The dwindling critical and commercial reactions to have affected the Multiverse Saga are making it clearer and clearer that Marvel Cinematic Universe burnout is a very real thing, and through no fault of its own, there’s a lot of people finding it hard to get excited about Thunderbolts.
In the grand scheme of things, director Jake Schreier’s ensemble piece can generously be dubbed inessential from the outside looking in – unless of course it’s hiding some major buildup for the remnants of Phases Five and Six – and the strikes halting production have ground its momentum to a standstill.
We’ve become all too accustomed for the filmmakers behind the MCU’s latest projects to tout their contributions as something new and different, with Schreier the latest to roll out the red carpet for the official party line in an interview with Collider.
“It was just a really different approach and a new kind of story to tell amidst that, which I know they’ve made so many things, but it’s not a sequel. Yes, these characters have appeared before, but it is a new story being told and a story, I think, with a very different perspective that maybe people aren’t expecting, and I think that that felt exciting and felt like a real challenge worth taking on.”
If the story turns out to be a group of rogues and antiheroes being banded together to form a reluctant unit and battle against a shared enemy with the potential and power to cause untold devastation, then Thunderbolts is taking exactly the perspective everybody is expecting.
Hopefully that won’t be it, though, because superhero fatigue is setting in dangerously quickly, and the MCU has been right at the forefront.
