September 18, 2026
Movie Review: “The Thunderbolts * The New Avengers”. 2025 PG-13, 2h7m. Featuring Florence Pugh (Black Widow), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld), David Harbour (Stranger Things, Black Widow), Sebastian Stan (featured in eight Marvel movies).
Pull Quote: “It’s a winner of a Marvel Movie, If you care to wade through the deeper, dark waters.”
This Spiritually Speaking in the Movies will concentrate on Proverbs 14:1 as the basis for the Marvel’s movie “The Thunderbolts*The New Avengers.” This is actually the full title of the film, by the way, asterisk included, indicating what we are seeing are, “The New Avengers.” The movie tag line is “Not Super. Not Heroes. Not Giving Up.” Don’t we need that idea just about now?
Read that Proverbs passage first, if possible, then this review. It will be helpful. (*or see it below).
The Quick Review of “The Thunderbolts”
This story is all about mutual support and encouragement. It’s about having a home, or more specifically, about what happens when you don’t have a home. It’s about being accepted for who you are, not what you want to be or think you are. It’s about family - or a family you can build - helping you crawl out of what the movie itself calls “the void of purposelessness”.
If you want to dive deep into those ideas, then, yes, this action movie is for you. It is more thoughtful than most Marvel movies I’ve seen. The theme changes the action pace at times, certainly, but the film makers are intent on making a strong point, and don’t cut corners to make it.
Within the story you have Yelena (Pugh), a new Avenger who builds. Then there is Valentina (Dreyfus) who tears down. They are polar opposites. “Yelena restores. Valentina destroys.” This is an admirable piece of slick movie writing, setting up this confrontation of the destroyer and the restorer.
Both are women, resembling 14:1, have power to build or destroy, and the concept drives the film along. The script is woven expertly around the plentiful and mandatory “Avengers” super-hero action. This is still an “action” story.
Admittedly, there is heavy-laden and deep dialogue. But David Harbour as “the Red Guardian” supplies welcome, nearly hysterical, comedy relief and saves us all from Brain Fog. He utters some classic lines I won’t divulge here but I’ll certainly recall for years to come.
It’s a winner of a Marvel Movie, If you care to wade through the deeper, dark waters.
A Deeper Dive into “The Thunderbolts” :
The namesake, ie, the original Thunderbolts, we find out, are just kids. They are Yelena’s girls youth soccer team that has never, ever won a game. They keep playing, though, hoping. Little Yelena wanted to be the goalie for her Thunderbolts team because the Red Guardian —(her “sleeper”spy “father”) — reminds adult Yelena that she “wanted to be the one kids depended on when they failed.”
It’s a fair point. The things we do as children are often a pattern for our lives. Why? Because, spiritually speaking, the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.” It means your gift is always with you, no matter what you do with it, even if you were a “Red Room assassin,” as Yelena was. She still wants to “be there” for the team, somehow. The idea may be a loose fit, but it’s there.
Yelena’s influence is the rock though out the entire harrowing journey of survival and restoration the Thunderbolts, a group of losers, endure. Even though she is a seriously searching and a wounded child herself — barely hanging onto a life that has no purpose for her — Yelena remains the woman who builds. Not a bad trick for an MCU Red Room Assassin (see the movie “Black Widow” for background details).
The Thunderbolts remind me of the real — hopeless — New York Mets that lost the most games in a single season than anyone in a half-century or more of baseball … before overcoming and winning the World Series. They are forever known as “The Miracle Mets,” and “the Amazing Mets.”
Like Yelena’s team, ya’ gotta love an underdog who won’t quit. That’s the American way.
So now you have the Thunderbolts, and amazingly enough, their attempt at the impossible is also set in New York City, Is a miracle about to happen?
The Thunderbolts have to live up to what the public thinks of as the “real” Avengers (Mets v. Yankees if you will in 1963). It doesn’t look good for the new Avengers as they face a menace more powerful than the fearsome Chitauri aliens who invaded earth last time.
It’s quite a surprise and twist when that threat is revealed.
The Thunderbolts will need a help, and the miracle isn’t Iron Man, the god-Thor from another planet, or a Hulk…it’s Yelena, a flesh-and blood child with no superpowers or even an amazing suit supplying enhanced weapons like Iron Man. All there is, is this woman who chooses to build, and her bold choice are made in the face of death itself.
It’s a fun movie in the midst of a story whose basis is rejection and loneliness. That, in and of itself is a miracle.
Epilogue—
Proverbs 16;1, “The wisest of women builds her house, but the foolish with her own hands, tears it down.”
Yelena’s influence is the rock though out the entire harrowing journey of survival and restoration the Thunderbolts, a group of losers, endure. Even though she is a seriously searching and a wounded child herself — barely hanging onto a life that has no purpose for her — Yelena remains the woman who builds. Not a bad trick for an MCU Red Room Assassin (see the movie “Black Widow” for background details).
The Thunderbolts remind me of the real — hopeless — New York Mets that lost the most games in a single season than anyone in a half-century or more of baseball … before overcoming and winning the World Series. They are forever known as “The Miracle Mets,” and “the Amazing Mets.”
Like Yelena’s team, ya’ gotta love an underdog who won’t quit. That’s the American way.
So now you have the Thunderbolts, and amazingly enough, their attempt at the impossible is also set in New York City, Is a miracle about to happen?
The Thunderbolts have to live up to what the public thinks of as the “real” Avengers (Mets v. Yankees if you will in 1963). It doesn’t look good for the new Avengers as they face a menace more powerful than the fearsome Chitauri aliens who invaded earth last time.
It’s quite a surprise and twist when that threat is revealed.
The Thunderbolts will need a help, and the miracle isn’t Iron Man, the god-Thor from another planet, or a Hulk…it’s Yelena, a flesh-and blood child with no superpowers or even an amazing suit supplying enhanced weapons like Iron Man. All there is, is this woman who chooses to build, and her bold choice are made in the face of death itself.
It’s a fun movie in the midst of a story whose basis is rejection and loneliness. That, in and of itself is a miracle.
Epilogue—
Proverbs 16;1, “The wisest of women builds her house, but the foolish with her own hands, tears it down.”
This review can be seen at V2movies.com
No AI was used in this Spiritually Speaking in the Movies review
