Marvel’s Thunderbolts wants to be seen as cool indie cinema

You know all about Marvel. It’s big, mainstream, massive budgets, A-list cast and just so obvious. Owned by Disney, it’s the epitome of studio fare.

You may know about A24. The indie powerhouse has been around for just over a decade and has quickly established itself as the go-to brand for cool, auteur-driven films that get people talking and win awards.

Think Everything Every All At Once, Ex Machina, Hereditary, Moonlight, Aftersun and Past Lives. It works with filmmakers such as Ari Aster, Sean Baker, Alex Garland, Darren Aronofsky, Lulu Wang and Kelly Reichardt.

It has cred that Marvel can only dream of.

So, why not borrow some?

Marvel’s next release, Thunderbolts, is another one of its all-in epics that draws characters from different corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe including films such as Black Widow, Ant-Man and the Wasp and TV series Falcon and Winter Soldier.

Thunderbolts may be about wise-cracking anti-heroes but Marvel Studios has never been cool. But Thunderbolts has something going for it and that’s the involvement of some very cool people with very cool resumes.

The movie is directed by Jake Schreier, who was an executive producer of Beef, on which he also helmed six episodes. The writers include Lee Sung Jin, who created Beef, and Joanna Calo, who was a writer for both Beef and The Bear.

The cinematographer is Andrew Droz Palermo, who held that role on David Lowery movies The Green Knight and A Ghost Story while its editor is Harry Yoon, who worked on Beef and Minari.

The production designer is Grace Yun, who served the same on Past Lives, Hereditary, Beef and First Reformed, and the composer is Son Lux, an experimental band who worked on Everything Everywhere All At Once.

All of those movies and shows are A24 titles, and Marvel really, really wants you to know that it is paying these folks to work on Thunderbolts.

It even released a trailer for Thunderbolts titled “Absolute cinema”, crowing about these credentials. It’s very unusual for production designers and editors to be given their own cards in a trailer but the whole point is to emphasise how cool Thunderbolts might be.

The one-minute video is also cut like a trailer for a weird indie movie, scored to the track “Opr” by German techno outfit Gesaffelstein.

If Marvel wants to bathe in the reflected glory of A24, have at it. When you’ve rounded up that many A24 alumni, including cast members Florence Pugh (Midsommar, We Live in Time), Sebastian Stan (A Different Man) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (You Hurt My Feelings), why not sing about it.

It’s a clever piece of marketing aimed at cinephiles otherwise entirely uninterested in comic book movies. It also helps to sell the “underdog” and scrappy nature of the Thunderbolt characters, a rag-tag crew of second-tier not-quite-heroes.

Marvel has previously brought on cool indie filmmakers including Ryan Coogler, Taika Waititi, Destin Daniel Cretton, Chloe Zhao, Nia DaCosta and Scott Derrickson, so there is form, but the company’s slate is kind of on-the-nose after a run of middling releases.

Why not try something different? Let’s hope Thunderbolts actually lives up to the tease.

Thunderbolts is in cinemas on May 1.