Before Marvel, Lewis Pullman Broke Out In A Great Crime Thriller You Probably Missed

Marvel's "Thunderbolts" is the rare MCU movie to truly be about something, and that something is mental health. Among the many tormented characters in the film, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman) are the clearest examples of a struggle with darkness. Yelena is dealing with a metaphorical inner void caused by her Black Widow upbringing, assassin career, and personal losses. Bob's Void, on the other hand, is capitalized — an inner darkness manifest, cultivated by a lifetime of bad cards and wrong turns, and made to bloom by Valeria Allegra de Fontaine's (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) shady superhero experiments. 

The multi-faceted masterwork that is Bob/The Sentry/The Void might be many fans' first exposure to Pullman's talents, but he's already worked in many interesting projects before "Thunderbolts*," from appearing as Lt. Bob Floyd in "Top Gun: Maverick" to playing Rhett Abbott in the Prime Video drama "Outer Range." As people who are familiar with Drew Goddard's excellent 2018 ensemble thriller "Bad Times at the El Royale" can attest, "Thunderbolts*" isn't the first time Pullman has excelled as a nuanced character who's far more than meets the eye, either.

At its core, the easily overlooked "Bad Times at the El Royale" is a story about the misdirection of morality. It's also a film that doesn't reveal its full hand until very late in the game, if even then. Set in the 1960s, the movie takes place in a somewhat dilapidated hotel on the California-Nevada state border, where a handful of mysterious strangers played by some of Hollywood's best and brightest converge. Just like in "Thunderbolts*," Pullman is the odd man out in the team-up, playing the hotel's manager and sole employee Miles Miller — and just like in "Thunderbolts*," there are some serious surprises in store. 

In "Thunderbolts*," Lewis Pullman has to balance portraying Bob as a lovable dork, a man ground down to the bone by his issues, a cocky hero, and an unfeeling villain — often compressing several of these aspects in a single line or facial expression. He also has to do all this while surrounded by established MCU characters, which makes the effectiveness of his performance all the more impressive. 

In this respect, "Bad Times at the El Royale" was a good trial run. Pullman's hapless hotel manager character serves and sneaks amidst guests played by folks like Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Bridges, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, and Cailee Spaeny — all playing meaty characters with huge secrets (or, in the case of Hemsworth's cult leader Billy Lee, simply a massive, wonderfully scenery-chewing attitude). Despite all this, Pullman's Miles is a standout and turns out to be the most complex character of them all. If you wish to watch the movie — which does very much rule, if you ask me — I won't go into specific spoilers about him. Suffice it to say that there's a very good reason for his superficial meekness, and it comes into play in a serious way before the movie is over.

"Bad Times at the El Royale" is one of Pullman's best movies, and if you look at his filmography, it stands right between his early work and a noticeable leveling up with roles like Major Major Major Major in the 2019 Hulu adaptation of the Joseph Heller classic "Catch-22" and the aforementioned tentpole successes. Judging by the sheer strength of his performance in the Drew Goddard film, it's probably safe to say that this isn't a coincidence.