How Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier meshed Marvel blockbuster with Beef’s indie sensibilities

The last thing you’d expect from a gargantuan Marvel blockbuster is indie cred.

The studio is known for CGI-heavy, action-fuelled and broad-appealing movies that blend humour and kabooms. But it has a long history of trying to bring in outsiders and their perspectives.

Sometimes that works and those filmmakers can infuse a different tone or chart a new direction (Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok), and sometimes it makes for an uncomfortable marriage as two competing sensibilities struggle to gel (The Eternals).

For Thunderbolts*, Marvel recruited Jake Schreier, a filmmaker whose resume included more intimate films such as Robot & Frank and tastemaker TV shows Dave, Lodge 49 and Minx. But it was the edgy Netflix miniseries Beef that really made audiences take notice.

Directing six of its 10 episodes, Schreier was nominated for an Emmy (losing only to Lee Sung Jin, Beef’s creator who helmed the finale) and his involvement on Thunderbolts* signalled that the anti-hero ensemble piece would be more than just another Marvel movie.

It’s something the studio marketing team had some fun with in March when it cut together a promotional trailer that emphasised Thunderbolts*’s connections to A24, the uber cool independent studio that in a few short years has become synonymous with bold and original filmmaking. Beef was an A24 production.

The A24 alumni are many – co-writers Lee and Joanna Calo (Beef), cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story), editor Harry Yoon (Beef, Minari), production designer Grace Yun (Hereditary, Past Lives, Beef) and composer Son Lux (Everything Everywhere All At Once).

Plus, actors Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are all part of the A24 repertoire.

But for all that’s been made about the “Beef team” striding onto Marvel’s soundstages in Atlanta, Schreier is far more magnanimous, saying that it took a village, several large villages, to make it come together.

“There definitely were ‘pinch me’ moments where I’m on these massive sets with my friend Grace, who’s the production designer, and it’s fun to see your friend work at that scale,” he told The Nightly.

“But I also want to say as much as we highlighted those people in that trailer, a ton of our crew are long-time Marvel veterans who also care deeply about their work.

“So, having such a great mix of crew who have that institutional knowledge and the people who make these movies care so deeply. Then to also have your friends come over, and people that have a kind of new perspective on it, and they all work together so well.

“I wouldn’t want the fun of that (trailer) to take away from the people who also have made Marvel movies, which are great, and worked on this and put just as much heart and soul into it as everyone that we brought in.”

One example Schreier cited is Jake Morrison, a visual effects guru who has been working on Marvel movies since Iron Man 2, who was totally onboard with the edict that Thunderbolts* was going to try and do as much “in-camera” practical effects as possible.

“The theory going in is if you do all of that practically, then when you add visual effects to it, the two of those things blended together will improve both sides of the coin. (Morrison) was so committed to that,” he said.

Schreier is not a total novice to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He had worked on some second unit LA-shot scenes on Spider-Man: Homecoming. The director of that film, Jon Watts, had been Schreier’s university roommate, and the two are still besties. Schreier directed an episode of Watts’ Star Wars series, Skeleton Crew.

Watts had given Schreier a rundown of what to expect, how to pitch to the big bosses, and how Marvel liked to work with filmmakers, and Watts got a “thank you” in the Thunderbolts*’s credits, which audiences will actually sit through because of the MCU’s tradition of mid-and post-credits teasers (there are two in this film).

“I had a little bit of a leg-up going in, knowing from Jon, that they really want you to step in and have a perspective. (Marvel boss) Kevin (Feige) wants that and Kevin is at his best when he is being given stuff to react to that is exciting and different,” Schreier said.

“I was going to pitch what I thought would be an interesting take on the story, and if that felt right to them, then great. If not, that was OK. It wasn’t a thing I felt I needed to do, but it was such an amazing opportunity.”

Like the melding of the indie kids and the Marvel veterans behind the scenes, the story of Thunderbolts* also involves bringing together personalities you think won’t mesh. The film bands a series of anti-heroes and former villains of the MCU including Pugh’s Black Widow Yelena Belova, Stan’s Bucky Barnes, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost and David Harbour’s Red Guardian.

It’s not just that each character has a dangerous edge to them that makes them compelling, it’s that they’re all, in their own way, trying to reckon with their sins. There’s a darkness in them that has manifested in death and destruction, but they’re not megalomaniac sociopaths so there’s a cost on their souls.

They’re carrying heavy emotional and mental burdens, especially Pugh’s Yelena, who is still grieving for her dead adoptive sister (Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff) but also dealing with her purpose. It gets pretty grim but when you have someone of Pugh’s talents, you take her there.

“It’s the most fun-filled, action comedy about depression that you’re going to see this (northern hemisphere) summer,” Schreier promised, teasing the tonal balance between the hijinks of an MCU movie with the gravity of the emotional arcs.

That feels very much like Beef, which played in a sandbox that was heightened and over-the-top, but at its core was about disconnection and malaise. Schreier generously pointed out that Thunderbolts* is not the “Beef Marvel movie” because that would be unfair to Lee for whom Beef was very much his artistic vision.

“(But) it was really lovely to be able to bring in so many collaborators from Beef and also work in a thematic area that was similar and resonant,” he explained. “We’re talking about (Thunderbolts* characters) that don’t fit in just like (Beef’s) Danny and Amy don’t fit in, and feel outside of the world.

“They’re also experiencing a feeling of emptiness and find that connection is the only way to address that emptiness. This is obviously playing on a much more operatic scale of what those ideas are, but I there was that tonal resonance, which is why the fit seemed to make so much sense.”

Thunderbolts* might be operatic, but it also allows time for more intimate, grounded character moments than you might expect in a typical MCU movie.

Schreier added, “We attempted to find our own path to something that feels like a different kind of Marvel movie that honours the tradition and the history, but gets to it from a very different angle and different path. I hope we’ve done that.”

Thunderbolts* is in cinemas on May 1

* The meaning behind the asterisk at the end of the title will be revealed by the end of the film, and Schreier has promised it will “pay off”’.