It’s a very broad comparison, but the raft of initial reports revealing that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s long-rumored Thunderbolts movie had officially entered development with a director attached in Jake Schreier described the villainous team-up as the franchise’s answer to DC’s Suicide Squad.
It would be fair to say Task Force X has experienced mixed fortunes in live-action so far, with David Ayer’s original making a ton of money at the box office but leaving critics and audiences cold after being hacked apart in post-production, while James Gunn’s hybrid of sequel and reboot ranks as one of the DCEU’s best-reviewed movies, but tanked at the box office.
As you can imagine, as soon as it was confirmed that the MCU was doing its own version of an antihero ensemble blockbuster, fans of both franchises were out in force to throw some cutting barbs in each other’s direction.
One thing we can bank on is that Thunderbolts will be PG-13, and the smart money would also be on the vast majority of the principal cast being familiar faces audiences have already been introduced to before. Those are two major roadblocks that Suicide Squad and its successor weren’t forced to contend with, and that’s without even bringing up the guaranteed commercial windfall that comes attached to any MCU project.
Julia-Louis Dreyfus’ Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is probably going to bring the team together, but for now we’re left to luxuriate in the speculation of the who, what, when, where, and why of Marvel’s Thunderbolts.