It's no secret that the MCU hasn't had a good movie (excepting Guardians 3) since Endgame, and even Endgame was more of a resolution than a great movie unto itself. The new phase has varied from mediocre to bad to Quantumania (a movie so bad, that I believe it should be it's own adjective). The one exception (G3) is more a remnant of the old era than part of the new. This is why I think alot of people are overpraising Thunderbolts, which is a nice solid movie...but is hardly amazing. If this had come out during the MCU's glory days, it would have felt like a solidly average movie by MCU standards. It would stand alongside Thor 1 or Cap 1 or Black Panther as "yup, that's another MCU movie". But surround it with the recent Falcon movie, Dr. Strange 2, Eternals, and so on and Thunderbolts stands tall and proud by comparison. IMHO, the best things about this movie are the actors/characters. Especially Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Julie Louis-Dreyfus. I'd like to give Sebastian Stan a shoutout, but did Bucky really do anything but flex and look like the adult in a group of bickering children? But that is what used to make the MCU great. The MCU movies were never elite scripts/plots. They were basic fun action/comedy/spectacle movies with fun, bright characters played by actors with charisma and charm. And despite Ghost and US Agent being pretty bland, the movie mostly delivers. JLD does well as the scenery chewing villainess, Pugh and Harbour are priceless in this, as they were in Black Widow. It's still an absolute crime that Disney sat on it's thumbs and wasted it's shot at a good Black Widow movie, only producing one far too late. I also want to give the movie credit for doing a very cliche thing with the respect to Sentry, but doing it in a way that felt earned and believable, when it very easily could have been eye-rollingly stupid. If you've seen the movie, I suspect you can guess what I mean, but I don't want to spoil anything. There definitely are some moments where characters know things they shouldn't know, or where power levels seem inconsistent. I'm not going to claim it's a 'clean' movie in that respect. Some things occurred that were a bit too 'just so'. But there weren't any that took me out of the movie...except one. I really didn't like how omnipotent Sentry was from a 'super soldier program'. Every other super soldier program produced low tier super-people. Sentry was Superman+. This seems orders of magnitude beyond others, and makes it hard to swallow that there won't be a billion such programs going forward. I think the humor was okay, but not excellent. The action setpieces were fine...but seldom as impressive as some of the MCU's past offerings. I think the only person in this that really inspires 'hero' is Yelena...the others kind of all feel like joke characters. Even Bucky, despite being portrayed consistently seriously and competent doesn't really feel like a part of a headliner group...which is part of the point of course. But I feel like that lack of a standout hurts going forward. Heck, Yelena's best showcase really comes in a weak movie alot of people skipped (Black Widow) and a streaming series that even more people skipped (Hawkeye). So basically, good movie, I enjoyed it, but let's keep the praise reasonable.

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