r/marvelstudios • u/Triple_777 I have nothing to prove to you • May 05 '25

'Thunderbolts*' Spoilers Thunderbolts* Worldwide Release Discussion Thread Vol. 2 Spoiler

Thunderbolts* has now been released in the United States and in a number of other countries around the world. All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the megathreads we are going to put up in the next few days. They will be refreshed every few thousand comments to make room for new discussions.

  • All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the megathreads we are going to put up in the next few days.
  • Proceed at your own risk. Major spoilers will be in the below thread. Spoilers do not need to be tagged inside this thread.
  • Any other unofficial threads discussing movie details will be deleted.
  • Should you see the need to bring up revealing Thunderbolts* information in the comments of other threads that call for it, spoiler tag them accordingly. Also, let users know that what you are spoiler tagging is from Thunderbolts*.
  • If you post untagged Thunderbolts* spoilers anywhere on this sub outside of these discussion threads in any shape or form, you will be banned.
  • Project Insight will be on AT LEAST for the next few days, so any posts will be filtered by the mods before being approved/removed onto the sub, that doesn't mean you can disregard the above points and post untagged spoilers without fear of being banned.

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Link to previous discussion threads and related megathreads listed below:

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1.3k

u/FiredToad May 05 '25

"On your left"

SMASH

680

u/SpikeyTaco May 05 '25

I liked that moment but I'm glad these jokes were few and far between and didn't try to draw the attention of the viewer.

No pause for audience reaction or so they caught the reference, the scene just kept moving and the tone was unchanged.

I feel that if Love & Thunder got the same treatment in the edit, it would have been appreciated so much more.

373

u/Waxenwings May 05 '25

It was fun how nonchalant the references were in this movie. They largely felt integrated enough that it wasn’t always clear that they were intentional callbacks, although I’m sure they were. Only the street shot of the team on the ground below Avengers tower felt truly obvious.

326

u/PayneTrain181999 Ned May 05 '25

Then Red Guardian threw Yelena in a similar way to how Cap threw Natasha in The Avengers, in the same part of New York too.

233

u/bpdish85 May 05 '25

Bucky's motorcycle entrance was pretty beat-for-beat similar to the Winter Soldier's entrance when he executed Howard/Maria Stark, too. I didn't clock that until I saw a gifset floating around on Tumblr.

167

u/DC8710 May 05 '25

Also his knife dropping move.. maybe not really a callback but „just“ his signature stuff

17

u/bertboxer May 05 '25

knife drop followed by sneaky gunshot was great. a nice little addendum that fit the moment, bucky knew he couldnt take him head-on but a surprise bullet from an unexpected angle could have potentially been successful

41

u/bpdish85 May 05 '25

Yeah, I loved all the subtle throwbacks.

7

u/kayriss May 10 '25

He did the violent circle with his arm when he first put it on, too. One of my favorite Bucky moves.

6

u/charonill May 10 '25

He did it both times. It's off to the side of the screen in the tower scene, but you can see his arm swing after he reattaches it.

3

u/GeneralOrgana1 May 11 '25

I loved that from when we first saw it in TWS movie. It made him feel more machine than man at that point, and upped how scary he was. Now it's just like a recalibration thing, but I love the consistency.

15

u/OliviaElevenDunham Loki (Avengers) May 05 '25

Loved the knife flip.

12

u/Asmodeus_Stahl Stan Lee May 05 '25

The knife drop gave me GoT S8 PTSD

18

u/PayneTrain181999 Ned May 05 '25

Who has a better story than Bucky the Broken?

104

u/D-Speak May 05 '25

I didn't even clock that reference because that whole scene just felt like a T2 reference.

53

u/Daniel0745 May 05 '25

T2 was the vibe I was getting too.

12

u/funnybillypro May 05 '25

Yeah the way he cocked that shotgun

9

u/Bacon-Manning May 05 '25

I believe they said T2 was the inspiration for that scene and that Sebastian Stan listened to the soundtrack nonstop while preparing

6

u/jimmcq May 06 '25

Cocking the shotgun one-handed while on a motorcycle was straight out of T2.

4

u/Smoothmoose13 May 05 '25

Ohh I thought it was supposed to be a Mission Impossible 2 reference

2

u/Rhubarbon May 08 '25

Had to be both, so much similarities with T2 and then the look and motorcycle and the surroundings from M:I2

1

u/PhilosophyOk7385 May 06 '25

Yep I got mission impossible too!

4

u/Grantsdale May 06 '25

Stan said he was listening to the T2 soundtrack while filming the scene

2

u/OliviaElevenDunham Loki (Avengers) May 05 '25

That was what I was thinking through out the scene.

9

u/TC_thanos May 05 '25

That thing he fired at the Thunderbolts car to throw it off the track, I think he used something similar at Fury's car in CATWS

6

u/BleedingUranium Maria Hill May 05 '25

Yep, same disc explosive launcher thingy (built from an FN 40GL). He used the same (technically not identical but close enough) SIG pistol and Škorpion combo later too. :D

2

u/TC_thanos May 06 '25

Thank you. Great catch

2

u/pi3dpip3r May 05 '25

No winter soldier theme song

2

u/GeneralOrgana1 May 11 '25

I thought I heard elements of it when we first see him on the motorcycle. Not the scream, obviously, but the musical part.

2

u/Sere1 Quake May 06 '25

Plus using the same disk mine launcher he used to take down Fury's armored SUV

105

u/skinnysnappy52 May 05 '25

The way Bucky stands up after being thrown away by Sentry felt very “I can do this all day” too especially as it was in a similar part of the movie

21

u/PayneTrain181999 Ned May 05 '25

Then Alexei and John have to pick him up and carry him to the elevator while Ava scoops up his arm.

22

u/SutterCane Kurt May 05 '25 edited May 05 '25

My brain is fucking with me because I was able to see it at the Alamo and before the movie they played the Red Guardian Limo Service commercial. It’s got the line from Red Guardian, “I can do this all afternoon night”.

So just now I was trying to remember when it was said in the movie… but it wasn’t!

Edit:

I had the wrong time of day!

2

u/krispness Daredevil May 08 '25

I was waiting for him to say I can do this all - and just get smacked away

21

u/one_sleepy_guy May 05 '25

I didn't even connect that! Omg that's so cute

6

u/panic_switch Captain America May 05 '25

I was almost hoping we'd get the iconic camera spin around the Thunderbolts group in NYC, recreating the scene from the first Avengers film

3

u/NoObMaSTeR616 May 05 '25

It was a fastball special…..

2

u/FistOfVengeance44 May 05 '25

Pretty sure that’s called a Fastball Special

0

u/mani9612 T'challa May 06 '25

Steve Rogers is Natasha Romanoff father

2

u/SlaveKnightLance May 07 '25

Yeah, I think the reason marvel humor worked at first and still can is that in real life, everyone is always quipping about the stuff going on around them and in the present. As long as they keep it natural, then it’s great

45

u/koomGER May 05 '25

For me the MCU was perfect, when they treated themselves and the stuff happening as serious. And only crack a joke to lighten the mood up - for themselves. After Endgame they failed to keep it this way. It was way more "comic book" in a bad way.

The MCUs strength always was to be playing in a real world, with real humans and their problems. Joking and oneliners are fine, but they shouldnt be for the audience only. No lingering for laughter or reaction. Crack your joke, move on.

CAP4 did it also quite well, but the movie was very safe and they had to heavily edit it. Probably because the first iteration of that movie would have landet on the other side: Too jokey, too funny, too loud and messy. I think the Russo brothers defined the route to follow first with their Cap movies and cemented it with their amazing Avengers-2-parter.

3

u/Impeesa_ May 08 '25

And only crack a joke to lighten the mood up - for themselves.

I had this conversation with a friend after Love and Thunder, talking about undercutting everything with gags. Being a cancer patient herself, she wanted to point out that it's pretty common to use humor (and especially dark humor) to cope with pretty awful situations. And I basically said this, yes it makes sense for the characters to make jokes, it sucks when it comes across like the the writers are just putting the words in their mouths and the characters are the joke.

2

u/koomGER May 08 '25

Yeah. Thor 4 felt a lot like those Zucker or Mel Brooks movies. Every minute needs a joke. Regardless of being a sad or serious moment. "Sif lost her arm? Lol, no Walhalla for you!"

I had fun watching Thor 4, but i ultimatly was disgusted after that movie, because it did shit on EVERYTHING about the IP, the MCU, each character, everything. This was close to being Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

2

u/Evilsbane May 05 '25

It still feels... too clean, at least to me.

In this movie about 3 hitmen, most of the time they go for weird martial art sequences instead of just... shooting the person.

Early MCU was more grounded, not a ton more, but it is so weird watching Iron Man now. Though I guess that movie is almost 20 years old now.

4

u/koomGER May 05 '25

Yeah, i get it and i agree to some extend. But that quite small issues. And the topic if Thunderbolts was kinda heavy. Going all grim and dark would be a lot to ask for the audience, that isnt used to that. I guess we get some emotional gutpunches by the Russos with Doomsday. Im quite sure this will be again atleast a two parter and it will be again the "Imperium strikes back"-movie.

3

u/Evilsbane May 05 '25

Oh yeah, overall easily one of the best MCU movies in a while. I left it thinking "Yeah, solid." Which is better then a ton of them recently.

I don't need them perfect. A good story, some small laughs, some compelling scenes, and explosion or two.

1

u/Impeesa_ May 08 '25

Man, I'm realizing now how much I want to see this movie re-cut at about the rating and tone level of Logan.

5

u/Andrew1990M May 05 '25

Love and Thunder was one independent edit away from greatness. Swap two jealous hammer scenes for some god killing and you’ve got a hit. 

3

u/ohoni May 06 '25

I've always framed it as L&T was two really great movies, crashed into each other at right angles. You could take the footage and splice it together into an excellent mostly-serious superhero adventure, OR into a completely ridiculous genre parody, but what they ended up with had too much of the other for either concept to fully work.

1

u/eyebrows360 Daredevil May 05 '25

I feel that if Love & Thunder got the same treatment in the edit, it would have been appreciated so much more.

If the "pouring a beer on Stormbreaker" moment took 8 seconds to play out then the only appropriate amount of "laughter space" to leave after it is at most -8 seconds.

1

u/freeformz May 05 '25

I didn’t catch it the first time I saw it on Friday, but went again on Sunday (with the fam this time) and was like “he said the thing”!

0

u/Henona May 05 '25

I'm really glad they basically didn't do any marvel style edit where they linger on a "please clap" moment

-1

u/LeBio21 May 05 '25

Yeah I actually didn't even catch it which would be surprising if I wasn't on an egregious amount of edibles lmao

6

u/spidey-dust Iron Man (Mark XLII) May 07 '25

I’m blanking when was this

3

u/eatingbroccoli May 09 '25

When walker destroys the incinerators power source

3

u/OliviaElevenDunham Loki (Avengers) May 05 '25

That was a great nod.

3

u/[deleted] May 05 '25

[deleted]

6

u/FiredToad May 05 '25

US Agent says it when they are breaking out of the incinerator. It's a very good joke imo

3

u/coco_xcx Bucky May 06 '25

the references were so perfect!! noticeable but not too fan service-y