We saw 2 movies in this particular week, both Thunderbolts* and Lilo & Stitch. So this was very much a Disney week and despite how very different the two movies are, they both had stories centred around loss and the mental health impact of this.
We start out Thunderbolts* by following Yelena as this is very much her movie despite it being the gate way for 'The New Avengers'. She's lost her purpose since her sisters death. It hit her hard after they reconnected and she had so very little time with her before she died. Instead of dealing with the loss Yelena turned to drink and throwing herself into her work which just didn't fulfil her. We see her at her darkest but still trying to keep her head above water. She's lonely, she's grieving, and she is lost.
We navigate her personal story within a much bigger arc. Valentina has put a hit out on Yelena as well as all her other loose ends and they are all familiar faces. With this they work together in order to escape the trap they are in and when the newest addition, Bob, is taken they work to rescue him with the help of Bucky and Alexei.
Bob is another character who is showing severe trauma. It's this trauma which triggers Void and this becomes the centre point of the movie. Void is turning people into nothingness as he believes there is no hope anymore, no reason to live so he takes away the choice. Feeling that she understands Void due to her own trauma Yelena sacrifices herself in order to save the world and it works, she saves Bob with help from her ramshackle team all of whom are experiencing their own mental health issues but finding a reason to go on.
Valentina then tricks them into becoming 'The New Avengers' thinking it'll save her from them, but little does she realise they now own her. Of course there is a downfall to this which sets up the next MCU movie, these new superheroes are not accepted by Captain America who has set up his own version of New Avengers although we dont yet know who these heroes are. Now Bucky and Sam are on opposing sides of this hero war and it's almost a set up for Civil War 2.0. It'll be interesting to see how this is navigated in the next set of films.
The MCU has disappointed me with its last few movies, but Thunderbolts* was the first one in a long time which actually made me feel something again. Nothing will ever match the magnitude of Infinity War and Endgame, but the movies since have all lost their spark, I haven't cared about anyone since we lost all our main players (Spiderman being the exception). This one however, it made me care by bringing in all the underdogs who have been around in this long game but never had the chance to be the hero. These are all the characters who helped shape the heroes we know and love. Bucky was Steve's rock, Yelena Nat's sister, Alexei Nat's dad, John Steve's failed replacement. Everyone here has felt the loss or the shadow of one of our main Avengers, everyone here got the chance to redeem themselves and make their own footprint instead of being in someone elses which helped them on the road to recovery.
This was a wildly different approach than we have seen from the MCU before. The only other time we've seen the narrative device using mental health as the driver has been Wandavision which was on a massive scale and Multiverse of Madness which was the fallout from that. Both of these were executed extremely well and MoM was the last time a MCU movie thrilled me following the fallout from Endgame and that was purely because of Wanda and the big names they drew in to play variants. But Thunderbolts* used this jarring aspect of how grief affects us and ran with it, but this time they came good unlike Strange and Wanda who went rogue and strayed from the light for a bit. It was nice seeing how the other half coped, the antiheroes, in this sort of situation, it was also nice seeing how all these events are taking their toll on people, super or not.
Despite this MCU instalment moving me to tears as I understood it on a deeper level, and despite it being a big improvement compared to other recent releases, I'm still only giving it a 7/10. It was moving, impactful, action packed, and a genuine story, but it was still just another cog in the machine. Whatever way you look at it this was just another build up to the bigger picture they are going to throw at us shortly. All of the woes these characters had are going to be forgotten once the Multiverse saga comes to an end, Doomsday is meant to be the next MCU movie to rival Endgame and this was just a stepping stone to that I just hope it isnt in vain giving these characters the depth they deserve.
Can we just give Florence Pugh a shout out for yet another superb performance? I would so love to be her friend because I really think she's so talented with these characters because she actually understands their pain from experience. I'm not saying she's an assassin I mean as in she gets the heartache Yelena feels as it must be so lonely being an actor of her calibre with so much pressure on her shoulders that people have no right to put on her. I just wanna protect her and stand up for her like she does for women like me. She brought true emotion to this role and she's the stand out from this whole movie.
I am slightly concerned however that quite a lot of the characters had the same hair cut... Bucky, Yelena, and Bob were twinning and only Flo wore it best.
Drop a comment on my socials with your thoughts on this one, yay or nay?
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