The first teaser trailer for Marvel’s upcoming big-budget film “Thunderbolts*” is out now and fans are excited and critics hopeful.
The three-minute-twenty-four second trailer shows off an ensemble of Marvel’s wayward anti-heroes as they assemble their team.
The rag-tag misfit team includes Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), a spy and adoptive sister of Natasha Romanoff, the former Black Widow. Yelena is joined by her adoptive father, Alexi Shostakov, aka the Red Guardian, a Russian super-soldier.
Taskmaster, a brainwashed assassin from the 2021 feature film “Black Widow,” returns as a member of the Thunderbolts.
Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, is back; this time as a congressman. It’s a weird turn of events for the former assassin, but it promises some interesting plot points.
Hannah John Kamen returns as Ava Star, or Ghost, the villain from the 2018 film “Ant-Man and the Wasp.”
Disgraced hero and secondary antagonist of the 2021 Disney+ series “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” John Walker is back as a disillusioned former replacement for Captain America.
A newcomer and perhaps the most notable appearance is Lewis Pullman as Bob Reynolds or Sentry. Sentry is a Marvel superhero who has only appeared in the comics up until now.
Injected with an experimental version of the super-soldier serum, Sentry is quite possibly one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel comics. His ability to warp reality in the comics erases him from the minds of many Marvel heroes.
New Rockstars, a popular YouTube channel, theorizes that Reynolds is the product of Howard Stark’s continued experiments with the super-soldier serum in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The theory suggests Avengers Tower is actually Sentry’s headquarters and that Howard passed property down to Tony but died before he could reveal the existence of Sentry.
The plot is a bit of a mystery. The synopsis for the film reads “Depressed assassin Yelena Belova teams up alongside the MCU’s least anticipated band of misfits.”
It’s not the most helpful synopsis, but from watching the trailer, my best theory is that the Thunderbolts are lured to the exact location either by someone or through their own investigations. There, they fight but eventually stop finding Bob Reynolds.
A goofy synopsis is exciting. With the recent success of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” leaning into meta-humor and the ability to laugh at oneself might be the key to revitalizing the MCU.
The rest is a mystery, but one possibility is that Thunderbolts is working to protect Ben Reynolds from those who are experimenting on him out of a collective need or some misfit code.
That is my theory, but more trailers and behind-the-scenes info will undoubtedly surface before the film.
Another win for the film is its down-to-earth style. Is there going to be a tie-in to the multiverse somewhere? Probably.
The lack of a galactic setting and the types of characters we are following give me hope for a more focused storyline.
From the trailer the aesthetic of the film is reminiscent of the “Captain American: The Winter Solider” film’s espionage style, a direction that propelled the film into many fan’s top 10 lists.
The official title of the film is “Thunderbolts*” notably featuring an * symbol. Typically, the symbol signals that something is missing from the text. So what’s missing? No one quite knows.
It is clear that Marvel is taking a different route with the film and hopefully the divergence from the typical formula is the secret to a good Marvel Film.