Blog Project 2 - Thunderbolts*

 

(Photo courtesy of IGN https://www.ign.com/articles/thunderbolts-review-marvel-sebastian-stan-florence-pugh-david-harbour)

Thunderbolts* (Also referred to as *The New Avengers) is a Marvel film that was released on May 2nd, 2025. I chose this movie because I got to watch it with my mother and sister at the Pix Theater a couple weeks ago. Prior to my sister telling us she bought us all tickets, I didn’t even know this film was releasing. I’m not a die-hard fan of Marvel or super hero-type movies, but I do enjoy watching them from time to time, even though I am not caught up on most of the lore. I know a handful of characters by name, but not their entire stories like some fans may know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sAOWhvheK8&ab_channel=MarvelEntertainment 

Brief Summary:

Thunderbolts* is a film following (mainly) Yelena Belova (played by Florence Pugh), trained as a child assassin and now working under Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a corrupt noblewoman who serves as the antagonist of the story. Essentially, we watch Yelena along with her adoptive father, Alexei Shostakov (David Harbor) and a group of misfit superpowered people (John Walker played by Wyatt Russel, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen, Mel, played by Geraldine Viswanathan, and Bob, played by Lewis Pullman, and also aided by Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan), join forces to attempt and stop De Fontaine’s plans. 

Actors:

Florence Pugh is our lead for this movie. Pugh is an actress from the United Kingdom and has had a very successful career. Some films you may know her from include Midsommar (2019), Little Women (2019), her MCU debut Black Widow (2021), and Fighting with My Family (2019).

David Harbor also has a prominent role in this movie and played his character very well! You may know him best from Stranger Things (2016), where he played Chief Jim Hopper, and other notable works he’s done include CIA agent Gregg Beam in Quantum of Solace (2008), Shep Campbell in Revolutionary Road (2008), Van Hauser in End of Watch (2012) and Dexter Tolliver in Suicide Squad (2016).

Lewis Pullman is honestly who I would consider our second lead behind Pugh, playing a very enigmatic and at the same time very entertaining role of Bob. Pullman’s notable roles include Rhett Abbott in Outer Range (2022-2024), Robert “Bob” Floyd in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and Miles Miller in Bad Times at the El Royale (2018.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays our main antagonist in this film, absolutely nailing a very smart and daring corrupt noblewoman who does not seem to stop unless she gets her way. Louis-Dreyfus may look familiar, as she played Elaine Benes in Seinfeld (1990-1998), and her other notable roles include Eva in Enough Said (2013), Selina Meyer in Veep (2012-2019), and Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006-2010).

Wyatt Russel plays John Walker, a character who may surprisingly grow on you as the movie continues. Russel has also appeared as Zook in 22 Jump Street (2014), Ray Walker in Night Swim (2024), and Cpl. Lewis Ford in Overlord (2018.) 

Geraldine Viswanathan plays Mel in the movie, a character who was both very integral to the plot and yet does not often get the spotlight in my eyes. Viswanathan is also known for her roles as Kayla in Blockers (2018), Emo: The Musical (2016), and Bonnie in Janet King (2017.)

Hannah John-Kamen plays Ava Starr, and you may also know John-Kamen from Ready Player One (2018) and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021).

Movie Stats:

According to Variety, Thunderbolts* cost around 180 million dollars to make, and according to Box Office Mojo, these are the box office numbers Thunderbolts* made. “Domestic (48.9%) $173,807,728 International (51.1%) $181,700,000 Worldwide $355,507,728.” By it’s revenue, Thunderbolts* seems to have done pretty well for itself after the initial cost to make it. 

Analysis:

Since I am not an extreme Marvel (or superhero type movie) fan in general, mostly tuning in here and there when I want to, it may be difficult for me to deeply analyze the movie in comparison to others. But in general, I found myself actually laughing many times during this film. I don’t often find Marvel extremely funny, and I’m sure some of you may be aware of the memes being critical or making fun of the humor in Marvel, boiling it down to very basic jokes. I can’t really attest to this myself, but suffice it to say, I didn’t feel as though the humor in Thunderbolts* was bad at all, and the dynamics between characters added to the humor, as the chemistry felt natural and not at all forced. So, in the humor department, I’d say it’s different from other Marvel movies. In terms of story, I think the general structure and beats it hits matches well to other Marvel movies; it has a story structure of a group of unlikely people coming together to face an enemy. For comparison, we have recent movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, where the titular characters follow a similar storyline. I’d also say that the characters have a lot of heart, which is also common for Marvel characters as well I’d say. Characters that feel real and personable, sometimes relatable or easy to sympathize with. I believe that’s a trait held by many Marvel characters, and it is true in Thunderbolts* as well.

Interpretation:

Truthfully, Thunderbolts* might not be important to people as a whole. Does that matter to me? No. The importance of it is based on the fact that this is something for fans, and even then, it can reach a more general audience as well and be appealing to them as well. I’m an example of that, as I’m a very casual fan and yet I still massively enjoyed this movie. 

The trend is very much following the Marvel Movie timeline. It’s so massive now in our culture, with fans all over the world and a legacy that’s lasted for decades now. I wonder if Marvel and DC movies and content will always be around, being remade over and over again. 

The target audience would be fans and the general public. I personally did not pick up on any stereotypes or offensive messages, but I can also be blind to a biased message being put into the movie. I think everyone is portrayed very equally and with the same amount of care put into all their characterizations.

Evaluation:

The strengths in my eyes fall under the humor, characterization, and chemistry. The characters are easy to get attached to and it helps in making me laugh at the jokes. The weakness I’d have to say is the plot. It’s not boring by any means, but it follows a similar structure as many other movies do. I don’t fault the movie for that though, as it’s simply a formula that is tried and true and sells. I still thought the movie was good! I still enjoyed it immensely. I don’t think it’s the best Marvel movie, as I can’t really claim which is best or worst since I haven’t seen them all, but I do think it’s solid compared to the others. To be honest, it’ll likely be forgotten in the next week to everyone who isn’t a massive fan of Marvel. I probably won’t remember it in the next year or so. But what do critics have to say?

Here are some reviews from Rotten Tomatoes:

“The initial thought might be to dismiss Thunderbolts as an also-ran. That would be a mistake, since this flick is one of Marvel’s more successful efforts of late.”

— Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

“The sort of level that more superhero films should be at… Thunderbolts is a pleasant surprise.”

— Ross Bonaime, Collider

“The movie’s many verbal references to depression, substance abuse, or the writings of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (yes, really) establish a genuine thematic ambition Marvel hasn’t seen in a while — not at least since 2016’s Doctor Strange, a story steeped in death anxiety and confronting mortality.”

— Siddhant Adlakha, JoySauce.com

So in general, it seems critics are pleasantly surprised for the most part. I would have to agree with them.

Engaging:

Since Marvel is such a big company, it’s active pretty much everywhere. They’re on instagram with an accumulated 102 million followers between both the @/Marvel and @/Marvelstudios accounts. They’re also on X with around 20 million followers. They’re on Facebook and TikTok as well with similar amounts of followers. I’ve definitely seen other Marvel movies, and I’ll surely watch whatever new ones may intrigue me in the future. The Marvel YouTube provides other content aside from trailers. They seem to also have compilation videos as well as some promotional content.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6emIOTsJNVA&ab_channel=MarvelEntertainment

I saw the movie with my family and they both liked it very much!

To conclude, Thunderbolts* felt fresh and at the same time, similar to other Marvel movies. I’d give it a solid 6/10, as while I loved it very much, there is still some story tropes seen in there that feel overdone, like the general story structure,

Sources:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20969586/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_in_0_q_thunder

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt20969586/

Blog Project 1: The Last of Us - Season 2

!Major Spoilers Ahead!

The Last of Us is a television adaptation of a video game of the same name that was released on June 14th, 2013. The TV adaptation began premiering on January 15th, 2023, nearly ten years after the original game release. Being a very big fan of the games, I made sure to subscribe to HBO Max and tuned in on a weekly basis as that’s how it was released. Now in 2025, the second season is premiering, which began airing in April. The second game is following the plot of the second game, The Last of Us II, released on June 19, 2020. I watched the latest episode “The Path” on its release day, April 27th, 2025. 

(The Last of Us box-art, courtesy of Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us)

The show is a mix of drama and horror. We have characters that are very fleshed out and written with humanity and compassion paired up with a zombie-apocalypse setting, the zombies in here have various types and differences, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to them as Infected as the show does. 

Season One Summary

To briefly sum up the first season, the world experiences an apocalypse due to a cordyceps virus spreading to humans. Joel Miller (portrayed by Pedro Pascal) is a middle aged man who’s become a smuggler for goods in and out of quarantine zones. When the world ended, his daughter Sarah Miller (portrayed by Nico Parker) is brutally murdered by a military official after they believe her ankle injury to possibly be a bite from an infected, and they believed she would turn. Joel, along with then romantic interest Tess Servopoulos (portrayed by Annie Wersching) are tasked with escorting Ellie Williams (portrayed by Bella Ramsey), a fourteen year old girl who is immune to the cordyceps virus. The leader of a terrorist group known as the Fireflies, Marlene (Merle Dandridge) tasks Joel and Tess to bring Ellie to a hospital run by the Fireflies in hopes of discovering a cure for humanity.

Along their journey, Tess dies tragically from a standoff with infected and Joel and Ellie continue their journey alone. They travel a long distance, with Joel slowly going from a very hardened, stoic survivor into a more open and honest person because of the bond he’d since formed with Ellie. Upon Ellie telling him, “Time heals all wounds,” Joel responds; “It’s not time that did it.” 

They finally make it to the hospital and are captured by the Fireflies, and Joel is informed by Marlene that  the operation Ellie is in will most likely kill her, because of how the infection usually starts in the brain and spreads from there. For her, the infection stopped at the brain, meaning they’d have to kill her by using her brain samples to run tests. 

Joel, unable to let them kill Ellie over some possibility for a cure, decides to take matters into his own hands. He kills every Firefly in that hospital, takes Ellie, and they go to a settlement named Jackson that is run by Joel’s brother, Tommy Miller (Gabriel Luna) and Tommy’s wife, Maria (Rutina Wesley.) The first season ends with Joel promising Ellie that the lie he told her about the Fireflies no longer needing her in order to find a cure was true.

The Path + Brief Season Two Summary

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in character as Joel and Ellie, courtesy of IGN (https://www.ign.com/articles/the-last-of-us-season-2-review-spoiler-free)

Season two finds us back in Jackson, observing a strained relationship between Ellie and Joel. We see Ellie has made friends in Jackson with Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino). On a patrol, Joel and Dina find Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever), and unbeknownst to them, Abby’s father was the surgeon who was about to perform the operation on Ellie in hopes of finding a cure. Abby was vengeful and full of hatred towards Joel for not only murdering her father but killing a large portion of the Fireflies, enough to make the group disband and set off in different groups. Her group happens to be the Washington Liberation Front, WLF— or commonly referred to as Wolves.

Tragically, Abby murders Joel, and her group that she had with her consisting of Owen (Spencer Lord), Mel (Ariela Barer), Nora (Tati Gabrielle), and Manny (Danny Ramirez). Ellie finds them in the middle of Joel’s murder and witnesses his death.

The Path is the episode directly after Joel’s death. 

We see Ellie after returning home to Jackson, and she displays signs of PTSD from the incident. After being held in the infirmary for days, she is allowed to go home. She goes to Joel’s home and looks around, mourning his death and looking at everything that used to be his. Then, Dina appears downstairs and Ellie goes to meet her.

Dina informs Ellie of the information she found out about the WLF, and they both decide they need to have a group go out to take out the WLF, both in justice for Joel and for the safety of their community. After pleading with the council, they are denied. However, Ellie and Dina decide to leave anyway. The episode follows their trip towards Seattle where the WLF are located and ends with them riding on horseback towards it. Presumably, the next episode will show Ellie and DIna's continued journey into Seattle on Ellie's journey for revenge.

Production and Audience Reaction

The Last of Us (game) was originally created by Neil Druckmann and created by Naughty Dog, best known for games like the Uncharted series, Jak and Daxter, and their upcoming game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. As Neil Druckmann wrote the story for The Last of Us, he is also creator and producer on the show, along with Craig Mazin. Mazin is known for creating, writing and producing for a show called Chernobyl, as well as working on some comedy movies like Scary Movie 3 and 4.

Pedro Pascal is known for his roles in movies and shows such as the Mandalorian, Narcos, Game of Thrones and many more. Bella Ramsey also worked on Game of Thrones, and other shows and films like Catherine Called Birdy, Hilda and many more.

The show released to critical success among audiences for the first season, praised for the performances showcased in the show and the faithful adaptation the first season became. However, season two seems to be lacking for some people. Rotten Tomatoes wrote an article stating, "While the majority of write-ups for The Last of Us: Season 2 are positive, assuring fans that the new episodes are worth watching, there is a consensus that it’s too short, too incomplete, and too lacking in screen time for Joel and Ellie together." (https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/the-last-of-us-season-2-first-reviews/#:~:text=The%20first%20season%20of%20The,Last%20of%20Us:%20Season%202)

Analysis

The first season of The Last of Us was filmed on location in Alberta, Canada and the second season was filmed in British Colombia, also in Canada. The locations created for the Last of Us not only do an amazing service to the show itself, providing a gritty, dramatic and dark atmosphere necessary for a zombie-apocalypse themed series, but also does an incredible job recreating iconic scenes from the show. The characters interact and speak to each other in what is essentially a line-for-line adaptation from game to show, with some extra lines and scenes that not only enhance the pre-existing story but also endear us further to these characters. I feel characters are written in a relatable and realistic way, down to the way they talk feeling like you're watching a real conversation happening.

Truthfully, I do not watch many different shows. The best comparison I could make would be the Walking Dead. Both shows feature characters that are endearing and realistically written, and both feature a sentiment of 'found family.' It shows people who aren't related meeting each other and coming together, creating a makeshift family and showcasing how people need each other to survive, a very human necessity.

What would make it unique is the fact that its a live action video game adaptation show. Video game adaptations have become increasingly popular, with movies like Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, and The Minecraft Movie coming out in the last few years to critical success. However, this is a live action show. While adapted shows are common, they are moreso common for animation (Arcane, Castlevania, etc.) I haven't seen many live action video game adapted shows, much less to the overwhelming success like The Last of Us.

Interpretation

I feel that The Last of Us has little to no stereotyping, or maybe I am just blind to it as a fan. But I can speak on it's character tropes. We have Joel as your typical hardened, angry, older man survivor, emotionally closed off until Ellie helps him open up and heal. We have Ellie, a loudmouthed, similarly angry teenager who struggles with taking things sincerely and trusting others until Joel becomes the one person who doesn't leave her or die. For a while, at least. It has extremely excellent writing for it's characters who are LGBTQ+, Ellie as the main example, being a teenage girl who's attracted to girls, isn't written as if her being gay is such a big deal; that's just who she is. The greatest example would be on two characters, Bill and Frank, gay men who initially had a relatively minor role in the game but were given an episode centered solely around their blossoming relationship and then their tragic end together. It was beautiful.

Our target audience, primarily, is fans of the game. People who fell in love with the game, such as myself, saw this show as something that was even better than the game, something building upon it's existing material. I'd say the show is aimed at young to middle aged adults, 18-40. I'd say it also has great appeal to members of the LGBTQ+ community as it has wonderfully portrayed gay characters. On commercials made for the show, I think they try to reach a general audience. The commercials are very dramatic and action-packed, showing the more exciting or anticipated scenes especially for those who've played the second game.

I think visitors to the US would see an example of something they've probably already seen before in terms of a US made show or movie. US culture has a lot of violence, guns and flashy visuals in order to promote our movies and shows and make them.

Evaluation

To be completely honest, the show has some strong performances, and at times, not so strong performances. I love Bella Ramsey and I think they make a wonderful Ellie, but there are times where I felt that their performance was lacking. That isn't to say the entire performance though, especially in season 2, where I think they've only gotten better. Another strength would be it's writing. As stated before, they lift lines and story elements from the game, but also add a lot of extra scenes and lines that make it that much better. On that same note, characterizations for Ellie's character often times feel as though they are still attempting to write her as the fourteen year old we saw in the first season, when in the second season, she is meant to be nineteen. I feel as though we should have seen some more maturing of her character. I'd say for the most part, it is a good mirror to society and real life, having these characters make decisions that have you going, "Yeah, I'd do that, too." At least for me.

I personally love just about everything about this show, as the game it's based on means a lot to me. I first played it when I was about 18 and I fell in love with the characters, character design, story, music, everything. And I hold the same feelings for the adaptation. From keeping the score used in the games by the wildly talented Gustavo Santoalla who composed the original games, to keeping a lot of the outfits the same or similar for the show from the games, it serves as a wonderful adaptation from game to movie. Some changes I've seen I haven't been a huge fan of for the second season, but there have also been changes that I did like, so currently I'm on the fence in that regard (and explaining and complaining it to my best friend after each episode.)

Here are some quotes from Rotten Tomatoes critics;

"Often these middle seasons can feel like a weigh station, an impatient stopover until the meat of the work in the final act but The Last of Us gifts the audience with many sublime moments that make it more than worthwhile in the meantime."

"Trust that this show’s devotion to its characters’ humanity makes the horrors hit harder."

It’s all a bit auto-dystopia, even sluggish. Still... I’m keeping the faith that the mushroom apocalypse will deliver again."

I agree with all these reviews! Even the one calling it 'sluggish' because yes, especially with the Path, this episode dragged for quite a while until we got to the part that would actually progress the story. However, the parts that dragged actually provided us with more world building, especially in the sense of us seeing more of the settlement Jackson that our main characters reside.

Engagement

I am currently tuning in every Sunday for each new episode's release, much like how I did with the first season. I do watch it with family, as well as playing through the game in order just to provide them with extra contexts. I follow it's official Instagram page as well as Bella Ramsey's and Pedro Pascal's both for any updates for the show and as well as showing my support for these actors.

The shows official Instagram often posts sneak peaks of upcoming episodes as well as promoting fanart that fans have created for the show, which shows that the people running it care a lot about the fans. Unfortunately, we do see some people online who are rather critical of actor Bella Ramsey because of their appearance, which has been an issue from the start, claiming that Bella does not resemble Ellie in the slightest. To me, that isn't as important as the actual performances made by the actors.

Conclusion

From this assignment, I've delved a lot more into what has gone into making this show and I'm leaving with more respect for those creating this lovely piece of art. I learned more about the creators and the way the official accounts interact with their fans. I was surprised to learn that both seasons are being filmed in Canada. I had initially assumed that it was filmed in the US somewhere. It makes the way that they've captured the scenery and settings from the initial game even more impressive than before. If possible, I implore anyone reading to play the games or watch the show!

Links:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_last_of_us/s02
“en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_(TV_series).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Mazin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Druckmann

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3581920/