Shadowing Practice: The Original Plans for Thunderbolts - Learn English Speaking with Video
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What if John Walker was the villain in Thunderbolts instead of Sentry?
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Not only that, what if Taskmaster survived, the team featured
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Man -Thing instead of Bucky, and the whole movie took place in the vault a la Die Hard?
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Believe it or not, all of those things almost happened.
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To find out how we went from that to the movie we know, let's dive in and take a look at what could have been Thunderbolts.
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Many fans were disappointed by Taskmaster's treatment in Black Widow.
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In the comics, she's a he and he's a funny, wise -cracking, and charismatic mercenary with photographic reflexes,
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able to mimic any opponent's fighting style in seconds.
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But the film reimagined the character as a quiet, emotionless enforcer, stripped of that trademark personality.
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What could have been a dynamic, scene -stealing villain instead felt muted and underused.
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The disappointment only deepened when Thunderbolts killed her off early,
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erasing any opportunity to expand on her character or make her evolve more into the version from the comics.
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However, originally the character didn't die as the script explored her bond with Ghost, with the two connecting over their shared pasts as experiments,
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raised and weaponized by secret organizations.
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Ghost, having already learned to assert her independence, took on a mentor -like role, helping Taskmaster rediscover her own identity and autonomy.
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Taskmaster's tragic backstory also grounded the team, reminding the others that no matter how dark their histories were,
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hers was worse, keeping their egos and self -pity in check.
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On the lighter side, her lingering memory issues would have been an ongoing joke,
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as she would have occasionally forgot she was no longer trying to kill John Walker and suddenly attack him mid -conversation,
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forcing the group to repeatedly restrain her and remind her they were allies.
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After the writer's strike halted production, however, director Jake Schreier felt the film lacked tension and unpredictability.
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It was too bloodless, with little sense of danger or uncertainty about who might make it out alive.
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To raise the emotional stakes, he chose to rework Taskmaster's role, deciding she should die early in the film in a sudden,
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matter -of -fact way that would shock the audience and set the tone for what followed.
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Her death was meant to resonate throughout the story, reminding viewers that no one on the team was truly safe.
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Although the idea of saving her death for later in the film was considered, Schreier believed that if audiences got to know her better,
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then her eventual death would overshadow the film's core focus, building a genuine bond between Yelena and Bob.
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When writer Eric Pearson finally saw the finished film, however, he was stunned.
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No one had told him Taskmaster would be killed off.
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The change completely blindsided him, but in hindsight, he admitted the surprise worked, since it mirrored the audience's own shock.
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He also suspected the decision was partly creative overlap.
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Both Taskmaster and Bucky were grappling with memory loss and identity issues,
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and removing her may have been a way to keep those arcs from feeling too similar.
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Originally, the film opened with Yelena confronting Valentina about ordering the Clint Barton hit.
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In the scene, Yelena angrily accused Valentina of manipulating her into targeting her sister's killer, when, in reality, he was her best friend.
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Valentina then would flip the script on her, arguing that she had simply paid Yelena to do a job and she didn't finish it,
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and that Valentina only shared the intel that
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Clint Barton killed Natasha to further motivate Yelena, information that ultimately turned out to be false.
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The exchange then shifted into a deeper discussion about Yelena's growing dissatisfaction with her work, and her desire to find something more meaningful,
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a powerful setup for her arc that was sadly lost in the final version.
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However, this was cut because writer
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Eric Pearson felt that too much time had elapsed between Thunderbolts and Black Widow and Hawkeye, and he worried casual audiences wouldn't remember what happened.
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Pearson had originally wanted to use
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Red Hulk as Thunderbolt's main villain, but Marvel Studios rejected the idea due to their existing plans to use him for Captain America Brave New World.
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As a result, Pearson made John Walker, aka US Agent, the film's main antagonist.
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His storyline was dark and tragic.
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Valentina deceived him into thinking his super soldier serum was wearing off
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and gave him pills to fix
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it unknowingly turning him into a ticking time bomb as his instability grew became more volatile
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and alienated from the team culminating in a finale where the
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Thunderbolts were forced to confront one of their own choosing not to try
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and kill him but to try and save him however around the same time
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Brave New World was developing a similar storyline in
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which Thaddeus Ross transforms into the Red Hulk after unknowingly taking pills from Samuel Stearns aka the leader, that was secretly infused with gamma radiation.
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To avoid repeating the same idea, Thunderbolts needed to rethink its villain yet again.
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Pearson remembered the Sentry miniseries years earlier during his time in the Marvel Writers program.
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Revisiting the character, he was struck by the idea of a Superman -like villain who the team couldn't simply beat in a punching fight.
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The Sentry's duality, a shining symbol of heroism, contrasted with his dark alter ego, the Void, perfectly captured the film's core themes.
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To Pearson, it represented the conflict between confidence and self -doubt and heroism and isolation.
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Once he realized that the team's emotional arcs could all be reflected within a single character, serving as both hero and antagonist,
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the story finally came together.
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Steven Yeun, who had previously worked with director
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Jake Schreier on the Netflix series
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Beef, was originally cast as Sentry.
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As Schreier believed, Yeun's emotional range and intensity made him a perfect fit.
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However, strike -related production delays caused scheduling conflicts, forcing Yeun to leave the project, a decision he later said he was disappointed by.
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Marvel then cast loose.
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Pullman, whose quieter, more introspective approach redefined the role.
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The void, the dark realm connecting to Sentry's powers, went through its own evolution.
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Initially, Pearson wrote it as a surreal, dreamlike space, but Schreier wanted it more grounded and unsettling, inspired by being John Malkovich,
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turning it into maze -like shame rooms that reflected each character's inner guilt.
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As a result, these moments were reworked to make them more symbolic and emotionally charged.
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Director Jake Schreier initially wanted to include
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Man -Thing, who was once part of Luke Cage's Thunderbolts lineup alongside Ghost.
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Man -Thing is a tragic figure once a scientist named Ted
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Salas who transformed him into a swamp creature after injecting himself with the super soldier serum
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he was trying to recreate and crashing his car into a swamp.
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Afterwards, he's barely capable of speech but possesses a terrifying power.
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Anyone who feels fear burns at his touch.
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The filmmakers explored using
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Man -Thing as a government asset or as evidence of an experiment gone wrong that Valentina wanted destroyed.
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However, the creative team struggled to fit him into the story before realizing
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that a swamp monster clashed tonally with the rest of the film.
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Essentially since Thunderbolts already featured another extraordinary character in Sentry.
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Having both would have drawn too much attention away from Sentry's transformation and emotional arc.
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The filmmakers also felt that including a swamp monster risked inviting comparisons to Suicide Squad's Killer Croc,
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making Thunderbolts feel less distinct from DC's ensemble anti -hero film.
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Bucky also wasn't originally part of the team or in the film at all.
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The story originally focused on Valentina's recruits, Yelena, Ghost, Taskmaster, and John Walker, as a group of anti -heroes forced to work together under her control.
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Bucky's inclusion is supposed to serve a few important purposes.
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His part as a brainwashed assassin connected him to the other's shared trauma, making him a natural fit.
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He also gave the story a familiar face linking thunderbolts to the MCU.
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However, Bucky was originally written as a washed -up public figure, being used by politicians as a promotional tool,
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the political equivalent of hiring a retired athlete to shake hands at a car wash.
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At first, it seemed like a humiliating fall from grace, suggesting Bucky had sold out and lost his purpose.
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However, it would later be revealed that this was all part of an undercover mission.
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He had infiltrated the world of politics and commerce to investigate Valentina,
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working alongside a congressman who secretly served as his ally before eventually going on the hunt.
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After Pearson left the project, Feige suggested that Barnes should be a congressman instead.
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Bill Foster, played by Lawrence Fishburne in Ant -Man and the Wasp, was also set to join the team in the final act,
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even getting a classic Goliath moment that paid tribute to his comic book counterpart, the giant -sized hero who gained his powers by synthesizing
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Hank Pym's particles.
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The film would have explored the dynamic between
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Foster and Alexei, two older men acting as unlikely father figures to Ghost and Yelena respectively.
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However, Foster's subplot was ultimately cut
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because his character didn't share the same kind of deep -rooted trauma that thematically connected the rest of the team.
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Zemo was also close to appearing in the movie.
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One early draft included a post -credits scene showing him in prison,
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quietly observing Valentina's new team and hinting that he'd been orchestrating events from behind the scenes.
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A fitting nod to his comic book origins, where Zemo was the one who assembled the Thunderbolts.
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Pearson envisioned Zemo as a Kaiser Soze -like figure, manipulating everything from the shadows.
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However, the idea was ultimately scrapped, as the filmmakers felt it just felt like fan service.
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Originally, Pearson wanted the film to take place in a single location, a massive underground prison called The Vault.
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The idea was to trap the team together, forcing them to work with or against one another.
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Pearson described it as diehard meets the breakfast club, high tension mixed with character bonding, giving them a bunch of team -building exercises to escape.
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He wanted to avoid repeating
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Suicide Squad, which had been done twice and featured an authority figure taking criminals and sending them on a mission.
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However, Marvel worried it felt too contained for a big -screen superhero film, and asked Pearson to expand the scope.
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The later versions added new settings, multiple missions, and broader stakes.
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Regardless, Thunderbolts ultimately became a very different kind of superhero film, one that traded spectacle for introspection.
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What began as a high -concept, die -hard -style thriller evolved into a grounded story about trauma, identity, and redemption.
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And while it ultimately delivered a powerful message about broken people finding strength in one another, Thunderbolts struggled to connect with mainstream audiences,
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its quieter, more reflective tone proving a tough sell in a genre built on spectacle.
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Thanks for watching everybody and don't forget to like and subscribe for more of Hollywood's untold stories and unmade movies.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Original Plans for Thunderbolts”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: thunderbolts, film, Pearson, originally, character. This video has 124 sentences and 1842 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:18. The speaker talks fast, about 198 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 71% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| villain noun | /ˈvɪl.ən/ | A vile, wicked person. |
| comic noun | /ˈkɑmɪk/ | A comedian. |
| swamp noun | /ˈswɑmp/ | An area of wet (water-saturated), spongy (soft) land, often with trees, generally a rich ecosystem for certain plants and animals but ill-suited for many… |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| remind verb | /ɹəˈmaɪnd/ | To cause one to experience a memory (of someone or something); to bring to the notice or consideration (of a person). |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| trauma noun | /ˈtɹɔm.ə/ | Any injury to the body of a living thing. |
| tragic adjective | /ˈtɹæd͡ʒɪk/ | Causing great sadness or suffering. |
| filmmaker noun | A producer or director of films/movies. | |
| tone noun | /ˈtəʊn/ | A specific pitch. |
| killer noun | /ˈkɪlɚ/ | One who or that which kills. |
| shock noun | /ʃɔk/ | A sudden, heavy impact. |
| soldier noun | /ˈsoʊld͡ʒɚ/ | A member of a ground-based army, of any rank, but especially an enlisted member. |
| alongside | /əˌlɔŋˈsaɪd/ | Side by side with. |
| disappointed adjective | /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪnɪd/ | Defeated of expectations or hope; experiencing disappointment; let down. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| sold out adjective | Completely sold; of which no more is in stock. | |
| wash up verb | To clean the utensils, dishes etc. used in preparing and eating a meal. | |
| wear off verb | to diminish in effect | |
| work together verb | To be coworkers with someone; to share a workspace with someone. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was meant · was considered · would be killed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Anyone who feels · one who assembled |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 8 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, couldn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, thriller /ˈθɹɪ.lə/, thunderbolt /ˈθʌndə(ɹ)ˌboʊlt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shock /ʃɔk/, tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, wash /wɑʃ/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/
- Long words — get the stress right: disappointed /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪnɪd/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, superhero /ˈs(j)upɚhɪɹoʊ/, manipulate /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/, respectively /ɹɪˈspɛktɪvli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like villain, comic, swamp.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.