The Thunderbolts* are home.
The ragtag band of misfits, which include Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), John Walker aka U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) and newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman), have arrived on Disney+. And that means that you have a whole new chance to watch what is definitely the best Marvel Studios movie of 2025, full of thrilling action set pieces, wonderful character moments and unexpectedly deep emotion.
TheWrap spoke to director Jake Schreier about the movie (we won’t say what the asterisk means in case you haven’t watched yet), what his takeaways from the experience were and how “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” inspired his first Marvel movie. By the way, at the time he was not yet confirmed to be the director of Marvel Studios’ upcoming “X-Men” movie, so he couldn’t talk about it, so we only alluded to it.
Now that you’re on the other side of this whole process, how do you feel?
I feel good. I think I’m still recovering from sleep deficit probably but it takes a minute. It was just so strange, like we finished it two weeks before it came out. It’s such a tight timeline. I was finishing effect shots for the home release, just improving them a little bit, the day or two days before the movie came out. It’s all such a rush. And you’re so sleep deprived. And then all of a sudden, it’s out in the world. It’s interesting to have a minute to step back from it and take some stock – and it feels really good. I learned so much and I got to work with such incredible people, both in the cast and on the crew, that it’s only been a positive experience.
The important thing is that you’re not jumping back into another one of these movies.
Yeah …
What surprised you the most about the process of making your first Marvel Studios movie?
I mean, whether I’ll be believed or not, but I can say it genuinely, what I was really surprised about is that it was not a machine and that it was just this really supportive environment. Because of the longtime success of the company, there is this autonomy and this ability for it to be a few people in a room just coming up with ideas, and if they like those ideas, they say, “Go for it.” I think from the moment I came in, Kevin said, “Make it different. Do something with this one. Try to do something different.” And that’s such a supportive prompt to be given by the head of a company that’s had so much success doing things a certain way. You try to make your shortcomings, your strengths. It’s not the most familiar title to people. Because of that, can you take that and use it as an opportunity to try to run off. If the same set of expectations are not there, can you use that to do something different?
It speaks to the movie that the action sequences don’t feel totally divorced from the scenes where characters are just talking.
The action sequences should feel like there’s a concept to them and like they come from character. That’s the thing that plenty of people say, but the hope is there’s a way to actually get that integrated and try to express character ideas in those sequences. And we had a great second unit director. It’s not like I directed every bit of the action, but we definitely had boards for everything. And I’d have a third monitor on set and be checking out what was going on second unit, and really would talk about before going in, like, what those thematics were and why the camera was where it was, and how to express character perspective through those sequences. And again, try to have each sequence have a concept.
I’ve talked a lot about “Mission: Impossible 4” and how much I love the action in that movie, and how like each sequence really comes from this idea – they’ve been disavowed and so all this gear, it’s all breaking. They can’t rely on that anymore. It’s not only what do you do when you can’t use your gizmos, it’s the gizmos breaking within the sequence is such a part of what brings tension to that and how they have to be invented. I just love that. I love when action is conceptual. And so like we tried, in our own way, to think about like what that could be for each of these sequences, and what would drive those sequences and give them an overarching idea that could then make it feel tied into the rest of the film.
Last time we talked you said Man-Thing was almost in the movie. Any regrets about not including him?
I regret ever saying Man-Thing, because it wouldn’t have fit with the movie we ended up making. No, I feel really good about the movie that we made. And I feel like there are always things that you could do better, for sure. I can point out the moments where I didn’t do as good a job as some of the other ones, but I think that we always tried hard and we took a swing. And the actors, especially, really went for it and embraced what this movie wanted to be about and didn’t shy away from the moments that were necessary to pull that off. I feel it’s that weird thing to feel so proud of your own work. It’s more like, I feel proud of what everyone else did. I know all those people and they worked so hard and I feel proud of what they brought to it.
“Thunderbolts*” is on Disney+ now.
