YouTube says Thunderbolts is underrated

A YouTube video saying “Thunderbolts*” is underrated only works because the basic contradiction is real. This was a Marvel movie people broadly liked, but not nearly enough people bought tickets. That makes it perfect internet afterlife material — the kind of movie that leaves theaters as a commercial disappointment and then quietly becomes a “wait, that was actually good” object. The new video didn’t create that tension. It spotted one that was already sitting there. ### What’s the actual claim here? The claim is not that “Thunderbolts*” was secretly a masterpiece. It’s narrower than that — that Marvel made a solid, emotionally grounded team-up movie and audiences mostly missed it because the brand’s recent baggage scared them off. That’s why the “best Marvel film nobody saw” framing travels so well on YouTube. It sounds corrective, a little provocative, and easy to argue with. (boxofficemojo.com) ### Why did this movie become the “underrated” one? Because the numbers and the reception point in opposite directions. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film sits at 88% with critics and 94% with audiences — unusually strong for recent MCU fare. But its worldwide box office finished at about $382.4 million, with $190.3 million domestic. For Marvel, that’s not catastrophic in a vacuum, but it is low enough to feel like a miss, especially for a summer release. (rottentomatoes.com) ### Why did people like it? A lot of the praise circles the same idea — it felt smaller, cleaner, and more character-first than the messier post-“Endgame” entries. Florence Pugh’s Yelena gave the movie a center. The antihero lineup let the story lean into burnout, shame, depression, and second chances instead of just multiverse bookkeeping. Basically, it played more like a scrappy ensemble movie than a giant lore-delivery system. (boxofficemojo.com) ### So why didn’t more people show up? Because liking a movie after release and deciding to see it opening weekend are different things. “Thunderbolts*” arrived after years of MCU overexpansion, with too many shows, too many side characters, and too many projects that felt optional until they suddenly weren’t. Add in the fact that these were not top-tier marquee names like Spider-Man or the Avengers, and the movie had to fight for attention on harder mode. (rottentomatoes.com) ### Why does YouTube love this kind of movie? Because a movie with a clean consensus is boring content. A movie with a split verdict — “good, but ignored” — is catnip. It lets creators play critic, detective, and contrarian at the same time. They get to say the crowd missed something. And viewers get a low-stakes culture-war version of discovery — not “here’s the hit everyone knows,” but “here’s the one you were wrong to skip.” That keeps a film alive long after box-office coverage ends. (variety.com) The May 7 upload is basically doing that exact move. ### Does this say anything bigger about Marvel? Yeah — that “well reviewed” no longer guarantees “widely seen.” Variety’s postmortem on the film made the point pretty bluntly: Marvel is in a different era now, where not every release can count on automatic turnout, especially if the characters are second-tier and the audience is tired. That makes “Thunderbolts*” feel less like a fluke and more like a warning label for the whole franchise. (youtube.com) ### Is “underrated” the right word? Commercially, yes. Artistically, maybe a little overstated. The movie was not buried by critics. Plenty of reviewers called it Marvel’s best in years right away. The underrated part is really the audience scale — not that nobody recognized its strengths, but that the recognition came from a smaller crowd than a well-liked Marvel movie used to get. (variety.com) ### Bottom line? The YouTube take is catching on because it names a very 2025 Marvel problem. “Thunderbolts*” seems to be one of those movies that earned respect faster than it earned revenue. And in the algorithm economy, that’s not the end of the story — it’s the beginning of the reappraisal cycle. (boxofficemojo.com) (rottentomatoes.com)