directed by Taika Waititi
written by Taika Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
I'm going to be blunt: I was not expecting much from Thor: Love and Thunder. When it was announced some months before the pandemic I rolled my eyes a little bit, wondering why unlike Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans, who had wrapped up their tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in fine style with Avengers: Endgame, Chris Hemsworth was insisting on having another go. It didn't really matter that Taika Waititi, who had breathed fresh air into the Thor franchise with Thor: Ragnarok, was returning to direct and this time write the film, I just felt the film was superfluous at a time when Marvel needed to start focusing on their next generation of Avengers. Subsequent announcements like the casting of Batman himself, Christian Bale, as well as acting legend Russell Crowe piqued my interest, but I still felt jaded about it.
My mind changed quite a bit with the trailer, though, which promised a dazzling, fun romp through space with the God of Thunder with colorful new characters and some familiar old ones as well.
The film starts with Gorr (Bale), the last of an unnamed race who walks the desert with his ailing child Love (India Rose Hemsworth) and who offers the last of his strength praying to his god for her to live, all in vain, as she dies. Shortly thereafter, Gorr stumbles into an oasis where the very same god to whom he was praying is apparently celebrating the defeat of a mysterious creature with an even more mysterious sword and discovers just how indifferent that god is to his plight. The sword, which is actually called the Necrosword calls out to Gorr, and he uses it to take his bloody revenge on the god, which then prompts him to take an oath to kill all gods.
Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) following the events of Avengers: Endgame is a bit aimless. He goes on adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt as Star Lord and the rest of the gang are all back sans Zoe Saldana's Gamora, of course) but when he hears reports of a mysterious figure killing gods all over space with a mysterious sword he sets off on his own in search of the threat with his best bud Korg (Taika Waititi). Elsewhere, Thor's ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is in a bad way health-wise, and basically at the end of her rope. Having exhausted normal scientific treatment, she heads over to New Asgard, where the broken pieces of Mjolnir are on display in a museum, and hopes to receive just a little bit of its magic. What happens next takes her by surprise and she soon finds herself reunited with Thor in a way neither of them had expected. `
Suddenly, Gorr then kidnaps the children from New Asgard, and Thor, King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Jane, realizing the scope of the threat, seek help from the gods themselves, led by the powerful, pompous Zeus (a gloriously campy Russell Crowe). Will it be enough, and will they be in time?
Thor: Ragnarok was, for me one of the real gems of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so to reiterate, I was not really thrilled to hear about this new installment, which honestly felt tacked on. Fortunately, Waititi's unhinged sense of fun, along with earnest, genuinely moving performances by series newcomer Christian Bale and the returning Natalie Portman really helped keep things interesting. Hemsworth really knows that Thor is at his best as a goofball so he brings on more of that, trying on a loud new outfit and quite notably shedding the dad bod his character had picked up in Avengers: Endgame.
There's an energy to the production that helped me overlook most of its foibles, but not all of the jokes hit, and the shift in tone from the more serious scenes to the lighthearted ones was, at times, enough to give one whiplash. A light and bubbly superhero movie featuring terminal illness? These are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts; Star Lord's mom died of cancer in Guardians of the Galaxy but the movie somehow balanced these scenes out. Waititi, however, doesn't quite pull it off and for the first time I understand some of the disdain that some critics had for Jojo Rabbit's irreverent look at the dying days of World War II.
Still, I really do enjoy Waititi's love for the more out-there aspects of Jack Kirby's work. He features the cosmic megabeing Eternity as, well, kind of a MacGuffin, and there are lots of visual nods to the Celestials as Jack Kirby drew them, not how Chloe Zhao reimagined them in Eternals.
Speaking of visuals, though, I was a bit disappointed at how, after letting Sam Raimi have his way with some incredibly moody lighting to Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, Marvel seems to have reverted to a more generic look in terms of lighting and color grading. Also, majority of the VFX scenes were shrouded in darkness, which is never a good thing. Considering how long Marvel have been at this, it was distinctly disappointing
Equally disappointing is the seemingly half-baked work of yet another Marvel veteran, composer Michael Giacchino, who doesn't even seem to have thought of a proper theme for this film, which is even more of a let-down considering the kind of work Giacchino has previously done for the MCU in its Spider-Man and Doctor Strange films. Thor now has the unfortunate distinction of being the only solo franchise in the MCU to have had four different composers across as many films. They didn't even bring back Led Zeppelin for this; instead they made Axl Rose and company a whole lot richer by featuring a whopping FOUR Guns 'n' Roses songs. It's somehow apt, therefore, that Thor has an identity crisis of sorts in this film considering that musically, his character, after all these years, still doesn't have an identifiable theme.
If nothing else, though, Hemsworth, Waititi and the gang have shown that there are still a few more decent Thor stories to tell, and with any luck, they'll be better than this one.
6/10
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