Review of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) by Legacyoftheash — 01 Aug 2022

***Mild Spoilers***.

My wife and I are big MCU fans. We've seen every one of the films, in theaters, together and have had varying opinions on a few of them. For the most part, however, we've enjoyed everything Marvel Studios has produced. That is until Love and Thunder stormed into cinemas. It is the first MCU film that we watched and felt had close to no redeeming qualities, generating an acute urge to leave the theater. We didn't, however, and here are my thoughts. Any notion of a compelling plot point was horrendously undercut by the film's inconsistent tone. The machine gun approach to humor shot so many holes into the narrative that it caused any semblance of weight or severity to come draining out in rivulets.

Gorr, for example, had the makings of such an intriguing villain but he had a stark lack of screen time in which to earn the title "God Butcher" and his potential was washed away in a deluge of joke after joke after tired joke. Don't get it twisted though. Christian Bale's performance was fantastic. Whenever his underutilized villain was allotted a segment on-screen, I could feel the anguish and hatred as the emotions traced furrows across his pained brow, his dialogue dripping with palpability. But with every goat screech, slapstick bit or suggestion of a love triangle between Thor, his former hammer Mjolnir and his most recent weapon Stormbreaker, I felt as if Gorr was out of place, tonally speaking. Even established characters such as Jane and Valkyrie felt unrecognizable from themselves with their usual personalities swapped out for generic, goofy lines. Our titular character simply became a parody of himself as the script overcapitalized on his ponderous penchant for oafishness. The only character that truly felt at home in the morass of endless quips and levity was Korg considering he’s never been presented as a particularly solemn entity.

And speaking of, Korg's overused, ham-fisted exposition washed over any hopes of subtly or subtext and many subplots were either totally ignored or relegated to a brief mention with no payoff. The power struggle for leadership of the Guardians of the Galaxy between Starlord and Thor (hinted at in the closing act of Endgame) was reduced to a gag. Valkyrie made a mere utterance on the weariness she felt for the responsibilities of being king which gets glossed over before moving on to the next joke. Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder, Thor’s legendary goats, were distilled into a one-note running gag based on a more than decade old meme. Jane's quest for Mjolnir consisted of an absurdly brief overview of Asgard becoming a tourist attraction (more missed potential). Sif’s short reunion with Thor was hijacked by the notion that she, one of the greatest warriors Asgard has ever seen, doesn’t understand the requirements to get into Valhalla for the sake of a jape. Then, a character’s passing on to Valhalla as one of the few emotional beats in the film swiftly had the rug pulled out from beneath it when said character was greeted by a cheerful former ally, thought lost, boasting a "Hey, you're dead too" line. The list goes on. The thing that sucks regarding the humor, other than it drowning out the plot and overstaying its welcome, is that even the jokes I would normally find humorous fell flat because I had already been beaten into a sense of numbness by the incessant torrent of jokes that didn't land.

I could go on for several paragraphs more about what I felt was wrong with the film but it isn't necessary and would just devolve into a pity party of complaints (hasn't it already?). I will just end it by saying: Either Waititi needs a shorter leash or Marvel needs to hand the next Thor film to someone that will do the franchise and characters justice.