Thunderbolts* starts on an introspective note. “There’s something wrong with me,” Yelena Belova says. “An emptiness. I thought it started when my sister died, but now it feels like something bigger. Just … a void.”

As Thunderbolts* unfolds, its lead figures continue the introspection and existentialism. Bucky Barnes, a former super soldier/assassin, and Mel, assistant to the comically cunning Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, both quote Søren Kierkegaard to each other. As characters deal with individual crises, it’s obvious Marvel is doing some interior wrestling of its own.

Such wrestling is necessary for the MCU as some might use Yelena’s words to describe its current state—empty and dead. The franchise’s recent outings haven’t done so hot, with Captain America: Brave New World landing at 48 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Thankfully, at every turn, Thunderbolts* proves director Jake Schreier is very aware of Marvel’s struggles, making the film a welcome arrival.

Thunderbolts* hit theaters just as The Wall Street Journal reported Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige admitting to colleagues that “watching all the comic-book giant’s new TV shows and films had started to feel more like homework than entertainment.” To satisfy parent company Disney, Marvel kicked out too much content with interconnected stories in too short of a time frame. As quantity increased, storytelling quality decreased.

Schreier says Feige told him to make Thunderbolts* “different.” And that he does.

In the film, a band of assassins and operatives—Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko)—who have been the tip of the CIA’s black ops spear are caught out when the U.S. Senate threatens to uncover the extent of CIA Director De Fontaine’s human experimentation. De Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) schemes to eliminate the operatives so they can’t testify against her. That scheme doesn’t work, thanks in part to a man named Bob. Unknown to De Fontaine, h survived her experiments and has gained mysterious powers.

Despite absolutely hating the idea of working together, Belova, Walker, and Dreykov join Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) to expose De Fontaine and stop the unstoppable weapon with which she’s about to take the world hostage.

Yes, Thunderbolts* has comedy. But its humorous moments manage not to step on the film’s emotional labor. Florence Pugh overcommits, not only to Yelena’s interior searching, but to being an assist in the interior searching of others. Her father, Alexei, in a way that only David Harbour could manage, blends insistence and heartwarming sorrow with over-enthusiasm for a team that nobody wants to be part of. He is a reconciler and father of prodigals (complete with scruffy Abrahamic beard), always urging togetherness, forgiveness, and love that covers a multitude of sins. He tells Yelena that the way to overcome her emptiness is not to entirely abandon the life of an operative but to use her skills in service to the public.

Yes, Thunderbolts* has awesome fight scenes. But just where you expect the biggest fight to break out, it … doesn’t. This movie has something more terrifying than death and destruction in mind. At my showing, audible gasps from fellow viewers prove that what happens is both unexpected and unnerving.

Yes, Thunderbolts* retreads territory significant to Marvel fans—most evocatively in De Fontaine’s new base being the old Avengers Tower. It directly references what made Captain America the first Avenger (hint: it wasn’t the super-soldier serum) and subtly suggests where the MCU may have lost its way. It doesn’t self-reference in a gaudy remember-this-cool-thing-we-did scheme, but adds something meaningful about loneliness, depression, and finding purpose, embracing the biblical principle that confession and community are starting points for healing. That goes for the in-story characters and for Marvel’s relationship with real-world fans.

Marvel’s not tone-deaf. It’s desperately aware of its need for revival. And a band of emotionally wrecked anti-heroes who hate themselves and the things they’ve done, and want to throw up at the idea of teamwork, might hand the MCU some resurrection.