Is it true, in an effort to do 'tagged templates', that I cannot pass a variable that returns a template literal as an argument?

Question

This works:

hero = "batman";
sidekick = "robin";
villain = "the joker"

function f(strings, good, helper, bad) {
    console.log(strings); //expected: " and must team up to defeat "
    console.log(good); //expect: "batman"
    console.log(helper);//expect: "robin"
    console.log(bad);//expect: "the joker"
}

f`${hero} and ${sidekick} must team up to defeat ${villain}`;

However when I store the template literal in a variable and try to pass the variable to the function it does not work:

hero = "batman";
sidekick = "robin";
villain = "the joker"

sentence = `${hero} and ${sidekick} must team up to defeat ${villain}`;

function f(strings, good, helper, bad) {
    console.log(strings); //expected: " and must team up to defeat "
    console.log(good); //expect: "batman"
    console.log(helper);//expect: "robin"
    console.log(bad);//expect: "the joker"
}

fsentence;

Is there a work-around?