🍿 Thunderbolts*

"We are all alone."

If there's one thing in the movie that I unequivocally, wholeheartedly, and 100% agree with, it's that line. Right before the sun rises, whether you're also rising or just about to end your day. Those few minutes after lying down but sleep doesn't come. Those moments that force you to unlock your phone, put your headset on, or literally do anything else just to push the void back down. Those are proof that we are alone.

Sure, there are moments when we aren't - but those do not last. And to be in those moments, you need to act: plan a dinner, take a bath, actually go out to see other people. Those require effort and fucks to give (or fake fucks if you're doing it just because you need to).

They both don't last, you might say. So why do I think loneliness is stronger? Because that is our natural state, that is universal, that is what we wake up to and sleep away from...

Unless you learn to accept, befriend, and embrace that loneliness. But who has the time, energy, and gives a fuck about that, right?

Like Bob, I have this grandiose idea that I was meant to be something great, a belief drilled into me by a lot of people when I was younger. And, just like Bob, not having that and not even having the faintest idea how to become "what I was meant to be" is depressing. But, unlike Bob, I don't blackout and forget all of it for some time. I remember them: the moments of glory, the inevitable return to normal, the dive to depression, and the things I did just to keep my head above the void.

The movie surprised me, really surprised me, because I thought it would be just the typical superhero movie with action sequences (it had that), a world-ending threat (it had that), and a happy ending (it had that). What I didn't expect was an introspection into what I think is every single person's fight with the void within. That void, when left unchecked, will really eat up a person. That void, when left to fester, will turn everything it touches into a shadow of what it once was. That void, when allowed to grow, will erase everything good and just focus only on the bad.

The movie's "conclusion" to Bob's internal struggle is, in most cases, very realistic:

be as small as possible

so that when (not if) the void overpowers you again, it will only consume you. No matter the power (literal or not) that's inside of you, hide it to also keep the void as weak as possible. That's what I did and that's what I constantly see whenever I look around.

I won't be surprised if we see Bob "embracing" his dark side to fully become The Sentry in future movies. I mean, I've been in therapy, and that's the ideal route but that feels almost impossible. Bob is in a movie, a Marvel movie, so I'm sure it will happen. Maybe not just in one movie, maybe over a couple, but I'm sure of it.

P.S.

I lied when I said "we are all alone" is the only thing I wouldn't argue against in the movie. There's another one: men don't change for themselves but they will do it for a woman. I mean, come on, if Yelena wasn't there, what reason does Bob have to leave the void? Who will be the "catalyst" for his change? Who will show him "the light inside?" Right, right?