I really enjoyed Thunderbolts, which I saw yesterday in theaters and I was told ahead of time that the end was going to be a little crazy. It was, and while I will put a spoiler warning here, Marvel, it appears, does not care about doing that at all.
In the wake of opening weekend, Marvel has rolled out a new campaign answering the question about the “asterisk” in the title, now apparently officially changing the name of the film to The New Avengers.
This was a reveal in the final moments of the film, after the Thunderbolts battle Void and save civilians, in an attempt to save face, Valentina presents the group, unbeknownst to them, as the New Avengers in a surprise press conference. The film ends with that title card but now? Disney is shrugging off that ending moment in the film and quite literally ripping the bandaid off.
There’s now a marketing campaign to rip the Thunderbolts name off posters and billboards to reveal them as The New Avengers, bringing in actors like Florence Pugh to do so, or a viral stunt that has Sebastian Stan wandering around the city replacing posters with the new name. Right now, even booking a movie ticket on Fandango for Thunderbolts has an image of the New Avengers thumbnail right on the app. What are they doing?
This is bizarre and bad because:
A) If you’ve seen the movie it’s baffling to see that they’ve put what is the final end twist you probably enjoyed and didn’t expect into marketing three days after release.
B) If you haven’t seen the movie you have probably no idea what’s going on or why they’re doing this.
C) If you were planning to see the movie, this is quite literally the turn that happens at the end, and you will probably be annoyed if you know about it going in.
I’ve seen some fans theorize that they’re doing this because the film is underperforming and attaching the Avengers name is now a desperate attempt to earn more. But you don’t just throw together something like this over a weekend, and this was the intention from the start, quite obviously.
If you’ve seen Captain America: Brave New World, you’ll know that it ends with Sam Wilson being tasked with assembling a new Avengers himself. This is addressed in Thunderbolts as it’s said Bucky and him sparred about it offscreen, and there’s a joke about Wilson trademarking the logo, to which Red Guardian says they should become the “Avengerz.”
Where is this going? It’s been confirmed all these characters, the surviving Thunderbolts (RIP Taskmaster), plus Sentry/Void/Bob, plus rival Sam Wilson/New Cap will be in Avengers Doomsday. There are still existing Avengers members/big heroes around like Thor, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and more And the second big turn is that we see the Fantastic Four entering this universe, seemingly in the wake of the upcoming film this summer, which was obviously always going to happen as the joined the MCU.
Very, very weird decision to use this in marketing. No, Thunderbolts isn’t tearing up the box office for a Marvel movie, but it’s been received really well and they didn’t need to do this. I hope they didn’t ruin for you if you haven’t managed to see the film yet.
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