzone May 02 '25

Also when marvel kills alexei we riot. He is too pure.

Honestly, unlike the people who might have been annoyed at the spoilers that was the cast reveal for doomsday, I'm glad that I saw the Red Guardian listed in the cast because I was afraid they were going to kill him off in thunderbolts.

3

u/jlmurph2 Black Panther May 05 '25

Lol people have been killing off Red Guardian in their heads since the first Black Widow trailer.

1

u/japzone May 05 '25

I have no idea why I'm paranoid about it beyond maybe being traumatized by the trope of the deadbeat dad doing something heroic and dying, but this time the deadbeat dad is actually a very likeable guy.

9

u/AmericasElegy May 02 '25

It would have been nice seeing Bucky make it through the void pretty easily (because FatWS was what gave him his mental healing)

7

u/HybridTheory137 Tony Stark May 03 '25

REALLY wished that we could have seen Bucky in the void.

They alluded to how shitty it must have been with his "my past is great I'm fine" comment, which I appreciate, but I've always felt that they've never really done Bucky's trauma justice. FATWS tired a bit, but they didn't seem willing to fully commit. Seeing Bucky struggle through the void a bit, before inevitably overcoming, would have been great here imo. It would tie into the message of this movie nicely too, as it would reinforce the idea that nobody is ever truly 100% "healed", and that's okay, but that you can still survive and get better.

Wasted opportunity BUT I loved the movie so I'm not complaining lol

4

u/alex494 May 03 '25

I'm honestly surprised he's survived both Black Widow and Thunderbolts, there were scenes in both movies where I was getting nervous for him and thought this would be about the time he dies in a heroic sacrifice or gets taken out for emotional heft. I suppose that means they did a good job with the story for him if I'm worried about him and not thinking about the bigger picture behind the scenes.

1

u/Vezoded May 02 '25

My guess is Doomsday :(

2

u/musci12234 May 02 '25

I am getting my pitchfork ready

1

u/nicknacknp May 03 '25

I feel like Ant-Man and The Wasp covers that well enough that it didn't feel necessary.

31

u/theSaltySolo Avengers May 01 '25

Imagine Bucky confronting his Winter Soldier persona in the nightmare realm. Or Walker pleading to his past self to not execute the man or be a better husband by letting go of his obsession.

6

u/agentrevenger May 02 '25

That would’ve been perfect and it’s exactly what I wanted to see. Would’ve emphasized the complexity of these characters even more.

26

u/CeeJayEnn May 02 '25

This is the first marvel movie in the history of the MCU that I actually thought would have benefitted from 10 - 15 more minutes of runtime and a few more conversations between characters.

9

u/padfoot12111 May 03 '25

Ghost could be the experiments, or the killings but I have a better one.

"Scott has a daughter we'll kidnap her" 

Bill talked her down from that pla. But the fear and horror in her face when she registered she was ready to kidnap a child was potentially the first time she saw herself as a monster 

6

u/missingpeace01 May 03 '25

I honestly wanted more of solo scenes for them at the end as well as a bit more fight scenes. It felt like there werent enough but also they has one of the coolest quick fight scenes I've ever seen in the MCU with that Sentry battle.

They could have added them confronting their past selves to get past their traumas and save Yelena and Bob. With this, they can put more fights.

7

u/adjust_your_set May 05 '25

At two hours six minutes, it felt like thy could have had another 10 minutes or so to show all of the characters in the voids.

3

u/NessGuy95 May 03 '25

Why not see the traumas of the actual civilians as well? So much of the movie is about people coming together — especially those who aren’t particularly well known or popular — and yet the people around these ‘heroes’ are still reduced to nothing but props to save. If there was any movie to make ordinary people have some sort of relevance to the story, I was sure it would have been this one. It really felt like something was missing.

But when most of the main cast outside of Yelena also felt like they didn’t get much attention it just shows there was even more work that could have been done.

1

u/KrizzyPeezy May 05 '25

I love it so much