How ‘Thunderbolts*’ Assembled That Epic Sentry Fight Scene
The cast and filmmakers go behind the scenes of that brutal penthouse battle: “Nothing we could do could hurt this guy.”
Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* is packed with jaw-dropping action scenes, from that spectacular fight in Valentina’s vault to Florence Pugh’s record-breaking dive off the second tallest building in the world. But one of the film’s most impressive sequences pits the entire Thunderbolts team against Sentry — and he immediately wipes the floor with them.
The scene comes late in the film, when the seemingly mild-mannered Bob (Lewis Pullman) is revealed to have godlike powers, the result of a covert Super-Soldier experiment orchestrated by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When the Thunderbolts come to the Watchtower to confront her, she introduces them to Bob’s new persona: the all-powerful Sentry, intended to be a replacement for the Avengers. She tells Sentry to send them packing, and he does.
“That was a big [scene] because that really is where you get to see Sentry,” Pullman tells Marvel.com. “It’s a small window of real estate where you get to really demonstrate what Sentry is capable of. Luckily, that scene is perfectly designed to do just that.”
Director Jake Schreier says he wanted most of Thunderbolts*’ fight scenes to feel as grounded as possible. But that Sentry fight veers straight into the fantastic, and he and the stunt team wanted to emphasize the breadth and scale of Sentry’s powers (including flight, invulnerability, and superhuman strength and speed).
“It was such a weird sequence to film because it’s not a traditional fight in any way,” David Harbour says. “Nothing we could do could hurt this guy. [The crew] kept saying things that were so hilarious. At one point I had a knife, and they were like, ‘Yeah, you knife his face, and then your knife breaks.’ I’m like, ‘On his cheek?! Okay… This guy’s gonna be hard to mess with.’”
For Pullman and stunt double Alec Back, the biggest challenge was to make superhuman feats look as easy as lifting a finger, something that required weeks of rehearsal and careful choreography.
“Alec is a genius, and we got to create a lot of the body language around what it looks like to be doing massively violent behavior in a very effortless way,” Pullman adds. “The way to really convey that power is with very small, minimal movements that have a huge reaction.”
The scene unfolds like one continuous take, and Schreier particularly praises lead storyboard artist Federico D’Alessandro and visual effect supervisor Jake Morrison for painstakingly mapping out every camera move. They also felt the emotional weight of filming in a familiar location: the penthouse of the former Avengers Tower, now owned by Valentina. “It was nice because we were telling this story that felt so different [from the Avengers movies], and then we were in that penthouse, which has so much resonance in this world,” the director says.
The Thunderbolts try to hit Sentry with everything they have — knives, guns, punches — but he easily deflects every move. At one point, Sentry even rips off Bucky’s metal arm and hits him with it, much to Sebastian Stan’s dismay. “I always take it personally when that happens!” the actor says with a laugh. “I always go, ‘Do we really need to disarm the arm again?’”
“Yeah, my shield got bent in half,” Wyatt Russell adds sadly.
But even though that fight ends poorly for the Thunderbolts, the actors still had a blast. “It was like being on a great rollercoaster,” Harbour says with a grin.
Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* is in theaters now.
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