After previously being revealed behind closed doors at SDCC 2024, Marvel has finally released the first big teaser for the next chapter in the MCU, Thunderbolts, and it looks like a promising banner under which to marshal some of the more unwieldy characters and loose threads its had hanging around.
The trailer opens with Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) arriving at the dumpy apartment of her surrogate dad Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and asking the aging Russian super-soldier, who clearly hasn’t gotten work in years, whether he still feels fulfilled. Facing an existential malaise, Belova takes a job that ends up entangling her and a bunch of other washed-up Cold War operators like Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) with a CIA run by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Lots of punching, shooting, and car chases ensue, as well as a stripped-down remix of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”
Take a look:
Pugh and Harbour’s on-screen charisma and father-daughter dynamic helps give the Thunderbolts trailer the feel of something beyond just another pit-stop on the never-ending MCU content roadmap. Louis-Dreyfus, putting a more sinister spin on her “WTF” smile and laugh from HBO’s Veep, is also putting in work. It helps that at least some of the big scenes in the trailer look like they were filmed in the actual real world instead of against a green screen, or at the very least with all of the principle actors actually in the same room together.
Thunderbolts, which releases in May 2025, is part of a one-two punch with Captain America: Brave New World, which premiers months earlier on February 14. Harrison Ford plays President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross in that movie, complete with a Red Hulk transformation. It’s unclear if he’ll also be reprising that role in Thunderbolts, but it could be one of a number of interesting tie-ins between the two blockbusters. I’m sure, though, that really dedicated fans will also be retracing all of the steps leading up to Thunderbolts that Marvel has been laying out in its Disney+ streaming shows.
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