The Marvel Cinematic Universe once carried immense weight in Hollywood. But in 2025, Marvel is a shadow of its former self. Every year, Kevin Feige and the suits at Marvel Studios churn out films, expecting the same global excitement as in 2016.

It’s been over six years since Avengers: Endgame, and it’s time someone faced reality: this cinematic soap opera, the longest-running in movie history, has overstayed its welcome by at least three seasons.

You’d need to be a diehard comic book fan to even know who the Thunderbolts are. The concept—a team of villains forced to do good while grappling with their villainy—is far from original. DC beat Marvel to it nearly a decade ago with Suicide Squad, which shares a similar premise. Yet Marvel expects its promotional machine to gloss over Thunderbolts’ flaws, ignoring the past six years of mediocre films stamped with the Marvel logo.

Thunderbolts is set years after 2021’s Black Widow. Yelena Belova, on behalf of CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, destroys a laboratory to erase evidence of Valentina’s ties to the O.X.E. Group’s “Sentry” superhuman project. Valentina recruits a crew of villains she’s worked with to do her dirty work, only for them to discover they’re the evidence she’s trying to eliminate.

After a botched cover-up, the group—including a ghost and a U.S. Agent—encounters Sentry, a figure powerful enough to rival an entire Avengers team. Unbeknownst to all, Sentry harbors a dark side capable of threatening humanity if not stopped. Marvel Studios in 2025 feels cookie-cutter.

Once, films like Captain America and Iron Man bore distinct creative marks, driven by a passion to deliver satisfying stories. Now, Marvel churns out content to meet deadlines set years in advance, resulting in films that feel more like corporate obligations than art.

Thunderbolts banks on Marvel’s D-list comic book characters, hoping to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Guardians of the Galaxy from 11 years ago. The problem? Director Jake Schreier hasn’t helmed a film since 2015’s Paper Towns, and the writers are tied to bloated summer blockbusters with four or more screenwriters attached.

The result is a film where no one’s steering the ship. Thunderbolts is another soulless Marvel project, as forgettable as its predecessors and successors. Florence Pugh’s Yelena tries to carry emotional weight, but it’s hard for audiences to care when her last appearance was four years ago, and fewer still are invested in her story.

The rest of the cast—pulled from various Marvel films and shows—requires viewers to have watched Black Widow, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Captain America: Civil War, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on Disney+ just to understand who’s who. Marvel movies have become homework assignments disguised as entertainment, with no satisfying payoff for the effort.

The suits at Marvel hoped Thunderbolts would reignite fan excitement for a new Avengers team. But like The Walking Dead learned the hard way, once your core fanbase tunes out, they’re gone. Marvel refuses to accept that their series died six years ago.

Thunderbolts is just the latest episode in a franchise that’s been creatively dead since Endgame.

2/5

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