Marvel’s Thunderbolts Trailer Has Everyone Saying The Same Thing

Marvel Studios’ upcoming superhero flick “Thunderbolts*” is slated to be the 36th feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and will assemble six ancillary characters culled from previous MCU movies and TV shows, making them into a ragtag fighting force. On the team are the Red Guardian, Yelena Belova, and Taskmaster (David Harbor, Florence Pugh, and Olga Kurylenko) from “Black Widow,” the Winter Soldier and U.S. Agent (Sebastian Stan and Wyatt Russell) from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” These characters previously served as low-level villains or antagonists, but are now redeeming themselves as hunted antiheroes.

The first full trailer for “Thunderbolts*” was released on September 23, 2024, and it displays the requisite action that the genre demands, as well as the notable character reveals that the MCU is known for. The characters are also well-equipped with quips, wielding bathos like a cudgel. A car is shot during an intense chase sequence, but the Red Guardian says not to worry, as the car is bulletproof. The bullets then break the windows and penetrate the chassis. Bulletproof? “It’s bulletproof-ish!” he yells.

There’s one detail in the trailer that’s driving everyone up a wall, though, and that’s the use of the Pixie’s “Where Is My Mind?” on the soundtrack. The song choice is controversial for two reasons. One, “Where Is My Mind?” played at the tail end of David Fincher’s “Fight Club” and has since become strong associated with that 1999 cult classic. And two, slowed-down remixes of classic rock songs is a move trailer cliché that fell out of vogue about seven years ago. Twitter/X users have thus logged on to register their distaste.

Multiple X users have demanded a moratorium on “Where Is My Mind?” Since the song appeared in “Fight Club,” it has become too familiar to a mass audience and no longer has the same emotional impact. Also, “Fight Club” wasn’t even the first film to prominently feature the song on its soundtrack. The song was first licensed for a scripted feature in 1990 with the release of W.T. Morgan’s low-budget indie “A Matter of Degrees” and later turned up in the 1992 sexed-up crime flick “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.” In 1998, “Where Is My Mind?” also appeared in Tod Williams’ “The Adventures of Sebastian Cole,” so hip 1990s indie filmmakers were already hammering on the Pixies a lot before Fincher ever got his hands on it.

In the mid-2000s, though, the song became ubiquitous. “Where Is My Mind?” turned up on “Veronica Mars,” “Criminal Minds,” and “The 4400.” It was also on “Cold Case” and in the films “Ghost Bird” and “Mr. Nobody.” By the time it turned up on sitcoms like “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Neighbors,” it was pretty clear that “Mind” lost its cool. Most recently, one might have heard the song on “Tiny Beautiful Things.”

Recall, though, this is not the first time Marvel included a previously-claimed classic rock hit on its soundtrack. Kids of the 1990s might know about Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” because of its inclusion on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 crime drama “Reservoir Dogs.” 20 years later, that same song was featured prominently in the trailer for James Gunn’s sci-fi action-comedy “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Of course, that film’s soundtrack also included David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” the Runaway’s “Cherry Bomb,” and multiple other “gimmes” that have been in many, many movies before.

Criticisms of the “Thunderbolts*” preview also point to a trend that many might have assumed was at an end: the movie trailer “bummer” remix. /Film previously wrote an article about the band Hidden Citizens, specifically about their career writing intense, operatic, downbeat reworkings of known pop hits. They were the ones who wrote the melodramatic cover of “Somebody’s Watching Me” for the trailer for “The Girl on the Train,” the overblown version of “Moonlight Sonata” for “Ad Astra,” and the version of “Hungry Like the Wolf” in bumpers for “Blood and Oil.”

For several years in the late 2000s, it seemed that most high-profile film previews featured bleak reworkings of karaoke-familiar rock songs. “A Cure for Wellness” featured a downbeat rendition of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” in its trailer. The promo for the remake of “Endless Love” featured a redux of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” The “Transformers: The Last Knight” preview featured a new cover of the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” It was a trend that was quickly recognized and eventually waned. The fact that the “Thunderbolts*” trailer is doing the 2016 thing all over again seems to be annoying people.

Then again, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” also crossed that line last year. That 2023 MCU film featured a remix of Spacehog’s “In the Meantime” in its trailer. That’s to say, perhaps the MCU has merely been clinging onto an outmoded form of expression that mass audiences just see as background noise. Of course (if we may be cynical for a moment), given the waning of cultural clout of the MCU in general, that clinging-to-outmoded-expressions might be appropriate.

“Thunderbolts*” is scheduled to reach theaters on May 2, 2025.