Thor: Love and Thunder | Review
At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) set off into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy (he dubbed the team the “Asgardians of the Galaxy”), hinting at exciting new adventures with this crossover franchise. If you were expecting an Asgardians of the Galaxy-type film in the latest installment, Thor: Love and Thunder, I’m sorry to break the news to you. The Guardians of the Galaxy appear for maybe the first 10-15 minutes before separating themselves from the titular hero, leaving Thor to tend to his own personal matters, one of which includes reuniting with his old flame Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Somehow, Foster is now in possession of Thor’s old hammer Mjolnir and all the power it summons, and has become the Mighty Thor. The two face a menacing threat in the form of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale, switching comic book universes), an alien who wields the Necrosword, a weapon so powerful it can kill any god.
You would think the return of Oscar-winner Natalie Portman to the Thor franchise (she was not featured in Thor: Ragnarok) and the addition of Oscar-winner Christian Bale in a juicy villainous role, under the direction of Oscar-winning writer/director Taika Waititi, would be enough to make this the best Thor film yet. But, unfortunately, and to my surprise, this is not the case. Far from it.
Jane Foster / Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman) and Thor (Christ Hemsworth)
If the transition from Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok was considered a huge upgrade, then I can’t think of a worse downgrade than the one from Ragnarok to Thor: Love and Thunder. And what’s mind-boggling is that both Ragnarok and Love and Thunder were directed by the same filmmaker, the much beloved film-darling-of-the-moment, Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit). Love and Thunder seemingly takes all the wrong lessons from Ragnarok, blends it all together with Waititi’s worst impulses, culminating in a film so bad I’m legitimately surprised Marvel released it. It’s quite literally the worst Marvel Cinematic Universe film I’ve ever seen.
It didn’t always have to be this way.
Waititi has been in the film industry for decades, but he didn’t break out into the mainstream until the release of Thor: Ragnarok, his first major studio film. Ragnarok was met with universal praise for being one of the only MCU installments to feel different. It was more fun and irreverent than the typical MCU film, and it had an atypical, rocking soundtrack, led by Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”. Ragnarok became the Thor series’ high-grossing and top-rated installment, so it made sense for Marvel to want to rehire him for the follow-up to Ragnarok.
Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and Jane Foster / Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman)
Since Ragnarok’s release, Taititi has ridden a wave of success, immediately following it with his Oscar-winning World War II comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit, directing or creating television shows like The Mandalorian and Reservation Dogs, and acting in tentpole pictures like The Suicide Squad, Free Guy, and Lightyear. But with this rise came a sort of “brand” creation for the filmmaker, with his name often associated with going against the grain, eccentricism, fun, and humor. Now, with his latest project, Thor: Love and Thunder, it seems as if Waititi has become a parody of himself (he also supports abuser Johnny Depp, so, yeah…).
With Love and Thunder, Waititi doubled down on the irreverence, on the humor, and on the atypical music and aesthetics, without the care that was at least apparent in Ragnarok but with all of its weaknesses. While Ragnarok was a lot of fun, it never successfully merged that fun with its world-ending stakes hinted at in the title. “Ragnarok” literally meant the end of Thor’s home world Asgard, but it was treated as an afterthought. His long-imprisoned sister Hela (Cate Blanchett), the Goddess of Death, looks badass and was so powerful she was able to destroy Mjolnir with her bare hands, but she was second fiddle to the hijinx Thor, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) got into on the garbage planet Sakaar. That same afterthought treatment is present in Love and Thunder with Gorr, whose nickname is threateningly “God Butcher,” yet he’s barely present in the film at all! We don’t even get to see him butcher any gods save for his brief introduction. This was a huge waste of a talented actor like Bale, as well as an interesting character like Gorr.
Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale)
The film’s plot, or lack thereof, is a hodgepodge of what just seems like very bad set pieces intended to be funny. This results in overly long, unfunny sequences like the one set in Omnipotence City, where all of the gods apparently meet, featuring a cameo from Russell Crowe (also switching comic book universes) as Zeus (yes, that Zeus, and no, this isn’t a spoiler, he was in the trailers!), and poorly-staged images like one in which Natalie Portman is literally standing in the background as if she’s a non-playable character in a video game. Love and Thunder tries to have some thematic weight by offering glimmers of interesting ideas like what it means to be a hero, questioning our fealty to gods, and even Jane Foster’s battle with terminal cancer (the fact the film doesn’t even bother to name which type of cancer shows the lack of care the film had to its production overall). But these ideas are just that—glimmers—and they, once again, take a backseat to jokes (and bad ones at that! Like, why would Asgardians make an ice cream shop that references Thanos… you know, the man who massacred their entire race). And the special effects are very, very bad, which I normally wouldn’t mind if everything else about the film were better.
"I think we always want to keep changing it up with Thor,” Waititi said. “He's so interesting when he's changing all the time." But the problem is the film changes him without giving him a proper reason. The best cinematic depiction of Thor was in Avengers: Infinity War, because this was a Thor who lost his entire family, his entire civilization, and who had nothing to lose. You can sense the gravity of his grief—and he was also badass! But in Love and Thunder, he’s the joke, which is fine, but without proper setup, it seems to come out of nowhere. Treating Thor like an idiot in this film doesn’t make sense in his arc that started with his first film in 2011 to the one before this one, Avengers: Endgame.
Waititi has also said he wanted this film to be romantic, explaining that he wanted “to make something that [he’s] never done or never cared for.” This love story is barely present in the final picture, only appearing in a single montage explaining why Thor and Jane broke up, and maybe the film’s final scene. Again, this is an example of the film being a mess of ideas, never going through with its alleged ambitions.
Waititi tries to repeat the musical language he brought to Ragnarok by, again, featuring “bombastic” and “loud” music, this time headlined by Guns N’ Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” But, like Ragnarok, the inclusion of these iconic songs never really meshed well with the films being told or even with their aesthetics (they’re never as successful as the way James Gunn included his soundtracks for the Guardians of the Galaxy films). Take a look at the marketing for Love and Thunder and you’ll see a lot of ‘80’s style imagery, mostly in the graphic design. That matches the film’s soundtrack, but the film itself never embodies this rocking aesthetic. So, the film’s vibe is just a confusing mess.
Jane Foster / Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth)
It’s important to note that Waititi had a lot more creative control in Love and Thunder than he did with Ragnarok. And he didn’t write Ragnarok (it was written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher L. Yost), but he did write Love and Thunder (with co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the writer/director of one of my favorite films from 2019, Someone Great!). Marvel pretty much gave Waititi total creative control with Love and Thunder, and, unfortunately, that freedom meant his worst impulses were not reigned in, resulting in a film that feels like it doesn’t matter at all (Side note: curiously, the film didn’t even have a trailer until two months before its release, which is unusually late marketing compared to all other MCU film before it. I wonder if Marvel was also confused about the story the film was trying to portray…).
Thor: Love and Thunder is the weakest film in the MCU’s weakest phase (Phase Four, which started with 2021’s Black Widow and will end with this November’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), which also makes it the weakest film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. I found myself surprised to say this, as I was confident Marvel has gotten so good at pumping out good-and-not-crap films that we’ve finally moved beyond the crappy superhero films of the 2000s. This probably won’t matter at all to Marvel Studios since the film is still making a ton of money, and the MCU is still the highest grossing franchise in the history of cinema, but this was the first MCU film I've seen that just made me exhausted.
“[Thor: Love and Thunder] is the craziest film I’ve ever done,” Waititi said. “If you wrote down all the elements of this film, it shouldn’t make sense.” He’s certainly succeeded in that regard.
