Summer Heroes: ‘Thunderbolts*’ and ‘Fantastic Four: First Steps’

By Danielle Cherry and Katlynn Rossignol

Marvel Studios is back in action! This summer saw the release of “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” Both featured a group of heroes as they worked with their team’s dynamics to save the day. 

“Thunderbolts*” welcomes fans back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with beautiful team-ups and gut-wrenching emotion. Cinema hardly describes the depth of emotion found within the “Thunderbolts*” movie (and yes, they do explain the asterisk).

Two black widows, an ex-Captain America, a Russian super soldier, an American brainwashed by Russians, a science experiment girl and Bob all make up the team of anti-heroes that steal your heart. Yet all of them share anxiety and uncertainty about life. 

With this movie, Marvel finds its roots in gritty action sequences and comedic timing, turning assassins into hysterical people. But more importantly, it shows the humanity in everyone on screen. For a movie filled with assassins and morally questionable characters, this movie is extremely relatable.

Florence Pugh’s jaw-dropping leap from the world’s second-tallest building kicks off the action. Both visually stunning and complicated, “Thunderbolts*” choreography is defined and precise in every way, showing genuine emotion from the characters. 

Rejection, fear and anxiety are the cornerstones of the team, even found in the villain of the story. The team is left with the question of how to grapple with these very real problems. Despite worldview differences, Marvel actually presents the hope of salvation through the love of others.

When “Thunderbolts*” is called a team-up movie, there is no exaggeration in its meaning; no individual can do anything without the others, being completely reliant on each other for survival, although they hate every minute of it. Yelena goes from mistrusting everyone to calling the people beside her close friends.

The soundtrack alone deserves mention because of the way it draws emotions from long-term fans and new ones alike. Please go listen to “Thunderbolts*” the song on Spotify and feel yourself come alive as you hear the progression of characters being outcasts to being a team now known as “The New Avengers.” 

But the New Avengers weren’t the only team reintroduced this summer. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” begins a year or two into the team’s heroic career. The Fantastic Four were adored as the world’s heroes after the fateful space voyage that gave them superpowers. But the peace they established teeters on the brink of destruction when Galactus, the planet killer, sends his herald to Earth. The heroes must choose between the end of the world or the end of their family.

As any good Fantastic Four movie should, this film had a resounding theme of family. There was never a moment when the family’s dynamic wasn’t the center of the action. Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby took the spotlight as Reed and Sue Richards, with the couple’s love and affection for each other and their child. Ben and Johnny, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn, share plenty of moments together, poking fun and living up to many of their comic book antics. 

The action was also fun, though not the primary focus of the film. Many of the high-stakes themes took place during space travel, rather than on battlefields. Speaking of location, what an amazing display of worldbuilding and set design! The retro-futurism of “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” was sleek, stylized and immersive. The 1960s design aesthetic helped Marvel’s first family feel at home, both in tone and time period. The music was also unique and is sure to have audiences chanting the main theme’s chorus for years to come. 

While the visual style was solid, it was clear that the film had been cut up in editing. Some scenes jump straight to a new locale, where there had clearly been something in between. There were also a few plot points that stretched the imagination of plausibility; yes, even for a superhero movie. It wasn’t the extreme fantasy of these scenes that made them hard to believe, but the characters who did them often didn’t align with their strengths and weaknesses. These scenes were few and far between, though, allowing the rest of the plot to focus on the important moments. 

Considering the film as a whole, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” made for an iconic addition to the team’s media history. This movie was a refreshing victory for fans of the characters and left many celebrating on the way out of the theater. 

Both “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” brought the Marvel action back into theaters this summer, for fun and heartfelt action flicks. 

“Thunderbolts* available to stream on Disney+

”The Fantastic Four: First Steps” coming soon to streaming. 

Danielle Cherry is a sophomore communication major and writer for Cedars A&E and Sports. She is a Missionary Kid from Germany and loves to travel and talk about Marvel.

Katlynn Rossignol is a senior Strategic Communications student and A&E editor of Cedars. She loves messy crafts with friends, absurd amounts of the color pink and raving about superhero movies. 

Images courtesy of Marvel Studios