00:00Thunderbolts, the new Marvel film starring Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan
00:04as Bucky Barnes, and more, is a welcome change of pace from recent MCU fare. One of the biggest
00:10reasons it resonates so much is that it wasn't afraid to actually be about something. While a
00:16lot of superhero films and shows across the board have felt like they've lost their way in their
00:20connection to their human elements over the recent years, Thunderbolts has found success
00:25by going in the opposite direction. It confronts the humanity of its characters and their situations
00:31head on, unafraid of exploring the dark while also remembering to find the light. So let's take a
00:37closer look at what Thunderbolts really has to say, and why audiences have connected with it so much.
00:43We open on Yelena going through the motions of a mission while unpacking the deep emptiness she
00:48feels. There's something wrong with me. She may be good at her job, but she feels like she's living
00:56a life without purpose. Valentina is facing impeachment for her work with a biochemical company,
01:03whose sentry project aimed to create superhumans who, unlike the Avengers, could be controlled.
01:09In the effort to thwart her trial, she enlists a group, Yelena Belova, Ava Starr, Taskmaster,
01:14and John Walker, to destroy the laboratory and thus conceal her involvement. Eventually,
01:20they realize that they've all been instructed to take each other out too, since their knowledge
01:24of the project creates more loose ends. And it is a trap set to explode and destroy all remaining
01:30evidence, including them, but they're able to escape just in time. Realizing she's got a big
01:36problem on her hands, not only are the mercenaries still alive, they had also run into Bob, a subject of
01:42the experiment who was thought to be dead. Valentina brings her own team to take them out.
01:47But it turns out that those sentry trials did work to some degree. Bob very much has some superpowers,
01:53though he doesn't quite seem able to control them. He uses them to help the others escape.
01:58Bob is captured, and Valentina decides to try to use him for her own gain. After teaming up with Red
02:04Guardian and eventually Bucky Barnes, the team decides to try to save Bob. During his time with
02:09Valentina, however, he has changed. He's now even more powerful than before, and seemingly much more
02:16in control. At Valentina's behest, he easily fights off the Thunderbolt's crew, but then also starts to
02:22wonder, if he's so powerful, why should he have to follow anyone's orders? Fearing losing control over
02:29him, they hit the kill switch, which essentially locks Bob down inside his own mind. But instead of
02:34fully incapacitating him, this instead leads to his dark alter ego, the Void, totally taking over.
02:42Not just him, but soon all of New York City itself. This isn't just a literal darkness, however.
02:48While trapped in this in-between space, people are stuck essentially reliving their worst memories.
02:55This Void represents an issue many people have to contend with, and that Yelena herself was already
03:01battling. Becoming so overwhelmed by your own grief and trauma that you become unable to even
03:07imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. And everyone here is dealing with this to some degree.
03:12These are people who have done a lot of bad things in their lives, and have all but given up on the
03:17idea of redemption. This Void pulls this into its own separate dimension. Actually trapping everyone,
03:24replaying these terrible moments, unable to escape. Already in a state of despair and disillusionment
03:30herself, Yelena decides to take the plunge and enter the darkness. She's met with terrible
03:36memories from her own past. Things she had tried to suppress, but that had always been bubbling
03:41under the surface, threatening to pull her under. She's eventually able to reach Bob's own
03:46consciousness and finds that he, too, is trapped. In Bob, we see a literalized version of the split
03:52of one's being that can come from mental illness and anguish. The darkest parts of ourselves threaten
03:58to totally subsume the rest of us. Yelena understands this on a personal level. She,
04:03too, became trapped by who she was, what she had done and was forced to do, and had come to feel
04:09that she was in such a deep hole that there was no way out, and no point of even trying to get out.
04:16You see some Bob, however, how important it is to fight through those feelings, and also how you can't
04:21do it alone. She and the other Thunderbolts join together to help give Bob the courage and belief in
04:27himself to be able to fight back and gain control over his own mind, in turn vanquishing the void.
04:33While a shadow superhuman overtaking an entire city is fantastical superhero fodder, the basic
04:39struggles at the heart of the story are intimately relatable to so many. But while we might not be
04:45getting literally taken over by the darkness, many of us are struggling with the effects of mental
04:51health issues and a society that exacerbates them. According to a 2022 data from the National
04:56Institute of Mental Health, approximately 23% of adults in the US were dealing with mental health
05:01issues, 6% with serious mental illness. Only around half of people dealing with mental illness had
05:07received mental health treatment over the previous year. Treating and dealing with mental illness can
05:12be difficult for a number of reasons. Lack of access to care, the cost of care, the illness itself
05:17leading one to avoid treatment, etc. But there's also the issue of outside factors, the way the
05:23world and society we live in contributes to our issues. And this is the level that Thunderbolts
05:28really connects on. It's not just one issue, but multiple compounding problems, psychological and
05:35physical, local and global, that come together to make it feel like we're up against nearly impossible
05:41odds. There's a feeling among many young adults of being constantly up against something seemingly
05:47insurmountable. Losing, getting back up and brushing yourself off, only to get knocked down again and
05:53again. And starting to wonder if it really is even possible to turn things around. Millennials,
05:59for example, were long chided for being overly optimistic about being able to change things for
06:03the better. But as time has gone on and they've continued to get hit with wave after wave of
06:08institutional and societal failure, that optimism has depleted. According to a report by the Bennett
06:14Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, during the late 1990s and early 2000s,
06:19as the first cohort of millennials were in their late teens and university years, millennial
06:24satisfaction with democracy was in fact higher than among their parents' generation. Only following
06:29the early 2000s recession did millennial satisfaction with democracy begin to trend downwards, before
06:35crashing lower with the global financial crisis. This suggests that the democratic disconnect
06:40is not a given, but the result of concrete factors in millennial life trajectories.
06:45That, of course, isn't something that's restricted to millennials. Gen Z are following a similar path
06:50and feel even worse off because they never even got that momentary optimism about the future.
06:56The report notes,
06:57Moreover, this last point illustrates a broader injustice produced by wealth inequality.
07:21Society in which the chances of success or failure in life depend less upon hard work
07:27and enterprise, and more upon inherited wealth and privilege. The Void showcases this interplay of
07:33the inner mental world and the outer physical world. Bob agreed to join the Sentry Trials in the first place
07:39because he was miserable with his life and hoped that this would be a chance for change, to finally turn
07:44things around. But instead, those richer and more powerful used him for their own interests,
07:50without any thought to how it would affect him as a person. In this way, he's an interesting contrast
07:56with Steve Rogers, who was also pulled into an attempt to morph a regular guy into a superhuman.
08:02Neither had any idea what they were really signing up for. And when the experiments work, both are used by
08:08those in power for their own ends. Steve becomes disillusioned due to realizing that the world isn't like he
08:14imagined it to be at all. Bob's biggest struggle is more internal. Even after he gains enough power to free
08:22himself from their grasp, he still isn't free because he becomes trapped in a prison of his own making.
08:28The only way he was able to find some kind of control was to take it through violence and attempting to pull
08:34others down with him. But even when it might seem like the core of who he was had been totally consumed and erased,
08:41it's still there in his subconscious trying its best to hold on. And deep, deep down, as disillusioned and
08:48despondent as she might feel, Yelena feels this within herself, too. The film opens with her delving
08:55into how miserable and hopeless she feels, how her life feels without purpose. But over the course of
09:01her story, we see again and again that her spark hasn't been totally snuffed out. When it feels like all is lost
09:08and we're in an unwinnable situation, there is still that little voice in us that wants to try
09:14one more time to fight back. To fight for ourselves. But it can take that outside help to remind us that
09:21we do deserve to follow that voice. To make it stand for ourselves. And to finally make it out the other
09:28side. A big part of the reason Thunderbolts works so well is because it goes back to a basic tenet of
09:34storytelling. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations. These characters aren't superheroes.
09:40They're everyday people who have been thrust into situations against their will again and again.
09:45Trying to figure out how to do the right thing. Or if there even is a right thing. They're not
09:51optimistic about this world or their ability to survive it because they don't have the protection
09:56of super abilities. They know they're just going to have to use what they've got to go up against
10:01whatever comes their way. And a lot of the time, that sucks. With all of the other real superheroes
10:08still out and about in this world, some might wonder why these people ended up having to save
10:14the world this time. But the people with the power to effect change not showing up when they're needed
10:19most and leaving everyone else to their own devices isn't terribly far fetched. While the fight against the
10:25void is out of this world, the real battle of the film is against something very human. And that's what
10:31makes it feel so genuinely powerful when they do overcome the darkness together. It's also notable that
10:37the film managed to dive into all of these themes in a way that feels relatable, without getting
10:42distractingly melodramatic or feeling like it just hand weighs away everything at the last minute for a happy ending.
10:48Is it enough to pull people back into being hype about the MCU? Only time will tell. But that also doesn't
10:54really matter because it works well as a film on its own. Which is actually why it works so well.
11:00Obviously it's connected to the larger MCU canon and events, but because the themes are about genuine
11:06things that everyone can relate to and understand, you don't feel like you need to have seen the last
11:1045 MCU releases to connect to the film or understand what's going on. Since the loss of the Avengers,
11:17there's been a hunt for replacements. Sentry Program hoped to make some new superhumans that could be
11:22more easily controlled. President Ross asks Sam Wilson to restart the group in Captain America
11:28Brave New World. But here, Valentina takes control in a swift PR move to save herself yet again,
11:34branding this team the new Avengers. This switch from brightly colored superpowered quippy heroes to
11:40downtrodden normal people who are just trying their best does feel very fitting for our current moment.
11:47We're all entering this alarming new era together. And we're all going to have to come together to
11:53find that light on the other side. That's the take! Click here to watch the video we think you'll love.
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