Thunderbolts* (2025)

I often have bad days. Goes with the territory when being both disabled and on the spectrum. Used to be, I'd sit down, watch a fluff movie, and veg out.

This is a good movie. Proper comedic and emotional beats, and even the stuff that felt like a cliche ("We're not a team, we're a bunch of losers!") at least rang true to the premise.

I didn't remotely enjoy it. At all. And I'm wondering if it's because I'm down. I would love to blame it on that, especially because it's not really realistic to blame it on the movie itself.

I read an article today. I am going to link it now. This is literally the first review I have EVER done linking to an outside source. I like my reviews to be entirely self-contained, but I think I need to share this context. But I read this article on Uncharted Blue by Hunter Lazzaro and I felt it so hard. It's a long read but a blazing indictment of how Hunter is incapable of enjoying current entertainment.

Here is the link. The article is titled Unraveled.

https://www.unchartedblue.com/unraveled/

Hunter speculates that it is purely impossible for him to enjoy current stuff because the behind the scenes realities of current entertainment, specifically big-budget genre, makes it impossible to shut off your brain and simply enjoy and accept what you are watching at face value. Because the real world is currently so shitty, Hunter is the guy who notices the mistakes before anyone else does. If Game Of Thrones were able to engross us, nobody would even notice the Starbucks cup. Instead, cinema magic had been stripped away from society bit by bit, and now that's the ONLY thing we notice.

Do I blame this film for that? Of course not. Hunter claims the problem is probably him. And yes, the problem is probably me too.

Unlike Hunter, there are plenty of TV shows, comics, books, and, yes, movies, I can still get lost in. But that still happening is majorly unusual. I still have the capacity. But if Hollywood keeps churning out movies like this, how much longer will I still have it? When will my cynicism guide every single thing I watch just because MOST stuff is shady? Because the more stuff that is shady, the more I watch out for it. And that is not something most stuff will ever disappoint you on.

If and when I do a Blu-Ray review of this film, I'll do a deep dive into what works and doesn't. I'll go in-depth that Florence Pugh is a perfect lead (she brings both the comedic and dramatic goods) and her relationship to Alexey still has weight. Or that despite all of the horrible thing Sentry / The Void does at the end, you are still rooting for Bob to come back from them.

But no, the biggest takeaway I have is how much I loathed the ending. And here is where the real-world sucking comes in. We spent the entire Multiverse Arc basically seeing Valentina De Fontaine flaunt and abuse her authority and basically making things a million times harder for the heroes due to her narcissism and greed. And the entire movie is building up to her finally being held accountable for her evil. And the twist ending is... she actually isn't?

This shit is why I literally hate comic books, and think almost none of them have value. The status quo must be upheld at all costs. But it galls me that a freaking MOVIE FRANCHISE is dumb enough to believe it is under those same restrictions.

This has been my worst day in awhile (although I had a bad week last week too). I will try and close the review on a positive note before giving the film the four stars out of five it earned for its quality, while I was spending every second looking at and noticing the errant Starbucks cups. But the fact that I have lost faith in current entertainment, has made me double down on my pledge to make sure the quality of my own writing remains one of a kind and unique. I always felt like Gilda And Meek was sort of shouting into the pop-culture winds alone. The fact that this movie is good and I didn't enjoy any of it means that that is the proper stand to take, and the proper thing to shout at.

But like Hunter said, it's him, and it's me. I don't know where my reviews go from here. But I will say this has made me determined to make my fiction all the stronger. 4 stars.

Gag Reel

Interesting. The cast is quite capable of delivering the funny lines as written, but this gag reel is illuminating because it suggests nobody in the cast is actually funny themselves.

Believe me, I was as shocked to learn this about Florence Pugh as anyone else. 1 star.

Deleted Scenes

Two deleted scenes, the first 30 seconds long, the second 20. They equally suck. Both: 1 star.

Door Is Unliftable

Adds nothing. But the most damning thing I can say about both it and the film is if these 30 seconds were added, the movie wouldn't be any worse off. Nobody would even notice. 1 star.

Gary Announcement

The ending sucks and this is just adding insult to injury. 1 star.