Thor: Love & Thunder is the fourth Thor movie in the MCU and the second directed by Taika Waititi. It stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Watiti, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and (for a brief moment) the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Sean Gunn, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper).
Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Hemsworth) has been romping around space with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We don't know exactly what they've been doing, other than kind of vaguely protecting people. Thor, meanwhile, is in the midst of an existential crisis brought on by losing basically everyone he's ever loved either to death or just time. He has, however, worked out enough to lose the fat suit he was wearing in Endgame. This is all narrated by Korg (Waititi), Thor's rockpile friend.
Meanwhile, a hapless dude call Gorr (Bale) has become an entity known as the God-Butcher after taking possession of/being possessed by the Necro-Blade, following the death of his daughter (India Hemsworth) and has begun hunting down and slaughtering gods. Thor notes this when Sif (Jaime Alexander) sends him a distress call, he winds up back on New Asgard just as shadow-monsters start attacking...
...but he is joined in battle not only by the King of Asgard, Valkyrie (Thompson), but also his ex, Jane Foster (Portman), now wielding the shattered Mjolnir as Mighty Thor! Gorr is defeated by steals all the children of New Asgard, so it falls to Thor, Jane, Valkyrie, and Korg to go and get them back, first by trying to rally other gods to their causing and failing miserably, and then by just...I dunno, going to the ends of the universe and pounding on Gorr with a hammer or two. Oh, right, Jane's dying of cancer.
Look, in my humble opinion, this is probably the weakest feature film in the entire MCU. There are entertaining bits, and Hemsworth is a solid comic actor, but the movie feels thin and kind of rootless. I hadn't seen it since it came out, but I remembered thinking that, so last night while we were watching it, I tried to nail down what it was that bugs me. And there are a few things.
First of all, I think it's too goofy. Ragnarok kinda set us on this path by turning Thor's depiction in the MCU about 75% more bro-y, and while Thor having a sense of fun and humor has always been there, the overt flip to him being a comic character started happening in Ragnarok. And that was OK; that movie ended with kind of a dire "oh shit" moment because it was the lead-in to Infinity War, and then we got Thor being traumatized and depressed because obviously. And the depiction of Thor at the end of that movie, fat, hurting but healing, and maybe imposing on Star-Lord's good graces a little too much, was fine, and that should have been what we got here.
Instead, Waititi chooses to have Thor's central conflict be that he keeps people at arm's length because of how much he's lost, and that's awesome, that fits nicely into his arc through the last two Avengers movies...except it's handled so clumsily because the surrounding movie is so silly. Sure, Jane is dying of cancer and turns to Mjolnir to stave off death, except channeling that energy is sapping her mortal body's ability to fight the disease (OK, whatever, that's no dumber than anything else in a comic-book movie), but then we have these goats that just won't stop screaming lol. Valkyrie is coping with being King and loving her job, but also kind of missing battle and still numbing herself because she lost all her fellow valkyries in battle, but then we've got Daryl (Daley Pearson) from the "Team Thor" shorts suddenly made canon as a tour guide in New Asgard? The tone of the movie is all over the map and it comes off sloppy. People (rightly) complain that a lot of Marvel movies are too quippy, that they don't let emotional moments breathe before someone makes a joke (thanks, Joss Whedon) and this cranks that to 11.
Second (yeah, that was all the first point), I've figured out something that Taika Waititi is bad at - he is shit at world-building. Look at his best films, which I'd argue are Jojo Rabbit and What We Do in the Shadows. They had worlds built already, 1940s Germany and our own modern world, respectively. Waititi didn't have to think about the "rules" of those universes, because they were already set (sure, WWDITS has vampires, but like, those vampires do not do anything remotely new with the legendry; they're more homages to other vampire stories than anything). And he doesn't play well in other peoples' sandboxes, which was apparent in Ragnarok when gods were suddenly a real thing rather than just space aliens. But here we not only have a whole city of gods, but they are a known quantity and are supposed to protect their people to the point that when the Guardians are inundated with distress calls, it's all about "these peoples' gods are dead and now there's no one to protect them!" That...has not been a thing in the MCU thus far. And, we still have the goofy bits, because when we visit Omnipotence City (ugh), we see Korg's people's deity, who not only has a stupid name ("Ninny of the Nonny") but sits on a throne bedecked with scissors because GET IT?! HE'S MADE OF ROCKS fuckin' hell.
And, along those lines, when did weapons become sentient? There has never been any mention that Mjolnir or Stormbreaker were thinking, feeling beings in any MCU property previously, and it's stupid.
And, finally, there's the problem that a lot of post-Endgame MCU movies have: It introduces plotlines and characters that are probably never going to show up again. Where, I wonder, will Love be in Doomsday? Will Brett Goldstein ever show up as Hercules? I rather doubt it, and that's a shame.
Oh, oh, wait, thought of another one! (Though this is probably Disney's fault, not Waititi's.) In the lead-up to the movie, Waititi claimed it would be "super-gay." What's the queer content? Val kisses a woman's hand. There's a throwaway reference to her girlfriend. And Korg's species is apparently all male, so the relationship he's in at the end is technically same-sex. THAT'S ALL YOU GET, QUEERS. Yeah. Pretty queer-baity.
So, what's the good news? Um. Movie's pretty, a couple of terrible unfinished effects aside. While I don't love Hemsworth's performance as Thor (I think it's too goofy), I think Bale, Portman, and Thompson did well. I think Russell Crowe's mid-credits scene where he gets to monologue about how gods are getting ignored in favor of superheroes was really cool and thematically much more interesting than the rest of the movie.
OK, I think I'm done.
My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Low
Next up: Backcountry
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