In a scene from Thunderbolts* Red Guardian (David Harbour) fantasizes aloud about one day creating figurines of his newly formed anti-hero group. But his daughter, the spy and murderer with a guilty conscience, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), silences him: "I'm not a marketing tool!" The exchange summarizes the usual tension between Marvel's corporate strategy and the efforts of some of its creators to give the studio's films soul and personality. The good news is that Thunderbolts* is that, unlike some of the studio's latest products, it doesn't seem to be directed by an AI: Jake Schreier (A friend for Frank) does not have a curriculum to write home about, but he manages to provide consistency and poise to the adventure of these second-rate antiheroes and reformed villains, a narrative of overcoming and redemption that superhero cinema has been milking hard in recent years thanks to James Gunn and his Guardians of the Galaxy or theSuicide Squad.