Robert Downey Jr delivers verdict on Marvel’s Thunderbolts* – UK Times

Robert Downey Jr has offered his thoughts on Marvel’s latest superhero team-up Thunderbolts*.

The 60-year-old Iron Man star is currently preparing to play the villain, Doctor Doom, in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday.

Downey shared a picture on Instagram of himself and some of his fellow cast members attending a Thunderbolts* screening. Included in the group were a host of returning Marvel stars including Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, Ant-Man’s Paul Rudd, Captain America’s Anthony Mackie, Shang-Chi’s Simu Liu and Winston Duke, who plays M’Baku in Black Panther.

Also present were Marvel Cinematic Universe newcomers Vanessa Kirby and Ebon-Moss Bachrach, who star in the upcoming Fantastic Four, and Channing Tatum, who played the X-Men character Gambit in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

Downey captioned the image: “Just wow!!! Dinner and a show with the Old Avengers. So cool, fresh, and deep. Big congrats to the New Avengers (and Bob). #Thunderbolts.”

Starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the film follows an unconventional group of antiheroes who embark on a dangerous mission.

In a four-star review of Thunderbolts*, The Independent film critic Clarisse Loughrey called it “the best Marvel movie in years.”

“It’s hard not to be cynical about Marvel’s Thunderbolts*,” wrote Loughrey. “The franchise, having muscled countless independent films out of cinema screens to make more room for its behemoths, now has the audacity to sell their latest instalment as a big-budgeted film with the ‘feel’ of a low-budgeted one, releasing a trailer boasting about how many of its cast and crew have worked on projects released by the average cinephile’s favourite production company, A24. Even its official synopsis declares, with a wink and a nudge, that it’s come courtesy of “a crew of indie veterans who sold out.

“Then again, if you do hire the team behind Netflix’s razor-sharp comedy series Beef (director Jake Schreier, its creator Lee Sung Jin, and one of its writers, The Bear’s co-showrunner Joanna Calo), and actually allow them the space and tools to work – well, logically, you should end up with something fairly decent.

“And, so, Thunderbolts* is good. Not “single-handedly save the Marvel cinematic universe” good, but enough to make those self-declared victims of ‘superhero fatigue’ reconsider that it might not be the genre itself that’s tapped out, but merely the focus on telling stories versus marketing future sequels and the sickly shimmer of nostalgia.”

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Marvel fans have been urged to stay seated after the end of the movie as the film has two post-credit scenes.