Review of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) by Loscrates — 08 Jul 2022

I’m honestly supremely disappointed, like exponentially so. This is easily the first genuine miss of Phase 4 for me. The movie is criminally unserious it’s a **** joke. Gorr knocks it out the park from the jump but as soon as the Marvel Studios logo rolls it’s all downhill from there, tonally. Thor and co. are written like an actual Muppets skit, complete with fighting literal Muppets within the first 10 minutes. Star-Lord gives this unusually out of character and frankly garbage pep talk to Thor that doesn’t really pay off at all when Thor recants it to Jane later in the movie.

For the great execution Christian Bale gives Gorr, he does ZERO God-Butchering in this film outside of the 5 minute prologue. They literally find out about this guy from a space Fox 5 broadcast labeling him Gorr The God Butcher while cutting through slides of dead god bodies.

Janes’ handling is great overall I think, but Marvel clearly cannot keep things interesting inflicting trauma on woman characters. Post-credit stuff was great though so I’m cautiously optimistic.

Overall this movie felt entirely disrespectful to Thor fans, like a parody Monty Python-ification of the typical slate of MCU one-liners and gags. Decent action sets and rare moments held intensely together by Christian Bale alone don’t save what is otherwise the weakest entry of Phase 4 without a doubt and possibly my least favorite MCU movie of all time.