We cold open on Russiaboo Mary Sue capital T Telling the audience what she's been doing, how she feels about it, and what her internal conflict is. She base jumps onto the roof of a building and discards her parachute. An armed patrolling the roof finds her discarded parachute and rather than inferring from the presence of a discarded parachute on the rooftop that someone has parachuted onto the rooftop, he stares at it like it's from space and gets incapacitated. Then there's an Old Boy style corridor fight reminiscent of Black Widow's introduction in Iron Man 2 in which Mary Sue effortlessly incapacitates a contingent of armed guards who do not shoot at her and instead line up to be dispatched in nonsensical fight choreography. After all the guards are incapacitated, Mary Sue draws a pistol that she apparently had the entire time and casually summarily executes two of the guards for no reason at all while leaving the rest conscious and writhing, some still holding their weapons. Then we get an Iron Man 3 style gag where it's revealed that Mary Sue has not been narrating her exposition directly to the audience, but has actually been diegetically monologuing her life story to a bound and gagged guard who she has kept alive for some reason despite the fact that we just saw her willingness to capriciously kill guards who aren't even a threat. She capital T Tells us that the guard is of no use to her because he cannot open a facial recognition lock. Conveniently a scientist appears. Said scientist gives a cliche bit of dialogue about how we don't understand, they've made the breakthrough of a lifetime, it could change the world; Mary Sue correctly predicts and lampshades each line of dialogue because she is Very Smart. A struggle occurs and the scientist accidentally shoots himself in the head, ostensibly to avoid having to portray Mary Sue killing someone who isn't a hired guard I guess. But this leaves the problem of the still-locked facial recognition lock, which Mary Sue addresses by blowing up the entire floor of the building. This action has absolutely no consequences whatsoever. I open my phone and post on kiwifarms about how this movie is already hot diarrhea.
We're then shown that Valentina Whatever is being impeached, via a senate hearing or something. Absolutely nothing of consequence is said. After the hearing, we're capital T Told that Valentina has evidence implicating her that needs to be destroyed. We're also reminded that Bucky Barnes, a literal manchurian candidate with a history of terroristic offenses against the United States, whose close personal friend and colleague was recently involved in a high profile attempt to assassinate the president, is a US Senator. Because everybody deserves a shot at redemption I guess.
Mary Sue goes to visit her dad because, as we've been capital T Told, she's feeling unfulfilled in her current role. The two Russian natives have a conversation alone in broken English rather than their mother tongue. He gives a speech about how the most fulfilled he ever felt was when he was serving his country, and worshipped like a god for it. I genuinely don't know if the conflation of these two ideas is an intentional bit of characterization or if it's the writers telling on themselves. Either way, the speech is ruined with a joke before the audience is allowed to feel anything. Mary Sue contacts Valentina and tells her that she wants to do something else with her life, and Valentina says she'll grant that request if Mary Sue does One Last Job.
Mary Sue is tasked with stopping a theft of who cares from miles underground a highly secure top secret black site which is a huge black conspicuous monolith on the top of a mountain in a desert easily visible for miles and probably from space. She follows Ghost (is that her name?) into the compound. She's ambushed by US Agent, who's ambushed by Taskmaster; there's some piss ass fight choreography and shameful gunplay that makes US Agent look like a fucking storm trooper despite the fact that it's like his main thing. Nobody does anything interesting at all except for Taskmaster who actually starts to look interesting and then immediately gets shot in the head. Bob is there too. They argue for minutes in dialogue that makes every single one of them seem completely unlikeable except for Mary Sue who surmises that they've been sent there to die because they've all been doing dirty work for Val. This is confirmed when a big red countdown timer appears on the wall for no fucking reason. They destroy a macguffin preventing Ghost(?) from escaping and put their faith in her to let them out from the other side. The big red timer ticks down as though we don't know what's going to happen and then Ghost opens the door; somebody says they didn't know if she was going to come back for them and, in one of maybe ten lines of dialogue she gets in the entire movie, she says she wasn't going to but the elevator isn't working. This could be an interesting bit of ambiguity about the nature of her character but we're then shown that no the elevator really isn't working and now we know exactly who she is and there's once again nothing interesting about her. Also Mary Sue and Bob touch hands and it's visually established that touching Bob makes you relive your worst memory, which would be a passable way of showing you who these characters are if they weren't so committed to capital T Telling you who these characters are. Then there's a gag where they have to walk up the elevator shaft back to back like in that co-op prison game, which is actually a cute way to visually represent them having to begrudgingly work together, but it's used as an opportunity to have each character capital T Tell you who they are. When they get to the top US Agent pulls Bob up and in doing so touches his hand and we're shown his worst memory which is absolutely nothing we don't already know and completely inconsequential but it's kind of sort of implied that he's being compelled to jump down the elevator shaft maybe. This never comes up again. Mary Sue and Bob have a moment. Mary Sue gives a half assed speech where she vaguely alludes to everyone having darkness in them. Bob calls this The Void. It's framed as some intimate moment despite them basically saying nothing. It's ruined with a joke.
Meanwhile Bucky is trying to get dirt on Val. His colleague implores him to have faith in the judicial system but instead he takes matters into his own hands, because I guess it's okay to act extrajudicially when the wrong person is in power.
Val finds out that her special goons aren't dead and sends regular goons to kill them. The regular goons fire smoke grenades into the complex for apparently no fucking reason because they're immediately unable to see through the smoke while the Thunderbolts see just fine and incapacitate them effortlessly. Then they dress up as regular goons and escape. They steal an APC but get stopped by some guys they could easily just run over but they don't because reasons. Unbeknown to the rest of the fuckers, Bob sneaks off to make a distraction. Bob gets fucking lit up by machine gun fire and it's framed like we're meant to feel something despite knowing virtually nothing about this character and having been given no reason to get attached. The others drive away, assuming he died. Bob is revealed to be the Sentry and bulletproof and flies up into the sky, and despite the fact that 1) it's fucking night time and 2) they're in a fucking APC and 3) they have no reason to believe he's alive, the other fuckers look up and somehow see him flying in the night sky and instantly know that it's him. Like seriously he's not glowing or anything he's just a fucking guy in the pitch black sky where they have no reason to be looking in the first place it's retarded. Then Val and her goons see him fall out of the pitch black night sky and go to get him.
Jump cut to Mary Sue and her unlikeable pet retards moving through the desert on foot, I guess to be less conspicuous. US Agent capital T Tells us who he is and gives a half assed pep talk, it's ruined with a joke, they all suck, it's fucking gay, then Red Guardian drives up in a shitty car, it's cringe and unfunny. They drive away and continue to be cringe and unfunny and unlikeable and say nothing of worth at all until they realize they're being pursued by three humvees. A bunch of nothing happens until Bucky shows up on a motorcycle and destroys two of the humvees with a mine launcher. Then he rides his motorcycle in front of the third humvee, shoots the winch on the front of the humvee so the cable starts unraveling, parks his motorcycle, gets off his motorcycle, and grabs the cable to flip the third humvee. Completely unnecessary and retarded, I'm not doing it justice. Everybody cheers. Then he blows up Red Guardian's car with the mine launcher, establishing that he could have just done that to the third humvee. Jump cut again, Bucky has detained everybody. He wrapped pieces of rebar around John Walker and Red Guardian as though they aren't also fucking super soldiers made from the same super soldier serum and exactly as strong as he is. Having accomplished his goal of securing evidence of Valentina's wrongdoing in the form of these individuals whom she previously employed and tried to kill -- evidence that would guarantee her impeachment -- he decides his best course of action is to take these individuals and walk right into Valentina's headquarters. Also he capital T Tells us some clumsily integrated exposition about John Walker that could have been just as easily shown to us in the squandered flashback we got of his memories earlier. And even more cringey character interactions.
It was at this point that I started to wonder if this was written by a woman because there's no other explanation for having so much focus on throwaway dialogue and so little focus on telling a coherent story, and sure enough one of the writers is a woman noted for working on Bojack Horseman.
Meanwhile Val is busy turning Bob into Homelander. Her assistant expresses concerns. She says that's why they have a kill switch. Her assistant says they destroyed the kill switch. Val tells her to make another kill switch. She makes another kill switch. There are no complications and it will function exactly as intended. Why the fuck is this in the movie?
Bucky drives a box truck full of retards through the front door of Val's headquarters. They beat up a bunch of armed guards who do not shoot at them in a display of nonsensical fight choreography. They go upstairs to confront Val. Val introduces Homelander. Homelander absolutely fucking steamrolls the retards in the first and only interesting action setpiece of the movie. It's simultaneously fucking awesome yet disappointing in that it makes it blatantly apparent that he's too powerful of a character to ever see any use ever again except as a deus ex machina a la Captain Marvel in Endgame. Val tells him to finish them off, he says no, they escape. Val tells him he has to listen to her, he tells her he's Homelander, her assistant kills him with the kill switch but to the surprise of absolutely nobody he doesn't stay dead.
Mary Sue and her retards have a Ghostbusters 2 dark night of the soul moment on the street and talk about how they're fuckups. She capital T Tells us how she feels and Red Guardian gives a speech, it gets ruined with a joke. The Void floats around and starts wrecking stuff. There's a bunch of visual callbacks to The Avengers, Red Guardian throwing Mary Sue like Cap threw Widow, Bucky flipping a rolling car like he and Cap have done, it's all soulless. A big piece of rubble falls and it's about to crush a woman but US Agent catches it but he's not strong enough to keep holding it up. The woman gets to safety and then the whole team comes together to flip over this big piece of rubble for literally no reason, like you can visibly see that the woman got out from under it already, they just flip this thing over together for no reason at all, and then everybody fucking claps. I am not joking. Then The Void starts poofing people into dust because it's PG-13 and they can't do pink mist. He farts out a black miasma that starts to consume the city, everybody runs away except for Mary Sue who surmises from absolutely nothing at all that she should walk into the black miasma. She wakes up in her worst memory and navigates a collection of her worst memories and literally beats herself up. Then she finds Bob and we see Bob's traumatic memories, and Mary Sue convinces him to fight back against The Void by telling him to remember the absolute nothing of a conversation they had in the blacksite. The rest of the retards surmise from absolutely nothing at all that maybe Mary Sue isn't dead and they should walk into the black miasma too, like seriously there is no clue for this, they just watched dozens of people get reduced to dust on the pavement around them and just decide "No they're not dead and we should let it happen to us too." They show up in sad memory world and find The Void in Bob's memories and Bob beats himself up and then they surmise from absolutely nothing at all that they all need to hug Bob and then they all hug Bob and that fixes everything because Love Wins. Then Val baits them into a press conference where she announces them as The New Avengers, because it would be too confusing/problematic to call the team full of whites the Dark Avengers and call the team full of POCs the Avengers. Mary Sue tells Val in front of an array of microphones and cameras that they own her now but I guess nobody notices, because corrupt politicians are permissible as long as they're acting in your interest.
