'Thunderbolts*' Super Bowl Trailer Takes The MCU Back To Congress
Be the heroes on the Wheaties box this May
It’s Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. A deluge of new trailers have been released, as is typical. Some were in the week leading up like The Fantastic Four: First Steps, some during like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Some did both, like Jurassic World: Rebirth. We’ll see how many I get to. With its release being Friday, Captain America: Brave New World did not need a last-minute Super Bowl trailer, so for Marvel Studios, that leaves Thunderbolts*, whose Big Game Trailer was released in the first quarter.
Oh we can build this team together. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s power-hungry CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine warns that the Avengers are not coming, and asks who will keep America safe. Guess whatever happens in Brave New World does not result in a reconfiguring reformation. But that doesn’t stop Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan, who knows there’s a mysterious threat out there. It’s Sentry, The Void played by Lewis Pullman. Bucky assembles Black Widow Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, her father Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian, played by David Harbour, John Walker aka US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Antonia Dreykov the Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and they’re all dumbfounded, wondering why them. Even as Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” kicks in, they’re still confused about how they’re going to go about this. Yelena’s not in a great place either. Of course Val is skeptical of this ragtagging. They don’t quite have communication down either. Sentry tells them they can’t save themselves, and they are visibly deflated, but Alexei gives a good dad talk to Yelena. They’re the heroes on the Wheaties box, as the new poster below makes real.
They’re not super, they’re not heroes, and they’re not giving up. But they’re also not sticking with the name Thunderbolts, much to John’s delight, finally easing us in on what that asterisk that was added to the title some time ago actually means. Still no sign of Harrison Ford’s President Ross or Geraldine Viswanathan’s character, so we’ll see if the former actually happens. Thunderbolts* is based on Kurt Busiek’s comic series of the same name, and directed by Jake Schreier. Scarlett Johansson spices up the list of executive producers that also has Louis D’Esposito, Brian Chapek, and Jason Tamez, while Kevin Feige is producing. The screenplay is written by Black Widow, and First Steps writer Eric Pearson, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear co-showrunner Joanna Calo. It releases in theaters on May 2, 2025.
