After several years of hype, anticipation, and speculation, the latest Marvel Studios project, Thunderbolts* has hit the big screen. The thirty-sixth feature film entry into the MCU packs plenty of surprises, twists, and unexpected reveals into its runtime, but among the most shocking of them is a quieter, sobering one. Despite the fact that the film features big-bad antagonists pulled straight from the comics like The Void and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, the actual biggest villain of Thunderbolts* is an unexpected one: phones.

Pulling together several misshapen and cast-aside characters from across the past several years of the MCU’s history, director Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts* film assembles a cast of misfits, all of whom are dealing with their own internal struggles of doubt, loneliness, and isolation. Each of these respective depression-inducing symptoms is overtly associated with phone usage throughout the film, and the end result is a startlingly topical and relevant thematic statement from the MCU regarding phone usage in a post-COVID world.

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By Catherine Armecin Martin

Thunderbolts* Is The Marvel Cinematic Universe's Most Human Movie In Years

In many different ways, Thunderbolts* is the most human movie that Marvel has produced in years. For example, it’s human in the sense that it has real actors on real sets performing primarily practical stuntwork in a way that feels exceedingly tactile. Simultaneously, it’s also a character-rooted piece that feels interested in actually exploring the internal lives of its characters and their interpersonal interactions in a way that has frankly fallen by the wayside throughout the MCU’s rise into the pop-culture stratosphere over the years.

Here, characters like Yelena, Red Guardian, John Walker, Ghost, and the mysterious Bob himself are all explored in fascinating ways. Each is struggling in their personal lives, which is shown to have led them directly to the dangerous predicaments they find themselves in over the course of the movie. Subtextually, the film’s foregrounding of its characters’ general sense of ennui and loss of motivation already strikes a pretty topical chord. But the film goes even further, overtly tying these emotions in to phone usage on numerous occasions, such as when John Walker is shown through flashback to be ignoring his infant son in favor of reading smear articles written about him or when Yelena confides to Red Guardian that her life feels pointless because she does her job, goes home, and just scrolls on her phone until she falls asleep.

Thunderbolts* is far from the only film in recent memory to make a case against phone usage, but it is shockingly adept and articulate at doing so, especially considering it is a Marvel movie. In these ways, Thunderbolts* feels like one of the first present-tense topical movies that the studio has delivered in years.

Marvel Studios Has A Lackluster History With Topical And/Or Political Content

Tony Stark aiming his repulsor in Iron Man (2008)

The first MCU film, Iron Man, was released in 2008 and was overtly political. Easily the most singularly pointed film that director Jon Favreau, Iron Man embraced a modern setting in visceral fashion, updating the character’s comic book origin story to instead now be set in war-torn Afghanistan. However, in the years that followed, as Marvel went all-in on their multi-million dollar gamble of attempting to establish an interconnected cinematic universe and were acquired by parent company Disney, things got much less political or even necessarily topical very quickly. While there were absolutely exceptions (Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther films, for example), the vast majority of MCU films have instead opted to focus on fantasy, nostalgia, or a mixture of the two.

This has been part of the franchise’s larger problem in the years since Avengers: Endgame. The world has changed immeasurably since 2019, yet the Marvel films have largely felt stuck in the past, either literally or metaphorically. Recently, something like Captain America: Brave New World, which was overtly advertised as a ‘political thriller’, was so concerned with being interpreted politically that it ruthlessly sanded its own edges off at every turn.

However, in just the past month, things have changed substantially on that front. The streaming series Daredevil: Born Again tackles pressing and urgent matters such as police brutality and corruption in overt, cutting ways. And now, Thunderbolts* sees the MCU speaking directly to present-tense audiences in a way that the franchise has failed to do for years.

How Thunderbolts* Speaks To A Modern Audience

Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel in Thunderbolts*

The year after Avengers: Endgame was released, the world at large was disrupted by lockdowns relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, Marvel took a year off and did not release any projects at all in 2020. When the franchise did return in 2021, there was a serendipitous opportunity for the studio to metaphorically address the fallout of COVID in-narrative, thanks to Infinity War’s ‘blip’ fallout. Despite occasions where it seemed as if the franchise was going to go there in projects like WandaVision or Hawkeye, it never quite did. However, with Thunderbolts*, Marvel has reclaimed this opportunity and, for the first time in a long time, is speaking to a modern-day audience without the trappings of nostalgia and is instead meeting them on their own terms.

The true villain of Thunderbolts* is isolation, which is why the film culminates with its titular characters realizing that they need human connection and connectivity to find fulfillment. In reaching this conclusion, the film overtly frames it in stark contrast to the digital attempts at communication seen earlier in the film, via characters disassociating while on their phones.

It is a subtle commentary on modern times that almost feels at odds with the rest of Marvel's recent output, at least on the big screen. While Daredevil: Born Again and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man certainly reflect current political strife, theatrical offerings like The Marvels and Deadpool & Wolverine feel almost apolitical in tone and execution. This means Thunderbolts* succeeds on two fronts: it is a pretty fun movie that also has something to say.

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