“Thunderbolts” Story Inspired By “Toy Story 3”?

A new feature piece over at Empire has gone into this Summer’s Marvel Studios feature “Thunderbolts,” a film that, on the surface, looks like the studio’s variation on DC’s Suicide Squad.

The group are a collection of misfits and misanthropes and include former cyborg sleeper agent Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), sarcastic assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), disgraced U.S. Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell’s), phase-shifting thief Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), move-mirroring Taskmaster, over the hill Soviet soldier Soviet soldier (David Harbour), and wildcard Bob (Lewis Pullman)

The influences of the new movie are more varied than you might think according to director Jake Schreier with the likes of “Ronin,” “Reservoir Dogs” and “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” all cited in the piece. One specific influence though is unexpected – Pixar’s “Toy Story 3”.

Schreier tells the outlet that both films are essentially about characters facing obsolescence:

I had Toy Story 3 in there. It wasn’t as focused on a genre as much as dynamics amongst characters. They all have that dynamic of a team that is thrown together. That [furnace] sequence works so well because you’ve come to care about these characters so much. Can they get out of the trash can together?

You’re talking about a group of characters that have done a lot of bad things, and maybe are struggling with feeling good about themselves. There’s an element that does speak to mental health, and loneliness, and how some of the darkness that we experience in our lives can’t be necessarily fixed, but can only really be made lighter through connection and finding others.”

Pugh meanwhile says that the film “ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes”. Schreier adds that his work on the TV series “Beef” also impacted his work here, saying: “there’s an emotional darkness that we brought to this that is resonant, but doesn’t come at the expense of comedy.”

“Thunderbolts” is set to open in cinemas in early May.

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