Yes, I wish I put my head on the same level as theirs…but it’s a little embarrassing taking pictures in movie theater lobbies.

Maybe you’ve seen this week that Marvel has a new ad campaign going - I think it’s mostly happening on the west coast because that’s where I’m seeing the pictures from but maybe it’s happening elsewhere and I’m just not out in the world enough to see it - but the ad campaign has to do with what the asterisk is doing in the title of this movie.

It’s very clever.

But I’m glad we saw Thunderbolts* over the weekend, before all of that, because I do my best to avoid any kind of spoiler before seeing a Marvel movie (often unsuccessfully) and this time I did so successfully, and that would have been an unavoidable spoiler…minor though it may be. (If the studio deems it worthy of putting it out there immediately after opening weekend, I’m going to categorize it as not a major spoiler.)

I’ll do my best to not do any other spoiling here.

I guess last year was a similar movie release schedule for Marvel movies, with Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, The Marvels, and Guardians of the Galaxy. (Or maybe a couple of those came in the calendar year before. There was an Ant-Man too. I lose track.)

This year, though, feels more exciting to me, with the new Captain America movie, this one, and Fantastic Four coming in July.

I’m not sure why that is, since I didn’t know much about/what to expect from Thunderbolts* - but that second trailer they released was pretty good and hooked me.

Yelena was a fun character in Hawkeye, so I was looking forward to seeing her in the movie, and I’ve come to like Bucky, so I liked something where he had more of a central role. Red Guardian turned out to be a really fun character, so I look forward to seeing him in more stuff. I never liked John Walker that much, but I guess that was the point of that character, and he plays into that pretty well and, dare I say, becomes more likable.

(Fun fact I learned reading reviews - after the fact - of the movie: Wyatt Russell, who plays John Walker, is Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s kid. And Lewis Pullman, also in the movie, is Bill Pullman’s son.)

I’m an easy guy to please with things I like, so it might not surprise you to learn that I liked this movie. It wasn’t just the superhero stuff - there was a good theme in it. It really tackles mental health. It resonated with me. I don’t know how dark things get for everyone comparatively but it seems like it should hit home with a lot of people.

It also has the best post-credit scene of any movie I’ve watched in real time in the Marvel universe. The good ones early on I only saw after the fact when I could watch the next movie the next night.

This one teases some good stuff to come. (I hope that’s ‘not spoily’ enough for you.)

I like where things are headed in the Marvel universe.

The Marvel world has been a fun diversion for me over the past five-plus years. And there’s more to come here: We’ve got a TV show - Ironheart - coming in June, with Fantastic Four a month later.

I’m looking forward to those, which is good…because after that it might be a while before I get more content that I will be excited about.