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By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
The Marvel Cinematic Universe entered 2025 on the brink of collapse. Its television shows were failing, and its movies, aside from the one propped up by Deadpool, were getting trashed. Marvel needed a change of direction to continue, and luckily, it had one planned.
Marvel’s Thunderbolts* debuted in May 2025 with a strong cast, credible word of mouth, and a marketing twist. The little asterisk that turned out to be a big reveal. Unfortunately, its timing couldn’t have been worse, and it flopped at the box office.
Now it’s on streaming seeking redemption, and so far it’s working. Thunderbolts* has been the #1 thing streamed on Disney+ since it hit the platform last week, and it looks like it’s going to stay there.
Maybe streaming will make Thunderbolts* a cult classic, but until it does, it’s going to be viewed as a failure. This is why Thunderbolts* failed.
Thunderbolts* Is Marvel’s First Great Movie In A Long Time
The film opens with six morally tarnished operatives: Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster, and U.S. Agent. Also with them, for reasons they don’t quite understand, is a guy named Bob. They decide to call themselves the Thunderbolts. Well, Red Guardian (David Harbour) does; eventually, the others go along with it out of exhaustion.
The group is ensnared in a lethal scheme orchestrated by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). As they struggle to escape the trap, they are forced into a high-stakes mission that demands cooperation and forces each member to confront their own emotional traumas and past.
That’s really what Thunderbolts* is about. Dealing with trauma. Trauma isn’t something you can solve with kicking or punching, and to its credit, Thunderbolts* knows that. The film contains some wild action scenes, but the climax of everything? The thing that saves the world? A full-on group hug.
If you haven’t seen the movie, you’re probably cringing at the notion of a hugfest solving the world’s problems. That’s not what happens at all. It’s an emotionally moving and tonally satisfying experience. The film earns that hug, and when it happens, it means everything. It’s a bold choice in a movie universe positioned as a series of max-powered action blockbusters.
Thunderbolts* revolves around the most damaged of the damaged characters, a man named Bob Reynolds. He’s introduced as a powerful new superhuman known as the Sentry before unleashing his destructive alter‑ego, the Void. His out-of-control abilities engulf New York City in literal and psychological darkness.
To save the city, Yelena (Florence Pugh) and the other Thunderbolts venture into the Void to confront Bob’s pent‑up trauma. She and the rest of the team fight manifestations of Bob’s inner shame while looking for a way to save them. Through emotional solidarity, they pull Bob back from the brink and dispel the void consuming the city.
In the aftermath, de Fontaine publicly rebrands the team as the New Avengers, a move they silently resist with Yelena’s pointed remark: “We own you now.
Setting up another Marvel movie with the film’s ending was probably the movie’s only mistake. It muddies the central premise of dealing with trauma and loss. Outside of that, it’s safe to say that Thunderbolts* is one of the best things Marvel has produced in a very long time. It’s a wild swing, a totally different kind of movie from what they’ve done in the past, and it totally works.
THUNDERBOLTS* REVIEW SCORE
This could have, should have, been the movie that saved Marvel. They just made it too late. More on that in a minute.
Fading Box Office Power Dooms The Thunderbolts*
My glowing review of Thunderbolts* isn’t unique. It’s pretty much been the consensus among those who saw it. Critics landed at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes; audiences into the 90s; CinemaScore at A-. That combination usually predicts longer legs.
That did not happen here. At least not in theaters.
The film opened at #1 with $74.3 million domestic and $162 million worldwide across opening weekend, respectable in context and better than some recent MCU entries. That’s where those longer legs come in and should have propelled it to greater heights. Instead, the opposite happened.
After that start, the trend line went the wrong way. Thunderbolts* dropped 56% in weekend two and ultimately finished with $190.3 million domestic and $382.4 million worldwide. Against a reported $180 million production budget and additional marketing costs, profitability would always be tight. Trade coverage pegged the break-even near $425M worldwide, a threshold the film didn’t reach.
The film had the first weekend of May largely to itself but quickly ran into a crowded corridor. It retained #1 in weekend two with ~$32M while Ryan Coogler’s sleeper Sinners remained a force, and May stacked up with new wide releases that diluted premium screens. By late summer, The Fantastic Four: First Steps overtook it to become 2025’s top-grossing Marvel title.
Why Thunderbolts* Failed In Theaters
Thunderbolts* was delayed by the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, pushing filming and reshuffling schedules. Steven Yeun exited; Lewis Pullman stepped in as Sentry, a change Marvel later emphasized in messaging. Pullman is fantastic as the character, so it was a great choice. None of this sank the film, but the staggered timeline likely blunted momentum and muddied pre-release chatter.
What no one at Disney probably wants to face up to is that the movie’s failure had little to do with Thunderbolts* and everything to do with everything that went before it. Disney has been releasing insultingly bad Marvel movies and television products for years, losing the audience’s trust. By the time Thunderbolts arrived in theaters, Marvel had burned so many fans for so long people were ready to hate it. So hate it they did.
Once you lose the audience’s trust, there’s no getting it back. Combine that with an overall superhero fatigue that was inevitably plaguing the genre and Thunderbolts* never had a chance.
To be fair, no superhero movie has a chance in this environment. Disney’s other big superhero release, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, fared a little better when released in the summer. The only superhero movies able to still turn a profit are the biggest brand-name cape-wearers like Superman and Batman. We’ve reached a point where everyone else, no matter how good their movie is, probably needs a smaller budget and lowered expectations for success.
Thunderbolts* Redeemed At Home
Audiences may not trust Disney enough to waste time going to a movie theater and paying outrageous ticket prices, but good word of mouth will get them to turn on their television and hit the play button. That’s especially true if doing so costs them nothing.
The moment Thunderbolts* hit streaming on Disney+, that’s exactly what audiences did. People tuned in to see if all the positive reviews were right, discovered they were, and told their friends.
From the moment of its digital release on August 27, the film quickly became Disney+’s most-watched movie in the U.S. , confirming the character-driven tone and ensemble clicked once the cost barrier dropped. That’s a reputational win, even if it doesn’t rewrite the theatrical ledger.
Hopefully, it’ll also be enough to convince Marvel it should keep moving in a Thunderbolts* direction. Making movies about more than just CGI action sequences and contests to see who can play the scariest villain may be the only possible path to success they have left. Thunderbolts* points the way; they just have to take it.
