THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER by Urizon

 

   Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Taika Waititi, Christian Bale, and Tess Thompson, while also adapting the loved Mighty Thor and Gorr the God Butcher storylines, Thor: Love and Thunder was set up to potentially be one of the best Thor stories we have had. Though some worried that Taika's comedic tone would overshadow two rather more dark and mature stories, others remained hopeful after seeing his work on JoJo Rabbit. I for one decided to just stay cautiously excited.  For me, I could certainly see it going either way.  Question is, which was it?

    Love and Thunder deals with a version of Thor who is trying to find himself after closing himself off from dealing with too much loss. Unfortunately, this quest for inner peace is interrupted by a being known as Gorr, who is has one goal…the extinction of all Gods. Along the way he runs back into Jane Foster who now also mysteriously has the powers of Thor. The two must band together and get past their personal issues to defeat the terrifying villain.

   Fortunately for me, I don’t have much experience with the comic runs that these are based on. That being said, I do know quite a bit about both of them and they seek like truly fantastic stories. Unfortunately, this movie does not seem to do them justice. That’s not saying it is bad though! In fact, one of my friends asked what I would rate it, and I said probably a 6 out of 10. I enjoyed myself quite a lot, but it also has a lot of issues.

   I think the biggest problem is exactly what everyone feared, and honestly for me has been an issue with the Thor storylines for a long time now--the balance between the humor and seriousness. From Thor: The Dark World and on, this has seemed to be the case. Some of that might honestly boil down to a worry I have had about the MCU for a while, the changing of directors. Some movies in the same series have kept directors, but throughout the years, we have seen various directors taking on the same characters in these movies. It was bound to lead to inconsistencies in tone and character, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

   I think to this day, Thor in Infinity War might be my favorite take on the character. He could be goofy, yet when things were meant to be serious, he fit the tone. Unfortunately, even in just the next movie, they leaned too much into the humor with the character when it came to dealing with his grief. As someone who occasionally deals with things with humor, I get it. You could easily just say that humor is how he copes with trauma, but that doesn’t seem to be it. It really just sadly seems like people don’t know the best way to handle the character. It’s unfortunate, but it is hard to get fully invested in an emotional moment when they don’t leave room for it to just set in before heading into a joke at times. I hope this is an issue that Marvel can get figured out at one point.

   I don’t want to make it seem like the movie doesn’t do a good job with the humor and drama though. It is just a balancing issue. Honestly the humor could be really funny, though a bit targeted towards maybe a younger audience. Even some jokes that I feel I should find stupid, hit really well. On the other side of this, the dramatic moments also hit really well. I knew where this story was going to go, but it still really made me feel things. It just unfortunately could not hit that balance as well as it needed to.

   Another possible cause of that is the run time. It is sad that we are now at the point where we go “Oh, that movie is only two hours long? That’s so short”. Yet here we are. Given how much I heard was cut from this film, and looking at some of the issues I have, I really think this could have benefited from a bit of a longer run time. Even just thirty more minutes could have been rather helpful. We don’t even really see much of Gorr the God Butcher killing any God’s. It is sort of a minor thing, but it is a major aspect of Gorr’s character. It could have really helped elevate him as a threat. Instead, we maybe get one God murder shown. There was a lot of telling and not showing. Again, that could have just been a time issue and issue with cut content.

   Speaking of Gorr…in general, I really wish we could have gotten more from him. Christian Bale absolutely killed it in this role from the little we got of him, but unfortunately it wasn’t much. Even with the more toned down design and human appearance, Bale was absolutely terrifying and unsettling at times. I would have loved to see so much more from him in this film. I only hope that in the age of all of these extended cuts coming out, we get one of this when it comes out on Blu ray.

   I will say, Gorr still was intimidating, and it helped that over time we are seeing Thor feel like an actual God. While a lot of the action in this movie can be very goofy at times, in part to the CGI, he feels incredibly powerful. We see him truly use his abilities and feel absolutely powerful. I wish we could have gotten this Thor in the first two movies, rather than just having him hit things with Mjolnir for the most part.

   While Hemsworth does a great job with the role, I really want to praise Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster in this movie. This is the first time she has felt like a real character with a personality that was allowed to shine through. Her whole arc is incredibly emotional, and if we had only been given what we were prior to this movie, it would not have had any weight to it at all. Also, between the better chemistry between Portman and Hemsworth and the flashback scenes we see showing Jane and Thor’s relationship, it really helped me care about the two and buy the two being I’m a relationship. Before everything felt so forced. I want more of this in the MCU honestly. I don’t need everything to be realistic, but I do want more scenes of these heroes just being normal people. The party scene in Age of Ultron is one of my favorites because we get this down time where they are all just hanging out. It helps us buy them more as friends rather than just coworkers. I hope that more of a balance can be found with that somehow as well.

   Quickly couple bullet points. I love the soundtrack. Going to have Gun N Roses’ songs stuck in my head for a while now. While the CGI was a bit rough, I so understand that the industry is still recovering from the pandemic. Marvel is releasing a lot of properties and spreading the staff pretty thin still, but for now I think they get a little bit of a pass on it. While the story was nothing amazing and had a lot of potential for so much more, I think it was still very entertaining.

   As a whole, I think Thor: Love and Thunder is ultimately better than The Dark World and probably even the first Thor movie, but it still has its issues. The film suffers quite a bit tonally as it struggles to balance humor and drama. Mostly leaning a bit too far into the humor in some more inappropriate moments. It also unfortunately suffers from a run time that should honestly be at least a little longer. On the positive side though, it is still a heartfelt movie with great performances and an awesome soundtrack. I don’t regret going to see it, and I did have a great time watching it. So I would say, maybe just keep your expectations on the lower end, and don’t go in thinking this is going to be a masterpiece. If you can do that, you are in for a treat that you just might just love.