“Thunderbolts*” is arguably the biggest Marvel surprise in years, a mature film with a hard-hitting emotional gut-punch that is also a hilarious team-up movie the likes of which we haven’t seen since the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies.
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It is also the rare Marvel movie to be very much about connecting different parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe together. What was once the pride and joy of Marvel — having an interconnected universe — has become less of a feature and more of a bug the past couple of years. The moment we started getting Marvel TV shows, the movies have gone out of their way to avoid mentioning them in order not to alienate the audience that doesn’t watch Disney+, to the point where shows like “Secret Invasion” feel entirely pointless, especially since nothing of consequence can happen.
And yet, “Thunderbolts*” is all about characters from different Marvel movies — as popular as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and as underseen as “Black Widow” — coming together to form a team. There’s also references to the larger MCU, including the TV shows, like reminding us of the time the new Captain America used his shield to murder a dude in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”.
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The movie also has a blink-and-you-miss-it reference to a more recent Marvel movie, one that (based on its box office performance) will probably not get another mention in the future. That’s right, we get some nods to “Captain America: Brave New World,” both its Red Hulk of a president and also a brief shot of the damage caused by Harrison Ford’s raging President Thaddeus Ross.
The Washington Monument can’t get enough
In the first act of the movie, there is a brief establishing shot of Washington DC in the leadup to the Congressional hearing of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. The shot includes a few frames showing the Washington Monument in the background being under repair for heavy damage. That damage, of course, happened during the fight between Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and the Red Hulk, with the latter jumping on top of the monument and climbing down by tearing it apart.
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In “Thunderbolts*,” we see the monument being repaired. This makes sense, and it’s a normal and sensible reaction to an important American monument being destroyed. And yet, it raises some questions. First of all, why do we never see the White House in the movie, if only for a moment to see how it was wrecked by Red Hulk? Most importantly, why is the Washington Monument being repaired yet again? We saw that same monument being nearly destroyed by Peter Parker accidentally bringing an unstable energy core inside the monument. Sure, it’s been nearly a decade since the time of that movie in-universe, but how often are taxpayers meant to pay to repair a monument before the government decides it’s enough and just lets it rest?
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