I just got out of the theater for Marvel’s Thunderbolts (2025) in IMAX—and yeah, I drove three hours and sat in Chicago rush hour to make it happen. My quick takeaway: the first half is genuinely pretty fun. You’ve got this misfit “JV Squad of the Avengers” energy with John Walker basically being the Kmart version of Captain America, and Florence Pugh’s Yelena straight up stealing the movie. She’s got that down-to-earth likability that makes me actually excited to see where she goes next in the MCU, and Red Guardian is still a blast—like a lovable Santa Claus jacked up on super soldier serum with a Russian accent. But then the second half hits, and that’s where it starts sliding into the boring, cliché, formulaic Marvel groove. I won’t spoil the antagonist stuff, but I’ll just say “corrupt political Elaine from Seinfeld” (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) continues to be the part I could do without. There is a bigger threat that shows up with some interesting choices, and I’ll save the deeper thoughts for a spoilers video later. Overall, it’s okay—some crowd-pleasing moments, humor that works at times, but not an MCU flick I think people will call a classic years from now.