Uncategorized mygms May 2, 2025 0 Comments

Why Sentry Is The Best Marvel Villain In Ages

Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Lewis Pullman in the role of Bob, Wyatt Russell like John Walker, David Harbor as a red goalkeeper, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes standing in a laboratory in Thunderbolts

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

Warning: this article contains major spoilers For “Thunderbolts *.” Proceed to caution.

Maybe it was just that the first film by Marvel Cinematic Universe features a pile of anti-heroes, antagonists and disjection of pure and simple superheroes would be that to remember how to develop a good villain. “Thunderbolts *” is not the most flashy film of the franchise to come in recent years, and it is not even the biggest in 2025 alone – This title returns to “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”, “ be released later this summer. But the little film Scrappy Underdog of director Jake Schreier (if this sentence can even apply to a blockbuster which makes a shameless part of the Marvel machine) do Take its tone signals from the dysfunctional team in its title loaded with asterisk. And even these budding Avengers could not have anticipated the type of threat they would be forced to continue throughout the film.

Thanos will probably come to the top of the lists of most fans for the best Big Bad in MCU, but “Thunderbolts *” adds a surprising competitor to the mixture in the form of Bob on-the-light and unpretentious (Lewis Pullman). Of course, Bande fans knew that he was much more than it seemed at the start once he became the super-fueled sentry. But at the beginning, only Yelena Belova by Florence Pugh even took the trouble to give her the time of the day, perceiving him as a real person while John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and the rest of the team has never seen him as unnecessary baggage. This, however, turns out to be the key to making the emotional arc of poor Ol ‘Bob struck all the harder.

Like Yelena, the script itself (by writers Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo) treats Bob and Its possible dark turns into a vacuum Also refreshing, human, first and foremost. When the final act takes place and our heroes must literally enter his mind to put an end to his destruction of New York, the creative team has already succeeded where so many Marvel films (and superhero films in general) have failed. As the smoke dissipates, the most unexpected surprise of “Thunderbolts *” is the way in which he unleashes Marvel’s best villain in time, very long.

Bob is secretly the beating heart of the Thunderbolts

Florence Pugh like Yelena Belova and Lewis Pullman as Bob standing in a dark corridor in Thunderbolts

Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios

The Thunderbolts team could make rejection and disaffection beautiful, but no one represents the pure pain of being a stranger like Bob in the times enough of the moments he shares with Yelena. After The wicked and mysterious Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) installs her various agents to wipe in the bowels of her secret safe, Yelena and Bob are initially attracted against each other for reasons that nor both understand. Yes, his memory loss, his lack of physical strength and his obvious mental instability make him a burden for the rest of the survivors. But, basically, Yelena clearly sympathizes with someone who took a bad hand in life and never even had the opportunity to take matters into their own hands.

Together, the arcs of Yelena and Bob work hand in hand to become the beating heart of “Thunderbolts *” as a whole. The sequence set in the safe teases Bob’s childhood trauma, especially when his touch repeatedly evokes flashbacks and memories of the dark past of each member of the respective team. When all this culminates in their attempt at daring and explosive escape, the script throws another curve to us. Bob chooses to sacrifice himself to let everyone escape, which then reveals his superpowers so that everyone can see. Few Marvel films would then have devoted so much time and space to Bob (which is the real name is Robert Reynolds) under the manipulation of Valentina, playing on the abuses he suffered when he was a child in order to shape him in the sentry she plans to be.

But by representing it as a character Unlike an obstacle, “Thunderbolts *” sets up a heartbreaking final act which fully establishes Bob like the monstrous emptiness – a dark and inhuman mirror image of all that we know that it is really inside.

Thunderbolts establishes a new bar for superhero films and their bad guys

Lewis Pullman as a bob carrying scrubs from the hospital and holding his hands in the surrender in Thunderbolts

Marvel studios

Move, Loki and Thanos, because another character came out of nowhere to Fight for the Crown of the best villain in Marvel … and with much less screen time too. While the franchise is preparing to free up heavy bad guys like Galactus and Doctor Doom on us in future event films, there is something perfectly faster in the most neglected figure in “Thunderbolts *” which rises to steal the whole series. Although it does not cause the most land damage, massacres the greatest number of innocent people, or threatens the greatest gods and superheroes of the barrel, Bob does something that very few others have ever succeeded: he feels real.

Honestly, the key to his role in “Thunderbolts *” is that he never really feels like the real bad guy in history. The closest he gets is when he is transformed into a sentry, sends the Thunderbolts without even working in sweat and instantly develops a serious God complex. But once “Kill Switch” by Valentina did it like a literal shadow of her old self, it is painfully obvious that it is only the end result of someone who was only a victim and took advantage of his whole life. These suspicions are confirmed once it has been awakened into a vacuum and quickly transforms all Manhattan into shadows, including Yelena when it will voluntarily allow itself to be swallowed by its powers and thrown into a nightmarish nautical world located in its own head space.

It is here that Bob’s psychology is finally posed bare and Yelena is able to connect with it to a fundamental human level. Of course, a character embraced by depression like Yelena would be the one who leaned on a traumatized individual like Bob, bringing him from the edge with the help of his faithful friends. By confronting his own demons and learning to accept that it belongs (through a real hug, be careful, rather than all the punches and the usual fights), the redemption of Bob is as powerful and moving as in the MCU – a testimony of one of the most well -balanced and three -dimensional characters of any recent Marvel film.

“Thunderbolts *” now plays in theaters.