MOVIE OPENS ON ABSOLUTE UNIT PUGH'S SLOPPY JOWLS PUGH (in bad russian accent): "QUIP." This opens a very confused movie that almost tried to do something unique but was hamstrung at every turn by meddling execs. How do I know this? Because the real movie, if you can call it that, doesn't start until about the 65% mark, and everything leading up to that is the Thunderbolts shuffling up a vent--something that should have taken 5 mins, but is stretched to 2/3rds of the movie. They do this so that it can be interspliced with Elaine-from-Seinfeld being a Boss Bitch of Boss Bitch Company with her minority assistant Pajeeta Dogface, in an endless procession of pointless scenes that demonstrate what a Bad Boss Bitch Elaine truly is (so too, her assistant Dogface, who carries a magic remote control or some shit and is totally a Boss Bitch herself--when she's not out getting coffee for Boss Bitch Elaine...) The brief glimmer of real chemistry, mostly scenes with Harbour or the guy who plays Bob, gets thrown into juxtaposition with the rest of the movie, which is tv-episode tier; and it makes it clear what a total disservice is done to the thing because of these meddling busywork execs, with their boss bitch attitude and giant coffee mugs (and probably their own fucking tv remotes too). Like, I am not a Marvel fan and cannot get hyped for this trash, but I doubt even Marvel fans can sustain their soyface when they have to sit through 50-minutes-plus of Elaine bickering with government officials. We did that in Blackstain America and it didn't work there either. Plus, everyone with an IQ above 8 knows exactly how the movie is going to play out from the first few scenes--do we really have to pretend like there's some depth to the story? None of the political intrigue makes a damn lick of difference to the outcome. As for the end sequence, it's kind of underwhelming and anticlimactic, but I actually give them props for doing something different. Of course, the shadow world could have been far, far cooler and actually had depth and meaning beyond the surface-level lip service in the final product, but that would require real characterizations first, something that is made impossible because we had to instead watch Veep: The Movie for the first two acts. Get your shit together already, Marvel.