Review of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) by Rebecca31 — 12 Jul 2022

The Thor movies have certainly had their ups and downs, and at this point I'm starting to believe Thor: Ragnarok was a fluke. If some of you are starting to feel a little jaded with the endless stream of Marvel movies, you are not alone.

After the events that took place in Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) now embarks on a journey to find inner peace. This lasts all of about five minutes before Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) shows up, with the sole purpose of destroying all the gods. In order to fight the threat to their existence, Thor seeks help from Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and Dr Jane Foster (Natalie Portman).

Thor: Love and Thunder is clearly dividing fans but for me, Thor 4 just didn't feel as good or as funny as it should have been. I very nearly gave up on the Thor franchise after The Dark World but the positive reviews for Thor: Ragnarok eventually persuaded me to give it another chance and well I wasn't the only one who was surprised at how funny and entertaining Ragnarok was. That right there is where the bar was set and to dip beneath it could not be allowed to happen. With Taika Waititi remaining as the director, the last thing I expected was for Love and Thunder to go hurtling towards Thor 2 levels of bad. This is tonally all over the place and normally I'd expect Waititi to get the blend between serious topics and humour right but in this case it's a mess. The jokes were constantly being thrown at you with only a handful of them getting any laughs at all. Not only that but they also repeated the same unfunny jokes over and over again, even if you did laugh the first time by the third and fourth it all gets a bit tedious. Overall the cinema was not laughing, and I understand every experience is not like this but when the majority of the jokes are met with cricket noises you have a problem.

So what else has Thor 4 got going for it? Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie is great but she's underused, Natalie Portman gave a better performance in this compared to Thor 1 & 2 combined. The CGI is messy, the script is messy and can someone please tell me what the hell accent Russell Crowe was trying to do? What accent was that supposed to be? Watch out Jared Leto, it seems Crowe is trying to outdo you for worst accent in a motion picture. Give him the award already, he deserves it for that horrendous portrayal of Zeus.

The only redeeming quality I can pull from this mess is Bale's terrifying performance as Gorr the God Butcher. A scene stealer every moment he's on screen and the only character with any real depth. He should have been used more because he is without a doubt the best thing about Thor: Love and Thunder. Hemsworth is just cashing it in at this point and after four solo Thor movies and eight total appearances as Thor I can't blame him for getting a little bored with the character. God knows I am. He definitely looks even bigger and better than ever before and as a casting choice for Thor he's perfect but looks aren't everything. As for Taika Waititi, dude you're better than this so if you've also lost interest in these movies then enough already, call it a day and move on to something else. The audience doesn't need to be subjected to cheap jokes and screaming goats.

Hemsworth said Thor: Love and Thunder is "the kind of film a seven-year-old would make" and that's certainly true. It's all over the place and did not manage to pull itself together and it's not like I had high expectations. To all the people saying Love and Thunder is better than Ragnarok, I'm glad you thought so but I respectfully disagree. If Marvel's Phase 4 is more of this then I'm going to start skipping new releases. It's better to have quality over quantity and more effort and imagination is needed. Superhero films don't need to be an endless stream of cash grabs. Yet like every other superhero fan I still went to see the 29th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I stayed for the obligatory post credit scenes. I have also contributed to the 300+ million Thor: Love and Thunder has made on it's opening weekend, which also means I'm partly the reason we probably haven't seen the last of Thor. You can either skip this or make up your own mind, if you are going to see it, I suggest you lower your expectations. Recommended for the Thor fans or for anyone who wants to stare at Chris Hemsworth for two hours.