Two Marvel Movies Changed Thunderbolts* For The Better
Finding a perfect Marvel villain is easier said than done.
Lewis Pullman’s Sentry, also known as Bob, has become one of the major scene-stealers of Marvel’s latest, Thunderbolts*. That the character is such a compelling part of the film, given his convoluted origins in Marvel comics, is nothing short of a feat. Thunderbolts* adapts his story seamlessly, turning his struggles with addiction, depression, and his dark alter ego, The Void, into the film’s central conceit. Bob and his alternate personas are each stand-ins for the struggles shared by each member of the ensemble, making him a crucial cog in the fabric of Thunderbolts*.
It’s impossible to imagine the film without Sentry — but early drafts of Thunderbolts* didn’t include the character at all. Per screenwriter Eric Pearson, he was a later addition to the script, a tool to put some distance between Thunderbolts* and two Marvel films that had already come before.
U.S. Agent was originally the villain in Thunderbolts*
U.S. Agent’s arc in Thunderbolts would have resembled the Red Hulk’s in Captain America 4.
In an interview with ComicBook, Pearson revealed that John Walker, aka U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), was originally the “punching villain” for Thunderbolts*. The film would have picked up on threads introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, in which Walker first took the Super Soldier Serum that gave him strength and speed. He also first met Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in the Disney+ series. In the years before Thunderbolts*, he became one of her top special ops agents, and in early drafts of the film, he also became a pawn in her political games.
“She convinced him that his Super Soldier Serum was deteriorating and he needed updates,” Pearson explained. “He needed to have monthly shots. What she was actually doing was implanting a ‘Hulk Bomb,’ or I think she even called them ‘A Bomb,’ which is a very obscure character from the comics. But if she needed to create an event, she could set him off, so he would rage out into this big monster.”
John Walker was originally the “punching villain” of Thunderbolts.
This initial draft was “fine,” but it also skewed way too close to the plot of Captain America: Brave New World, which sees President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) unwittingly exposed to enough gamma radiation to turn him into the Red Hulk. More than that, it didn’t pack the emotional punch that Pearson wanted from the ending.
“Ultimately [it] didn’t work and didn’t feel right tone-wise,” Pearson told ScreenRant. He later remembered the Sentry comics he’d read when he was part of the Marvel Writers program in the 2010s. Pearson was drawn to the character’s internal struggle, realizing that it could bolster Thunderbolts*’ central conceit.
“I was like, ‘What if it’s heroic ambition and self-esteem versus self-loathing and depression and loneliness?’ He’s basically the entire journey for our heroes rolled into one entity. So, I put him in, and he fit so perfectly.”
Spider-Man stole Sentry’s origin story
Sentry is an amnesiac hero in the comics, but that theme had already been explored in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Adapting Sentry’s unique powers, and his struggles with the Void, was easier said than done. In the comics, the two are depicted as separate entities: The Void can manifest his own corporeal form, and he’s dedicated to murdering as many people as Sentry saves. In order to defeat him, Sentry often resorts to desperate means. In Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee’s Sentry, he erases his own memory, and the memories of everyone on Earth, to keep the Void at bay.
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier read a lot of Sentry comics in preparation for the film, including Jenkins and Lee’s run. “It’s interesting reading that run,” Schreier told Marvel.com. “When we talked to Paul Jenkins, he would talk about it as a parable for mental health and this idea of an equal amount of good and evil. But when I read Sentry in those comics, there is this level of hubris that he has, and it feels like people around him are getting a little concerned about it. I thought it was so resonant.”
Unfortunately, they couldn’t adapt that comic to the letter in Thunderbolts*. Spider-Man: No Way Home had already given its title hero the same treatment in 2021, forcing the Thunderbolts* team to tweak Sentry’s origins and powers. In the film, Sentry and Void occupy the same body, and Bob’s amnesia manifests when the latter persona takes over. Not only does it adapt the comics with freshness and specificity; it also gives the MCU its best exploration of mental illness yet.
