Thunder Force(2021)

SHORT VERSION:
After William Stevens/The King (who we come to find out is a Miscreant with superhuman strength) loses the mayoral election to his opponent, Rachel Gonzales, he announces to the press that he will host a party for her to celebrate her victory. However, the true purpose of the party is to give him a chance to kill Gonzales and all those who voted for her with a bomb. After Lydia/The Hammer finds out about this plot by spending a romantic evening with the King’s Miscreant lackey, Jerry/The Crab (since the two of them developed a mutual attraction to each other and Jerry has become disillusioned with working for the King), she reports this to Emily, and with their assistant Allie and Emily’s daughter Tracy, they start to formulate a plan to find and disarm the King’s bomb.

While the operation is underway, Allie reveals that she is in league with the King when she tries to direct Laser to kill Lydia and Emily in a surprise attack in the loading bay area of the building that the victory party is being held in. Fortunately, Tracy finds out about her double-crossing nature before Laser can carry out the attack, and she knocks out Allie and warns her mother and Lydia about Laser right in the nick of time. After Lydia knocks Laser out, Tracy tells her and Emily that she is coming over to help them and leaves Emily’s office building. Thunder Force then goes inside the building to find the bomb, and Emily deduces that the bomb must be in Gonzales’ campaign office on the 29th floor since the party is being held on the floor above it. While the King, Jerry, and his henchmen are leaving the building following the King’s introduction of Mayor Gonzales to the partygoers, one of the henchmen contact a now-conscious Laser, and she reports her failure to kill Thunder Force to the King and warns him that they are going after the bomb now. He and his men thus go back up to the campaign office to put a stop to them.

In the subsequent confrontation, Emily fights and subdues all of the King’s henchmen, and Lydia fights the King and ends up defeating him when she sends him flying out a window to the streets below. Jerry tries to help Lydia during the battle, but he winds up getting his pincers broken off by the King for his betrayal. Also, Laser shows up in the midst of all the fighting and nearly kills Emily, but she gets knocked out by an arriving Tracy, who reveals that she has secretly taken her mother’s superhero treatments and developed superhuman speed.

Jerry tells the ladies that the bomb is in the corner office, and after they find it, Emily deduces that she won’t have enough time to properly disarm it, and she shoots down Tracy’s idea of running the bomb out of the city because they don’t know if the bomb will be stable enough to not go off during the process. Lydia thus decides to take the bomb and jump into the nearby Chicago River with it, both to protect the innocent people at the party and on the street and because she believes that, given her powers, she can absorb the force of the blast. She takes the bomb and then jumps out a window right down into the river, and the bomb detonates moments later.

Lydia’s intact but seemingly lifeless body is recovered from the river by police and paramedics that have been called to the scene, but she soon regains consciousness, much to Emily’s and Tracy’s relief. Mayor Gonzales then approaches Thunder Force and thanks them for their heroic efforts, and she informs them that, while Laser has managed to escape, the King has been found alive and is now in custody, fulfilling Emily’s goal to bring a Miscreant to justice. The Mayor then offers Thunder Force access to the city’s resources to support their crimefighting crusade, and Thunder Force immediately accepts. The last scene of the film shows us that Lydia and Jerry are now in a relationship, and we see that his pincers are starting to grow back.

LONG VERSION:
After Thunder Force – Lydia/The Hammer (Melissa McCarthy) and Emily/Bingo (Octavia Spencer) – foil a convenience store robbery being committed by Jerry/The Crab (Jason Bateman) and his henchmen (during which Jerry and Lydia feel sparks fly between them) and then follow it up with a few other successful superheroic acts, they come to the attention of William Stevens/The King (Bobby Cannavale), the Mayor of Chicago who is currently running for re-election against Rachel Gonzales (Melissa Ponzio). After he watches a news story about Thunder Force at his home, we find out that he is actually working with Jerry and another Miscreant, Laser (Pom Klementieff), when we see them watching the news with him. It turns out that they have been stirring up trouble around the city on the King’s orders so the voters and the media will be led to think that the Miscreants are a problem that only HE can solve, which will enable him to win the election. After the King recognizes that Thunder Force are a serious threat to his plans, Laser suggests that she kill them, but the King shoots that idea down, explaining that, if she kills them now, it will look like he couldn’t stop her from doing it. He then explains to her and Jerry that they are going to have a talk with Thunder Force instead, and they will only kill them if the talk doesn’t go right. When one of his henchmen tells him that he doubts that they will be easy to kill, the King reveals that he is a Miscreant himself when he uses his superhuman strength power to fatally crush the henchman with a bearhug.

The King and Laser proceed to force their way into Emily’s office building, and after (off-screen) knocking out Thunder Force’s assistant, Allie (Melissa Leo), and frying the security system, the King and Laser confront Lydia, Emily, and Emily’s daughter Tracy (Taylor Mosby) in the training center (though the King does not reveal to them that he is a Miscreant). Emily quickly realizes that the King has been working with the Miscreants all this time, and the King explains that, in time, he intends to have ALL the Miscreants working for him. He tells the ladies that they are changing the narrative of the election and he can’t have that, and then he offers them a chance to work for him as he expands his operations. He also explains how, after he wins the election, he intends to run for and win even higher political offices until, one day, he becomes the U.S. President. Lydia and Emily express no desire to work for him, so he and Laser threaten them with death in the future and then leave. Lydia and Emily continue on with their superhero acts and also start to openly throw their support behind Gonzales, and their endorsement helps Gonzales become the new mayor of Chicago. Infuriated by this turn of events, the King angrily declares that Thunder Force must die, and he also decides to get revenge on Gonzales and her voters. He thus calls a news conference and announces to the press that, as a gesture of goodwill, he is going to host a party for Gonzales to celebrate her victory, but he really intends to have this party serve as an excuse for her and everyone who voted for her to be neatly put into one place so he can kill them all with a bomb.

While Lydia and Emily are having a meal at Lydia’s favorite diner with Allie, Allie excuses herself to use the bathroom, and moments later, Laser appears and shoots a laser blast into the diner. The force of it knocks Emily for a loop, forcing Lydia to take on Laser herself, but the battle ends minutes later when Laser effects an escape on a getaway truck. Lydia orders an approaching city bus to stop and for the passengers and driver to get out of it so she can throw the bus at Laser, but Emily comes out and tries to tell her not to do this because the villain is now out of range. Lydia goes through with the attempt anyway, but all she ends up doing is wrecking the Buckingham Fountain. Emily scolds Lydia for acting without thinking and doing something so stupid and dangerous that she could have hurt someone, and she tells Lydia that she has acted like a Miscreant. Lydia retorts that she didn’t see her try to do anything to stop Laser except disappear, which she remarks that she had been doing before she ever got that superpower. Lydia soon walks off alone.

That night, Emily has a chat with Tracy, and Tracy tells her that she spoke with Lydia over the phone earlier on and knows that she is trying to work through some things with Lydia right now, then adds that she likes Lydia a lot. Tracy then asks her if she doesn’t talk to her enough and is too tough on her, then tells her that she feels that she has become so focused on righting the wrongs committed against her by the Miscreants that she has missed out on a lot of time that they could’ve spent together. She tells Tracy that she is going to change that, but Tracy replies that she does great and is too hard on herself, as well as on Lydia, who has been her friend for a long time even when she didn’t want her to be. Emily then asks Tracy where Lydia has gone off to, and Tracy replies that Lydia told her that she was going on a date tonight.

We then find out that Lydia’s “date” is a date with Jerry, having tracked him down and asked him to meet with her, and she has done this in order to find out more information about the party that the King has planned in an attempt to make things up to Emily for the bus incident. Hers and Jerry’s attraction deepens, and she tells him that she senses a good heart within him before eventually asking him whose side he is on. The next morning, Lydia visits Emily in her office and apologizes for the events of yesterday, then tells her that she found out that the King’s party for Gonzales is going to end with Gonzales and her voters getting blown up. She confesses that she went on a date with Jerry to get this information and ended up sleeping with him (during which he admitted to her that he planned on getting out of criminal life, having become disillusioned with the King and his attitude ever since he lost the election) but she tells Emily that she thinks that they can trust him. The two friends patch up their differences just before Tracy comes in and tells them that Allie has just ordered them to suit up and meet her in the tech room, where they all come up with a plan to find and safely disarm the King’s bomb.

After Thunder Force take their positions by a door in the building’s loading bay, Allie tells Tracy to go out and get some fresh coffee for her. When she thinks Tracy is out of earshot, she talks to Laser via a communicator in her wristwatch and tells her of Lydia’s and Emily’s whereabouts, revealing that she is in league with the King and had put Thunder Force by that door so Laser could easily kill them both in a surprise attack. Fortunately, Tracy catches her while she is talking to Laser and knocks her out with a coffee pot, then quickly warns Lydia and her mother to get away from the door just before Laser attacks them. After Tracy tells Lydia and Emily that Allie double-crossed them and was likely paid off by the King, Thunder Force has a short fight with Laser that ends with Lydia throwing a dumpster at her and knocking her out. Tracy then gets back on their earpieces, and after telling them that Allie is unconscious and that security is coming to apprehend her, she declares that she is coming over to help them and takes off. Lydia and Emily go into the building, and Emily eventually deduces that the King must have planted the bomb in Gonzales’ campaign office on the 29th floor because the party is being held on the floor above it. As the King is leaving the building with Jerry and some henchmen following his introduction of Mayor Gonzales, one of the goons contacts the now-conscious Laser, who reports that she has failed to kill Thunder Force and that they are most likely going after the bomb now. The King thus decides that they need to go back up to the 29th floor and stop them.

The King and company confront Lydia and Emily moments after they have entered Gonzales’ office, and the King soon orders his henchmen to start shooting at the ladies, forcing them to take cover and Jerry to go and hide in a corner of the office. The King then challenges Thunder Force to face him head-on, causing Lydia and Emily to realize that he is a Miscreant, and Lydia fights him one-on-one (despite the fact that his superhuman strength is greater than hers) while Emily disarms and incapacitates the thugs. Laser then shows up, and Emily dukes it out with her until Laser gets the better of her. Thankfully, before Laser can kill her, Tracy suddenly appears and knocks her out with a blinding fast attack, revealing that she has taken Emily’s superpower treatments herself without her knowledge and developed superhuman speed. Just as the King is about to finish off Lydia, she is saved by Jerry, who grabs the King’s arm to stop him. The King punishes him for his betrayal by breaking off his pincer hands and then kicking him down to the floor, but this gives Thunder Force a chance to surprise him with a triple-team attack that ends with Lydia breaking a support column loose and then using it like a baseball bat to whack him right out of the building and into the streets below.

After Jerry informs the ladies that the bomb is located in the corner office, they take a look at it and determine that Emily will not have enough time to disarm it before it explodes, nor can they risk Tracy running it out of town because they don’t know if the bomb will be stable enough to not go off during the process. Lydia thus decides to take the bomb and jump out of the building with it down into the Chicago River below, both to ensure that no innocent people in the building or on the street get injured or killed in the blast and thinking that, given her powers, she can absorb the force of the explosion. Before she jumps out, she tearfully tells Emily that, if this doesn’t go well for her, she just wants her to know that she is the best person that she has ever met and that Tracy is an awesome kid. She then leaps out and goes down into the river, and moments later, the bomb detonates.

Police and paramedics are called down to the river, and Lydia’s body is recovered fully intact but seemingly lifeless. Emily and Tracy have the paramedics lay her body down next to them, but as they start to grieve for her, Lydia regains consciousness. After Emily and Tracy help her to her feet, they are cheered by the assembly of onlookers, most of whom came down from the party. Mayor Gonzales then approaches them and thanks them for their heroic efforts, and she informs them that, while Laser has managed to escape, the King has been found alive and is now in custody (fulfilling Emily’s goal to bring a Miscreant to justice). Gonzales then offers Thunder Force access to the city’s resources to support their crimefighting crusade, and the ladies immediately accept. Gonzales then leaves them to make a statement to the press, and Thunder Force decide to return to Emily’s office building. After Tracy uses her superhuman speed to get there first, the people start chanting “Thunder Force” at Lydia and Emily, so they take a few moments to absorb the adulation.

The movie ends some days later with Lydia and Jerry – who are now in a relationship – having a romantic evening together in Lydia’s room in Emily’s office building, which they kick off by feeding raw chicken to each other (which is all that Lydia can really eat due to her superpower treatments changing her body chemistry, and Jerry enjoys eating it because his crab DNA makes him crave the stuff). We also see that Jerry’s pincers are starting to grow back.