‘Thunderbolts’ Is The Best-Reviewed MCU Movie Since 2021

Early reactions were extremely positive on social media, and now that Thunderbolts has over a hundred reviews in from critics, it has turned out to be the best-reviewed MCU movie in nearly half a decade.

It’s been a severely up and down era in the post-Endgame era, but with an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, that means Thunderbolts is the best-reviewed MCU movie since 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home at a 93%, where that multiverse crossover is one of the highest-scored MCU movies period.

What else does that list include? Here’s every MCU movie’s score since Avengers: Endgame

• Thunderbolts – 88%
• Captain America: Brave New World – 51%
• The Marvels – 62%
• Deadpool & Wolverine – 78%
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – 82%
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – 46%
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – 84%
• Thor: Love and Thunder – 64%
• Spider-Man: No Way Home – 93%
• Eternals – 47%
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – 92%
• Black Widow – 79%
• Spider-Man: Far From Home – 90%

This is an era that includes the only three “rotten” scored MCU movies in the form of Eternals, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and most recently Captain America: Brave New Word. The last of which is an issue considering it fully introduced the new Cap who’s supposed to lead whoever the new Avengers end up being from here, a much more major character than we saw in Eternals of Quantumania.

Generally speaking, critics have been giving the MCU far less leeway in the post-Endgame era. I have to believe if movies like Captain Marvel came out now, it would score less than its 79%, and The Marvel, I would say objectively a far better movie, is at a 62%. But yes this era also features just…not very good movies.

Thunderbolts appears to in fact be a very good movie. That does not necessarily mean it will do amazingly at the box office, but with amazing trailers, fan-favorite characters like Bucky and Yelena and now these great reviews, hopefully it will indeed perform well. It feels like a different sort of film than the endlessly green-screened slate of MCU features, as a recent promo having Florence Pugh herself base jump off a skyscraper would indicate.

Thunderbolts is out May 2, and we’ll see how it does from there. Supposedly it also will feature the “best post-credits scene in Marvel history” according to early viewers, and to keep that a surprise I’ve muted every term possible online. You might want to as well.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.