This text incorporates spoilers for “Marvel’s Thunderbolts.”
From a strict energy standpoint, the first antagonist of “Marvel’s Thunderbolts” is Robert “Bob” Reynolds’ (Lewis Pullman), whose superhero incarnation Sentry and his damaging darkish aspect, the Void, are probably the most highly effective opponents the titular staff faces. Nonetheless, the closest factor the film has to an overarching Large Unhealthy is CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). That is an fascinating improvement as a result of de Fontaine has been slowly taking up Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) position because the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s major spymaster in recent times. Each are identified for heading a shadowy intelligence company, share the tendency to construct highly effective safety instruments that they’ll management — de Fontaine has the Sentry Venture, Fury tinkered with Venture Perception in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” — and have been identified to make use of costumed vigilantes for harmful missions.
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Contemplating these similarities, it is fascinating that “Thunderbolts” goes out of its approach to construct de Fontaine into an anti-Nick Fury. Like Fury, she’s a succesful commander who’s exhausting as nails, however her management is undermined by unsavory traits like haughtiness and need for private energy. In contrast to Fury, she lacks the luxurious of working outdoors authorities jurisdiction and proves wholly unable to brow-beat politicians into submission. As a substitute, she has to scramble and improvise all through the film to keep away from impeachment. And in contrast to Fury, she’s additionally utterly prepared to sacrifice her personal individuals and belongings to save lots of her behind. All of this provides de Fontaine a novel mixture of ruthlessness and cleverness that permits Louis-Dreyfus to painting the character as a mixture of a merciless gamemaster and a “Veep”-style chief who’s persistently out of her depth … and one scene in “Thunderbolts” lastly affords us clues on the internal workings of the mysterious Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
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A Bob-induced flashback scene affords a glimpse of de Fontaine’s origin story
For the reason that film revolves round de Fontaine scrambling to cover proof of the Sentry Venture and varied off-the-books wetworks operatives, it is smart that it largely steers clear of creating her sympathetic — particularly because the Thunderbolts staff will get its begin when she sics Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) in opposition to one another and makes an attempt to incinerate them. Nonetheless, when Bob seems to have superpowers and she or he takes him to the Watchtower in New York, we get a short scene that reveals extra about her than she in all probability would have preferred.
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Throughout a bedside dialog, de Fontaine touches Bob and is subjected to one of many vivid dangerous reminiscence flashbacks which might be a part of the Void’s energy set. Right here, we study that her father was an overconfident criminal who acquired caught up in one thing large and was shot in entrance of her eyes by one other shady determine, who then took her below his wing. This temporary scene explains lots about de Fontaine’s personal amorality and callousness — she’s her father’s daughter, in any case — and means that no matter situations she grew up in cannot have been good. In different phrases, de Fontaine has been directed towards the trail of a ruthless energy participant by each nature and nurture. What’s extra, whereas she does appear very snug in her personal pores and skin as a CIA director, it is fairly telling that Bob’s contact particularly sends individuals to expertise their absolute worst reminiscences, and the expertise is sufficient to briefly crack the often unflappable de Fontaine’s facade.
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With a single scene, Thunderbolts explains Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s grim outlook on life
Examine de Fontaine’s temporary flashback with Nick Fury’s backstory, which has unfolded over the course of quite a few MCU initiatives — mainly “Captain Marvel” and the Disney+ miniseries “Secret Invasion” — and you will find that typically, much less actually is extra. Fury’s story, in any case, is a really easy “navy man to spy” state of affairs proper up till he crosses paths with the Skrulls and Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in “Captain Marvel,” and makes use of these new contacts to start out rising his energy base.
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Fury’s tragedies are these of an motion hero, and his profession path is that of a film character. This does not make Fury a dangerous character — quite the opposite, he is an excellent one, because the MCU goes. Nonetheless, just by taking an additional second to supply a glimpse into de Fontaine’s previous, “Thunderbolts” goes a good distance towards establishing her as a much more three-dimensional determine than Fury ever was … and after the flashback scene, her feedback concerning the world consisting of dangerous and worse individuals hit very, very in another way than they’d with out seeing it.
“Thunderbolts” is an emotional intestine punch via and thru. Whereas the film’s thrilling post-credits scenes and the huge powers of Marvel’s darkish Sentry, the Void, would possibly sometimes distract from its heavy psychological well being themes, scenes like de Fontaine’s flashback add layers to the film that can little question reward the viewer throughout a rewatch.
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