Review of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) by Mattyice — 12 Jul 2022

There's a good movie somewhere in there when it comes to Thor: Love and Thunder, but the overall package makes for a big disappointment and one of Marvel's worst efforts. Hemsworth, Bale, and Thompson all kill it with their performances, although Natalie Portman's is a mixed bag overall, succeeding far more as Jane Foster than Mighty Thor.

Additionally, the new worlds explored and the color palette used in the film are bright and fun to look at, while the soundtrack rocks like it did in Ragnarok. However, the major problems shine brighter than all of that.

The script is just really poor and feels like it was written by a child in many respects, particularly in the joke department. The film has no idea how to balance its tone, feeling far too immature towards its more serious subject matters like genocide and cancer, and misses far more than it hits on its jokes (namely the screaming goats joke, which was arguably the MCU's worst in any movie and felt ripped from ten years ago).

A more troubling trend for the MCU as a whole, though, that this movie showcases blatantly is just how much was cut out. There are multiple scenes where it was clear a cut was put in to end a scene before it was intended to keep the runtime down.

While this cutting was more subtle in Multiverse of Madness, it was so blatant in Love and Thunder and Marvel needs to let its directors do what they want, rather than keep the runtime down to under 2 hours to get more screenings in.

It also works to the movies detriment as Gorr deserved much more screen time than he was given and some character development for the rest of the crew felt so rushed. While not an absolute bore like The Dark World, Love and Thunder is far inferior to both the original film and especially Ragnarok, as well as most of the MCU's other offerings.