May 27, 2025 • 15 mins
💥⚡ Anti-heroes assemble! In this episode of The Rank Podcast, John dives into the explosive 2025 Marvel action flick Thunderbolts⁎, the latest team-up in the MCU that brings together a wild mix of fan-favorite misfits—Winter Soldier, Taskmaster, U.S. Agent, The Sentry, and more.
Packed with high-stakes missions, moral gray areas, and a star-studded cast, Thunderbolts⁎ flips the superhero formula on its head. But does it deliver on the hype, or crumble under the weight of its own ambition? John breaks down the action, character dynamics, and where this film lands in his Action Movie Rankings.
E-mail your fan questions, comments, and suggestions to TheRankwithJohnandZac@protonmail.com.
Support the show by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/TheRankPodcast.
For up-to-date rankings, check out The Rank's website at TheRankwithJohnandZac.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This was the first time in a long time that I stayed for the
post credits scene and was genuinely excited to see what
was coming. Welcome back to The Rank.
(00:26):
I'm John. And today we're going to be
ranking Thunderbolts Asterisk starring Florence Pugh,
Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, David
Harbour, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John Kamen.
It was adapted from the Thunderbolts comics created by
Kurt Busiak and Mark Bagley, TheAvengers comics created by
Stanley and Jack Kirby, Captain America comics created by Joe
(00:49):
Simon and Jack Kirby, and the Century comics created by Paul
Jenkins and Jay Lee. That's a lot.
The story was by by Eric Pearson, who also wrote the
screenplay with Joanna Callow and it was directed by Jake
Schreyer. Now if you're enjoying these
rankings or just like the idea of getting a review of an action
movie based on it being an action movie, please consider
subscribing and or following liking and reviewing.
(01:11):
Please put any of your questions, comments or
suggestions into the comments area or e-mail the show.
And if you super duper like it, consider becoming a patron at
patreon.com/the Rank podcast. With that being said, let's dive
into the Thunderbolts, starting with the Potent Notables.
Now quickly before we get into it, I want to say that I will
try to refrain from giving any spoilers, but I do make
mistakes. So that's your spoiler.
(01:33):
So as always with the Potent Notables, we start with the
movies financials. It's been out for about 3 weeks
now and as of May 20th, it has garnered $155.5 million
domestically and $170.7 million internationally for a worldwide
total of $326.3 million. And this is against the budget
of $180 million. So I think they say that to
(01:55):
really make money, you have to have double the budget.
It's not quite double the budgetyet, but it looks like it's
definitely going to get there. It's it's done pretty well at
the box office. So in the movie, there's a they
show Alexi or the Red Guardian watching TV and he's watching an
old Soviet parade. And this was an actual parade
that took place on May 1st, 1981in Moscow's Red Square.
(02:15):
And it was a younger Alexi, Red Guardian waving next to Prime
Minister Leonid Brezhnev. He was digitally inserted into
the historical footage. That's just thought that was
kind of neat. Now.
Stephen Young was originally cast as Robert Reynolds or
Sentry, having worked with Jake Schreyer on beef.
After filming was delayed due tothe SAG.
After strikes in 2023, Young dropped out due to scheduling
(02:36):
conflicts and was replaced by Lewis Pullman.
Curious of how different that would have been.
Sadly, we'll never know. Director Jake Schreyer made a
personal request to Lee Sung Sung Jin to rewrite the script,
as he felt the previous draft byEric Pearson focused too much on
the returning characters from Black Widow.
Lee is not credited as a screenwriter in the finalized
(02:56):
film, but he obtained an additional literary material
credit, whatever that is now. Florence Pugh loves heights and
wanted to be the one to jump offthe the Murdeca 118 building in
the opening, and she incessantlyemailed Marvel Studios President
Kevin Nagy about not using a stunt double quote.
As we got closer and closer to shooting, they said they don't
(03:16):
think it's going to happen because it's a crazy insurance
ordeal and obviously we're not going to throw her off the
second tallest building in the world.
I was like, what the fuck? Of course we are.
We have to do that. I was being a sassy Karen
emailing Kevin and saying it's going to do wonders for the
press tour. We have to do this.
We're going to have three women break three different Guinness
World Records and we'll do this and this.
(03:38):
I had to keep on pushing. And then they're like, OK, if
you want to fall off the second tallest building, we'll figure
it out for you. And then Pew said that the stunt
required so much willpower and adrenaline.
That quote, I fell asleep for three hours after I did the
stunt because my brain just shutdown.
South James Gunn was actually interested in directing a movie
focusing on this team, which Kevin Feige claimed as was a
possibility should Guardians of the Galaxy do well enough at the
(04:01):
box office now. The surprise success of
Guardians led to Marvel quickly announcing a sequel, which
resulted in Thunderbolts being relegated to development hell.
By the time the film resurfaced with a 2025 release date, Gunn
had decided the film was too similar to him making The
Suicide Squad for DC Comics, Which I get, it's kind of the
same. Jake Schreyer really wanted Man
Thing to become part of the roster for the Thunderbolts, not
(04:23):
knowing that the character had previously appeared in Werewolf
by Night. Schreyer ultimately concluded
that Man Thing's exclusion from the film was for the best
feeling the creature was too unpredictable and drew attention
away from Bob. Mel, played by Geraldine
Viswanathan, is based on MelissaGold or Songbird, a super
heroine who was a founding member of the Thunderbolts team
in the comics. Now here, she's an ordinary
(04:45):
human who works as Val secretary.
However, she has a Locket with abird on it, referring to her
comic name. Now I found this poet notable
and I couldn't help but think it's Marvel man.
Like you can't really be sure that Mel won't end up becoming
Songbird. Just throwing that out there.
Maybe this is something that's going to be developing.
We'll see. Now this next poet notable is a
good one and I was excited I found it, but it's spoiler
(05:07):
heavy. So this is your spoiler alert
for this poet notable. If you haven't seen this movie
yet, don't watch slash listen tothis to like the next, I don't
know, 30 seconds. That's your warning.
I'm going to go for it now. OK, so the ending where
Valentina announces the Thunderbolts to be the New
Avengers was expected to be met with applause and excitement.
However, test screening showed audiences didn't view them as
(05:29):
The Avengers and didn't react all that much to it at all.
So this caused Marvel and the director to go back to editing.
And this is how we ended up witha credit sequence that shows the
magazines and newspapers all feeling unsure about whether
these are the real New Avengers.And then we get this mid credit
scene all because of this, this test screening where they talk
about their branding problem with Sam Wilson.
So yeah, a moment where a test screening may have actually
(05:51):
improved the movie a little bit.OK, spoiler over.
Now we can go. We can go on to the to the last
potent notable, which isn't necessarily potent, but I think
it's still notable. So finally, this was the 36th
film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the final film of
the MCU's Phase 536 films. That's crazy.
All right, that's it for the potent notables.
(06:11):
Let's go of the movie overview. So I'm going to attempt to
discuss this movie now without giving any spoilers, which may
be difficult, but I think I can do it.
The first thing we notice is that this story is being seen
mostly through the eyes of Yelena, which is Florence Pugh's
character as she's narrating with voice over right away.
It's also a little bit heavy in the sense that she's narrating
about her own existential sort of dread.
(06:33):
This is just the beginning of the unexpected ways this movie
was going to tell its story. Now what I found really
interesting is that a lot of thecharacters we get to see are
from the seemingly lesser hits of the MC.
Similarly with Captain America, Brave New World, where they
pulled the villain from the Incredible Hulk, a mostly
forgotten entry into the MCU, and this one pulls Yelena,
Taskmaster and Red Guardian fromBlack Widow.
(06:53):
Secret agent or brief Captain America, however you want to
call him, and Valentina from theFalcon and The Winter Soldier
show and then Ghost from Ant Manand the Wasp.
Now I'm not saying that any of these movies were like flops or
anything, but they certainly weren't like the big MCU movies
that you would think of. And then it of course had
Bucky's slash The Winter Soldier.
That's probably the most well known character in the movie and
(07:16):
he's apparently a congressman now.
So that's fun. I will say that the focus being
on Yelena, I think goes more to show Florence Pugh's charm,
charisma and ability as a lead actor than anything else.
She's an amazing talent and continues to be Actually, the
casting choices for everyone here is is pretty spot on.
There are a lot of moments in this movie where you're
marveling. See what I did there No at the
(07:38):
splendor of the set design and I'm not a heights guy.
And when movies do it well, theycan really get me squirming in
my seat. And there's a scene in this one
that involves a deep tunneled pit that does just that, where I
legitimately was squirming and scared for a few moments, which,
you know, it's good. I guess it's sort of
embarrassing to say that the movie scared me because of
heights because I'm sitting in aseat.
(07:59):
Very embarrassing, but it still did.
The final showdown set was just incredibly done.
I felt like I was walking through an Art Museum and
enjoying the works. You know, it was like a like
this abstract modernism. I was really now on top of the
set design for some of these scenes that were incredible.
I can tell you that I found thismovie incredibly touching.
I was not expecting to get emotional in this movie, but I
(08:21):
am not afraid to admit that it absolutely got.
So what better sign is there of engagement with your characters
than the audience being moved totears by them?
There was also plenty of Comic Relief as we've got, you know,
come to expect from Marvel. It was well done and Red
Guardian was often the characterthat brought that, but he's also
the character that brought the tears along with Elena.
(08:42):
So just another shout out to Florence Pugh and a new one to
David Harbour for just being so good at what they do now.
I guess I'm giving a pretty goodidea of how the rank is going to
go, so let's just get to it and we'll let you know how it stacks
up. So the rank is where I rank the
movie based on 10 categories, story, acting, originality,
(09:02):
action sequences, film coherence, hero appeal, villain
appeal, slash hatred, supportingcharacters appeal, the final
showdown, and my personal rank. I rank it on a scale of one to
five, one being the worst, five being the best, and then the
first category story, which I gave a 3.25.
So this may seem like a low score, but just just give me a
chance to back this up. The story is fun and engaging,
(09:24):
but it's not really a story. It's sort of a mishmash, which
is probably kind of the point, but is this an origin story for
Century, or is it an origin story for the Thunderbolts?
Or both? It's just that it goes from
thing to thing without much driving it.
There just doesn't seem to be anoverarching story here and more
like 4 or five episodes strung together.
By the way, this is not me saying I that I disliked it
because I liked it a lot. It's just that this category
(09:46):
isn't its strongest. Now we go to the next category,
which is acting, which I gave a four and a half.
I honestly can't think of anything that didn't work, but
I'm still not convinced that it was a 5 and maybe I'm wrong.
Comment and let me know if you think so either.
Why everyone is excellent in this.
Louis Pullman as Bob is really good.
Florence Pugh continues to be amazing, David Harbour's
fantastic Julia. Louis Dreyfus playing a
(10:06):
competent version of Selena fromVeep is incredible cannon.
John Kamen is probably a little underutilized.
Wyatt Russell is probably the weaker of the group but still
really good. Honestly, it's him and Louis
Pullman that made me think it shouldn't be higher than I have
it. Which is not a knock on them,
they were great, but there were just times, especially with
Wyatt, where it felt like they maybe didn't buy the material
(10:27):
for their care as much. Anyway, still 4 1/2.
So let's go to originality, which I gave a 3.85.
It's a superhero movie, right? I mean, how original can they be
at this point? That being said, there's a
mental health aspect to this that is depicted in a very
original way, which I think makes it deserving of an above
average score. Everything else isn't
necessarily original. So I, you know, I couldn't bring
(10:48):
myself to give it a four, but the the mental health aspect
deserves to elevate. So let's go to the next
category, which is action sequences, which I gave a 4.35.
As always with Marvel, the action sequences are excellent.
It's not a full 5 because some of the choreography felt a
little slow to me at times, but there are plenty of badass
moments and it was everything you would want from a Marvel
movie as far as stunt work and action sequences are concerned.
(11:11):
So above average from an action movie standpoint, but you know,
not the best ever. So let's go to film coherence,
which I gave a 3.75. Considering the premise of this
movie, The fact that they were able to coherently and
believably bring these most of these disparate characters
together and even more impressively, believably keep
them together is quite an achievement.
Now I say most because the way they brought Red Guardian left a
(11:34):
little to be desired. Was I glad he was there?
You're damn right I was. I I love Red Guardian, David
Harper's fantastic, but it stillwasn't the most coherent thing
they did. Whenever you have an episodic
movie like this, the coherence usually takes a little bit of a
hit, but it was still really well done.
So let's go to Hero Appeal, which I gave a 5.
I loved how imperfect this hero team was.
(11:54):
They weren't necessarily bad people, just people who'd made
some bad choices, maybe looking for a little redemption.
The beauty of this movie is thatyou really root for their
redemption, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more
of them. So let's go to villain appeal,
Slash hatred, which I gave a 3 1/2.
So this category is interesting for this movie because who is
the villain? Is it Valentina?
Is it century? If it's Valentina, there's not
(12:16):
much resolution. If it's Century, there's some
resolution, but not in a typicalaction movie villain way.
There wasn't really anyone that I was rooting for to be
defeated. Valentina kind of.
So I think that's the correct pick for the villain, and I
don't think we spent enough timewith her to really get the
feeling of hatred, to want to root against her too much.
Still, she was a great characterand it left me wanting more from
her. And the heroes were the engaging
(12:38):
part of this movie, and they were fantastic.
So the points are going to the heroes, not as much to the
villains. I wish it had.
I wish we had gotten more time with the villain.
Supporting characters appeal. I also gave a 3 1/2.
There are so many lead characters in this that it's
hard to feel too strongly about any of the supporting
characters, of which I could only think of 2, The congressman
played by Wendell Holmes and Mel, the administrative
(13:01):
assistant for Valentina, played by Geraldine Vishwanathan.
Wendell Holmes is always excellent in everything.
And then Geraldine is a scene stealer.
She's she's great. Still though, they're so
ancillary that it makes it hard to care about them really.
So their appeal can't go too high.
So let's go to the next category, which is final
showdown, which I gave A5. This was such a unique showdown.
(13:23):
It didn't function in a typical action movie way.
It was an existential, thought provoking abstract.
It felt like a high budget art scene.
It was beautiful in my opinion. I found myself quite moved by
it, which you don't usually say for a final showdown, but that's
what happened. So let's go to my rank and I
gave it A5. I love this movie.
I'm not the person that has saidthat marvel post end game
sucked. I still enjoyed their movies.
(13:45):
Of course, there did seem to be a bit of a decline.
Well, obviously an interest, butalso just, I don't know, they
weren't as good. They weren't bad.
OK, A lot of people were like, oh, Marvel sucks now, but they
didn't suck. It's still good movies.
They're just not as good as and not as as exciting as they were
when they first came out so manyyears ago.
That all being said, this next part is going to feel weird for
me to say because I'm just I wasjust talking about how I don't
(14:06):
really think Marvel was bad in the in you know phases 4:00 and
5:00. But after watching this I truly
felt like I could say Marvel is back.
This was a superbly put togethermovie that actually moved me to
tears at times, made me laugh, and brought genuine excitement.
I think the biggest positive I can give it is that this was the
first time in a long time that Istayed for the post credits
(14:28):
scene and was genuinely excited to see what was coming.
So real quick before I summarize, I want to let you
know what the tier system is forour non comedy rankings.
From best to worst. It's absolute masterpiece
supreme cinema. I'd watch it again.
Meh D Yoker rank it and regret it and Disaster piece at the
bottom. The total for this one puts
(14:48):
Thunderbolts at a 41.7, which puts it firmly into the supreme
cinema tier. This actually puts it right in
between the original mission, Mission Impossible from 1996,
which is just above it, and the Counting 2, the episode from 2
weeks ago just below it. So thanks for listening
everybody. If you'd like to see an updated
list of our rankings, you can dothat on our website at the Rank
with John and zach.com. Remember to subscribe, review
(15:10):
and comment, and please considersupporting us on our Patreon
site at patreon.com/the Rank Podcast, where you'll get
exclusive perks of Dasvidania. There did seem to be a bit of a
(15:34):
decline in in. Come on, spit it out, will you?
I can't think of a damn word.
This was the first time in a long time that I stayed for the
post credits scene and was genuinely excited to see what
was coming. Welcome back to The Rank.
(00:26):
I'm John. And today we're going to be
ranking Thunderbolts Asterisk starring Florence Pugh,
Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, David
Harbour, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John Kamen.
It was adapted from the Thunderbolts comics created by
Kurt Busiak and Mark Bagley, TheAvengers comics created by
Stanley and Jack Kirby, Captain America comics created by Joe
(00:49):
Simon and Jack Kirby, and the Century comics created by Paul
Jenkins and Jay Lee. That's a lot.
The story was by by Eric Pearson, who also wrote the
screenplay with Joanna Callow and it was directed by Jake
Schreyer. Now if you're enjoying these
rankings or just like the idea of getting a review of an action
movie based on it being an action movie, please consider
subscribing and or following liking and reviewing.
(01:11):
Please put any of your questions, comments or
suggestions into the comments area or e-mail the show.
And if you super duper like it, consider becoming a patron at
patreon.com/the Rank podcast. With that being said, let's dive
into the Thunderbolts, starting with the Potent Notables.
Now quickly before we get into it, I want to say that I will
try to refrain from giving any spoilers, but I do make
mistakes. So that's your spoiler.
(01:33):
So as always with the Potent Notables, we start with the
movies financials. It's been out for about 3 weeks
now and as of May 20th, it has garnered $155.5 million
domestically and $170.7 million internationally for a worldwide
total of $326.3 million. And this is against the budget
of $180 million. So I think they say that to
(01:55):
really make money, you have to have double the budget.
It's not quite double the budgetyet, but it looks like it's
definitely going to get there. It's it's done pretty well at
the box office. So in the movie, there's a they
show Alexi or the Red Guardian watching TV and he's watching an
old Soviet parade. And this was an actual parade
that took place on May 1st, 1981in Moscow's Red Square.
(02:15):
And it was a younger Alexi, Red Guardian waving next to Prime
Minister Leonid Brezhnev. He was digitally inserted into
the historical footage. That's just thought that was
kind of neat. Now.
Stephen Young was originally cast as Robert Reynolds or
Sentry, having worked with Jake Schreyer on beef.
After filming was delayed due tothe SAG.
After strikes in 2023, Young dropped out due to scheduling
(02:36):
conflicts and was replaced by Lewis Pullman.
Curious of how different that would have been.
Sadly, we'll never know. Director Jake Schreyer made a
personal request to Lee Sung Sung Jin to rewrite the script,
as he felt the previous draft byEric Pearson focused too much on
the returning characters from Black Widow.
Lee is not credited as a screenwriter in the finalized
(02:56):
film, but he obtained an additional literary material
credit, whatever that is now. Florence Pugh loves heights and
wanted to be the one to jump offthe the Murdeca 118 building in
the opening, and she incessantlyemailed Marvel Studios President
Kevin Nagy about not using a stunt double quote.
As we got closer and closer to shooting, they said they don't
(03:16):
think it's going to happen because it's a crazy insurance
ordeal and obviously we're not going to throw her off the
second tallest building in the world.
I was like, what the fuck? Of course we are.
We have to do that. I was being a sassy Karen
emailing Kevin and saying it's going to do wonders for the
press tour. We have to do this.
We're going to have three women break three different Guinness
World Records and we'll do this and this.
(03:38):
I had to keep on pushing. And then they're like, OK, if
you want to fall off the second tallest building, we'll figure
it out for you. And then Pew said that the stunt
required so much willpower and adrenaline.
That quote, I fell asleep for three hours after I did the
stunt because my brain just shutdown.
South James Gunn was actually interested in directing a movie
focusing on this team, which Kevin Feige claimed as was a
possibility should Guardians of the Galaxy do well enough at the
(04:01):
box office now. The surprise success of
Guardians led to Marvel quickly announcing a sequel, which
resulted in Thunderbolts being relegated to development hell.
By the time the film resurfaced with a 2025 release date, Gunn
had decided the film was too similar to him making The
Suicide Squad for DC Comics, Which I get, it's kind of the
same. Jake Schreyer really wanted Man
Thing to become part of the roster for the Thunderbolts, not
(04:23):
knowing that the character had previously appeared in Werewolf
by Night. Schreyer ultimately concluded
that Man Thing's exclusion from the film was for the best
feeling the creature was too unpredictable and drew attention
away from Bob. Mel, played by Geraldine
Viswanathan, is based on MelissaGold or Songbird, a super
heroine who was a founding member of the Thunderbolts team
in the comics. Now here, she's an ordinary
(04:45):
human who works as Val secretary.
However, she has a Locket with abird on it, referring to her
comic name. Now I found this poet notable
and I couldn't help but think it's Marvel man.
Like you can't really be sure that Mel won't end up becoming
Songbird. Just throwing that out there.
Maybe this is something that's going to be developing.
We'll see. Now this next poet notable is a
good one and I was excited I found it, but it's spoiler
(05:07):
heavy. So this is your spoiler alert
for this poet notable. If you haven't seen this movie
yet, don't watch slash listen tothis to like the next, I don't
know, 30 seconds. That's your warning.
I'm going to go for it now. OK, so the ending where
Valentina announces the Thunderbolts to be the New
Avengers was expected to be met with applause and excitement.
However, test screening showed audiences didn't view them as
(05:29):
The Avengers and didn't react all that much to it at all.
So this caused Marvel and the director to go back to editing.
And this is how we ended up witha credit sequence that shows the
magazines and newspapers all feeling unsure about whether
these are the real New Avengers.And then we get this mid credit
scene all because of this, this test screening where they talk
about their branding problem with Sam Wilson.
So yeah, a moment where a test screening may have actually
(05:51):
improved the movie a little bit.OK, spoiler over.
Now we can go. We can go on to the to the last
potent notable, which isn't necessarily potent, but I think
it's still notable. So finally, this was the 36th
film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the final film of
the MCU's Phase 536 films. That's crazy.
All right, that's it for the potent notables.
(06:11):
Let's go of the movie overview. So I'm going to attempt to
discuss this movie now without giving any spoilers, which may
be difficult, but I think I can do it.
The first thing we notice is that this story is being seen
mostly through the eyes of Yelena, which is Florence Pugh's
character as she's narrating with voice over right away.
It's also a little bit heavy in the sense that she's narrating
about her own existential sort of dread.
(06:33):
This is just the beginning of the unexpected ways this movie
was going to tell its story. Now what I found really
interesting is that a lot of thecharacters we get to see are
from the seemingly lesser hits of the MC.
Similarly with Captain America, Brave New World, where they
pulled the villain from the Incredible Hulk, a mostly
forgotten entry into the MCU, and this one pulls Yelena,
Taskmaster and Red Guardian fromBlack Widow.
(06:53):
Secret agent or brief Captain America, however you want to
call him, and Valentina from theFalcon and The Winter Soldier
show and then Ghost from Ant Manand the Wasp.
Now I'm not saying that any of these movies were like flops or
anything, but they certainly weren't like the big MCU movies
that you would think of. And then it of course had
Bucky's slash The Winter Soldier.
That's probably the most well known character in the movie and
(07:16):
he's apparently a congressman now.
So that's fun. I will say that the focus being
on Yelena, I think goes more to show Florence Pugh's charm,
charisma and ability as a lead actor than anything else.
She's an amazing talent and continues to be Actually, the
casting choices for everyone here is is pretty spot on.
There are a lot of moments in this movie where you're
marveling. See what I did there No at the
(07:38):
splendor of the set design and I'm not a heights guy.
And when movies do it well, theycan really get me squirming in
my seat. And there's a scene in this one
that involves a deep tunneled pit that does just that, where I
legitimately was squirming and scared for a few moments, which,
you know, it's good. I guess it's sort of
embarrassing to say that the movie scared me because of
heights because I'm sitting in aseat.
(07:59):
Very embarrassing, but it still did.
The final showdown set was just incredibly done.
I felt like I was walking through an Art Museum and
enjoying the works. You know, it was like a like
this abstract modernism. I was really now on top of the
set design for some of these scenes that were incredible.
I can tell you that I found thismovie incredibly touching.
I was not expecting to get emotional in this movie, but I
(08:21):
am not afraid to admit that it absolutely got.
So what better sign is there of engagement with your characters
than the audience being moved totears by them?
There was also plenty of Comic Relief as we've got, you know,
come to expect from Marvel. It was well done and Red
Guardian was often the characterthat brought that, but he's also
the character that brought the tears along with Elena.
(08:42):
So just another shout out to Florence Pugh and a new one to
David Harbour for just being so good at what they do now.
I guess I'm giving a pretty goodidea of how the rank is going to
go, so let's just get to it and we'll let you know how it stacks
up. So the rank is where I rank the
movie based on 10 categories, story, acting, originality,
(09:02):
action sequences, film coherence, hero appeal, villain
appeal, slash hatred, supportingcharacters appeal, the final
showdown, and my personal rank. I rank it on a scale of one to
five, one being the worst, five being the best, and then the
first category story, which I gave a 3.25.
So this may seem like a low score, but just just give me a
chance to back this up. The story is fun and engaging,
(09:24):
but it's not really a story. It's sort of a mishmash, which
is probably kind of the point, but is this an origin story for
Century, or is it an origin story for the Thunderbolts?
Or both? It's just that it goes from
thing to thing without much driving it.
There just doesn't seem to be anoverarching story here and more
like 4 or five episodes strung together.
By the way, this is not me saying I that I disliked it
because I liked it a lot. It's just that this category
(09:46):
isn't its strongest. Now we go to the next category,
which is acting, which I gave a four and a half.
I honestly can't think of anything that didn't work, but
I'm still not convinced that it was a 5 and maybe I'm wrong.
Comment and let me know if you think so either.
Why everyone is excellent in this.
Louis Pullman as Bob is really good.
Florence Pugh continues to be amazing, David Harbour's
fantastic Julia. Louis Dreyfus playing a
(10:06):
competent version of Selena fromVeep is incredible cannon.
John Kamen is probably a little underutilized.
Wyatt Russell is probably the weaker of the group but still
really good. Honestly, it's him and Louis
Pullman that made me think it shouldn't be higher than I have
it. Which is not a knock on them,
they were great, but there were just times, especially with
Wyatt, where it felt like they maybe didn't buy the material
(10:27):
for their care as much. Anyway, still 4 1/2.
So let's go to originality, which I gave a 3.85.
It's a superhero movie, right? I mean, how original can they be
at this point? That being said, there's a
mental health aspect to this that is depicted in a very
original way, which I think makes it deserving of an above
average score. Everything else isn't
necessarily original. So I, you know, I couldn't bring
(10:48):
myself to give it a four, but the the mental health aspect
deserves to elevate. So let's go to the next
category, which is action sequences, which I gave a 4.35.
As always with Marvel, the action sequences are excellent.
It's not a full 5 because some of the choreography felt a
little slow to me at times, but there are plenty of badass
moments and it was everything you would want from a Marvel
movie as far as stunt work and action sequences are concerned.
(11:11):
So above average from an action movie standpoint, but you know,
not the best ever. So let's go to film coherence,
which I gave a 3.75. Considering the premise of this
movie, The fact that they were able to coherently and
believably bring these most of these disparate characters
together and even more impressively, believably keep
them together is quite an achievement.
Now I say most because the way they brought Red Guardian left a
(11:34):
little to be desired. Was I glad he was there?
You're damn right I was. I I love Red Guardian, David
Harper's fantastic, but it stillwasn't the most coherent thing
they did. Whenever you have an episodic
movie like this, the coherence usually takes a little bit of a
hit, but it was still really well done.
So let's go to Hero Appeal, which I gave a 5.
I loved how imperfect this hero team was.
(11:54):
They weren't necessarily bad people, just people who'd made
some bad choices, maybe looking for a little redemption.
The beauty of this movie is thatyou really root for their
redemption, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more
of them. So let's go to villain appeal,
Slash hatred, which I gave a 3 1/2.
So this category is interesting for this movie because who is
the villain? Is it Valentina?
Is it century? If it's Valentina, there's not
(12:16):
much resolution. If it's Century, there's some
resolution, but not in a typicalaction movie villain way.
There wasn't really anyone that I was rooting for to be
defeated. Valentina kind of.
So I think that's the correct pick for the villain, and I
don't think we spent enough timewith her to really get the
feeling of hatred, to want to root against her too much.
Still, she was a great characterand it left me wanting more from
her. And the heroes were the engaging
(12:38):
part of this movie, and they were fantastic.
So the points are going to the heroes, not as much to the
villains. I wish it had.
I wish we had gotten more time with the villain.
Supporting characters appeal. I also gave a 3 1/2.
There are so many lead characters in this that it's
hard to feel too strongly about any of the supporting
characters, of which I could only think of 2, The congressman
played by Wendell Holmes and Mel, the administrative
(13:01):
assistant for Valentina, played by Geraldine Vishwanathan.
Wendell Holmes is always excellent in everything.
And then Geraldine is a scene stealer.
She's she's great. Still though, they're so
ancillary that it makes it hard to care about them really.
So their appeal can't go too high.
So let's go to the next category, which is final
showdown, which I gave A5. This was such a unique showdown.
(13:23):
It didn't function in a typical action movie way.
It was an existential, thought provoking abstract.
It felt like a high budget art scene.
It was beautiful in my opinion. I found myself quite moved by
it, which you don't usually say for a final showdown, but that's
what happened. So let's go to my rank and I
gave it A5. I love this movie.
I'm not the person that has saidthat marvel post end game
sucked. I still enjoyed their movies.
(13:45):
Of course, there did seem to be a bit of a decline.
Well, obviously an interest, butalso just, I don't know, they
weren't as good. They weren't bad.
OK, A lot of people were like, oh, Marvel sucks now, but they
didn't suck. It's still good movies.
They're just not as good as and not as as exciting as they were
when they first came out so manyyears ago.
That all being said, this next part is going to feel weird for
me to say because I'm just I wasjust talking about how I don't
(14:06):
really think Marvel was bad in the in you know phases 4:00 and
5:00. But after watching this I truly
felt like I could say Marvel is back.
This was a superbly put togethermovie that actually moved me to
tears at times, made me laugh, and brought genuine excitement.
I think the biggest positive I can give it is that this was the
first time in a long time that Istayed for the post credits
(14:28):
scene and was genuinely excited to see what was coming.
So real quick before I summarize, I want to let you
know what the tier system is forour non comedy rankings.
From best to worst. It's absolute masterpiece
supreme cinema. I'd watch it again.
Meh D Yoker rank it and regret it and Disaster piece at the
bottom. The total for this one puts
(14:48):
Thunderbolts at a 41.7, which puts it firmly into the supreme
cinema tier. This actually puts it right in
between the original mission, Mission Impossible from 1996,
which is just above it, and the Counting 2, the episode from 2
weeks ago just below it. So thanks for listening
everybody. If you'd like to see an updated
list of our rankings, you can dothat on our website at the Rank
with John and zach.com. Remember to subscribe, review
(15:10):
and comment, and please considersupporting us on our Patreon
site at patreon.com/the Rank Podcast, where you'll get
exclusive perks of Dasvidania. There did seem to be a bit of a
(15:34):
decline in in. Come on, spit it out, will you?
I can't think of a damn word.
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