Something I have not said about a Marvel movie in some time is that it is good, or that I enjoyed it.  It is a shame, too, because I grew up a fan of the comics, and was excited as anyone with the early entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).  Yet, since whatever phase ended with Avengers: Endgame (2019), the studio has not been giving their adoring fans the same quality that typified their previous work.  Of course, there was a focus to everything that led up to Avengers: Endgame.  There has been nothing like that until recently, and it seems that Thunderbolts* is helping to forge a new direction.  However, that is not why I liked it.  It has everything you might expect from a superhero film, but the “weapons” used to defeat the “villain” are ones that a Catholic like me was moved by, nearly to tears.  Before going on, my apologies if the quotation marks spoil what I am about to write.

If there is one member of the superhero team that will temporarily be called the Thunderbolts* who is wondering about whether to go on, it is Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh).  I should mention here that it helps if you have watched the previous movies and streaming shows that contextualize these characters, though the film does hold up on its own merit.  To explain a little further about Yelena, she is the sister of the deceased Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson, not pictured), a member of the original Avengers known as the Black Widow.  Since Natasha’s death in the aforementioned 2019 flick, Yelena has been doing the dirty work of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  We meet her as she is destroying a research facility belonging to a company known as Ox Corp.  Yelena is trying to get into a laboratory, but a technician she could have used for this purpose dies defying her and warning of Valentina’s treachery.  Yelena is somewhat unmoved as she later casually blows up a floor of the building, phoning in the success of her mission.  It would be on to the next assignment, but before doing so, she goes to meet her one-time adopted father, Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), a former Soviet enhanced super soldier known as the Red Guardian.  Those days are long behind him as he now sits at home glorying in his heroic past and running a limousine service.  Yelena has come to him because Alexei is the only one she can call family, and she is seeking advice about getting out from Valentina’s service.  He is less comprehending of her situation, saying that he would love to be doing her kind of work, though he still encourages to do what she feels is right.  Hence, after walking away from his place, she calls Valentina to volunteer for one last mission.  This is fortuitous timing for Valentina as she has been called before a Congressional committee that seeks to impeach and remove her from her position in the government.  They are concerned about her shady practices, and they vow to uncover all her secrets.  She appears unconcerned, but after the hearing, with the help of her assistant, Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan), Valentina begins the process of covering up anything incriminating.  This includes sending Yelena to a vault in the middle of the Utah desert where she is supposed to assassinate somebody trying to steal information.  She gets there in time to see Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), a shadowy figure going by the alias Ghost, enter before Yelena.  It all leads to a showdown in a central room not only between Ghost and Yelena, but also entering the fray are the man who tried to replace Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko).  This last one is a mercenary referred to as Taskmaster, though she dies in the conflict.  As the dust settles and the survivors realize they have been set up by Valentina, emerging from a hiding place is Robert Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), who introduces himself simply as Bob.  To the rest, he is a helpless guy that happens to be in the wrong place, but with no memory of how he got to this facility.  As the group looks to be working as a team, their activity is monitored by Mel, who passes on the development to Valentina.  Not wanting to take any chances, Valentina orders dozens of armed agents to the out-of-the-way location to neutralize the emerging threat. Because Mel thinks Valentina is overreaching her power, she contacts the newly elected Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who has put his days as the Winter Soldier behind him, to warn him about Valentina’s activity.  Also hearing of what is happening is Alexei, who managed to be Valentina’s limo driver for a charity function she attended.  It is Alexei in that same vehicle who drives across the country to rescue Antonia, John, and Yelena.  As for Bob, he had distracted Valentina’s men while the others got away, but in doing so is revealed to be the all-powerful individual warned about by the Ox Corp scientist earlier, codenamed Sentry.  While Bucky regroups with the others, wanting them to testify against Valentina, she is busy preparing Bob for his new role, one she hopes will distract the government from impeaching her.  If the amnesia is not an indication of his mental instability, his buying into her playing the caring figure and allowing himself to be made into the Sentry underscores his brokenness.  Bucky brings the others to the old Avengers building in Manhattan to confront Valentina, but they are shown Bob as the Sentry.  Valentina orders her new toy to kill the intruders.  While it is evident that Bob could do so if he wished, he instead soundly beats them before letting them go.  Valentina is furious that Bob would betray her, and Mel ends up using a kill switch that temporarily incapacitates Bob.  Instead, it unleashes the evil inside him, known as the Void, which takes over his personality and causes him to spread darkness over the city.  After some bickering, our heroes put aside their differences to enter the mental scape inside the Void and try to help Bob’s shattered mind.  I will talk more about this later, but for now, know that they are successful.  They re-emerge with Bob, who does not know what has happened, and to Valentina, who introduces them as the New Avengers.

There are some other mid- and post-credits scenes with the Thunderbolts* as the New Avengers, which should explain the asterisk.  As always, these clips are meant to feed into future films, so they do not have much to do with the plot.  What separates this one from its cinematic cousins is how the plot is resolved, something I hinted at in the introduction.  As a practicing Catholic, it is somewhat uncomfortable to watch these films and cheer for the violence on display.  It is not that the Church is against defending oneself, but it should be done only after all other alternatives have been exhausted, if I may simplify the teaching.  Our heroes are understandably quick to use their fists and other weapons because it is either they do so or they die.  If they are dead, then they cannot save a child from a falling piece of concrete as we see the Red Guardian do in one scene.  In this sense, the eponymous team are no different than any of other of similar ilk, until they go against Sentry.  For all their martial arts skill, high-tech weaponry, and even Ghost’s ability to phase through solid objects, they are no match for Sentry.  He can fly, is bullet proof and generally impervious, can move things telepathically, and is stronger than all of them put together by several factors.  As it is described at one point in the movie, he has the power of thousands of suns.  No amount of kicking, punching, shooting, or stabbing can ever hope to defeat someone so powerful.  It becomes potentially more hopeless when Sentry becomes the Void, seemingly deleting people and spreading a shadow over Manhattan.  This darkness acts as a mental milieu in which people relive their darkest moments.  Put differently, the Void is forcing them to be encaged in their saddest memories so that they can know only despair.  Because Bob had been abused as a child and became a drug addict, it is in these times in his life that Yelena and the others find him.  Interestingly, their solution is not to punch their way out of Bob’s mind.  Indeed, Yelena stops him from doing so, which had been the Void’s goal, getting some help from her friends.  They surround Bob and let him know that he is not alone, which is what this awful side of his personality that is trying to take over wants him to feel, and nothing else. Yelena’s approach works, and as a Christian, I applaud it.  I daresay I was touched by the sequence, which is a rare occurrence in the MCU.

Still, I suspect that the way the conflict is resolved in Thunderbolts* will be a rarity in the MCU.  At the same time, I cannot say enough good things about it as a Catholic watching it.  My heart went out to Bob because he clearly has wounds, and he sought to medicate them in sinful ways, mainly through drug abuse.  That is also, I believe, a first for the MCU, and I applaud them for having the guts to have such a character.  By the way, God is at the center of the Twelve Step program for battling addictions, though this is sadly not mentioned in the movie.  Nonetheless, it relates to the non-violent way Bob and the others overcome his demons.  We usually associate non-violence with Mahatma Gandhi, who used it as a form of protest that led to India’s independence from Great Britain.  It is a method of social upheaval also adopted during the civil rights movement in the United States as personified by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  They felt that by not fighting back with their fists, by risking becoming martyrs, they could do more for their respective causes.  Unfortunately, they did become literal martyrs, both being assassinated, but it is a tradition that the Church has contributed to by the thousands over the centuries.  It should also be noted that one does not go looking to be a martyr.  There is a willingness should the occasion arise, but it is not necessarily the goal.  Many a Catholic saint did not intend to die for God, but had it in their heart the God-given strength to do so when presented with the opportunity.  Even if such acts did not establish nations or bring dignity to a race every time, it did bring that person to a better place in Heaven.  It is these kinds of attitudes that have Yelena and the others rushing to Bob’s side as he pummels the Void, almost turning dark in the process, while debris flies through the air that could kill them at any moment.  Whether it is for one soul or many, it takes a remarkable courage to do such a thing for another, and it is the definition of heroism.

It might seem odd to refer to the Thunderbolts* as heroes because much of the film is spent talking about how deeply flawed they are as individuals.  They are not happy about their reputations and seek redemption, being willing to die for such an opportunity.  In the end, though, their true heroism comes out in saving another, a person they barely know.  It is this aspect of the story that makes this one worth the price of admission, and I pray the MCU gives us more like it.