Previously on this blog:
"To all the doubters out there who still think Disney's Marvel films are in serious trouble, the three major directors of the next three MCU movies are Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, and the movie I'm reviewing today, Sam Raimi. They are going to be fine."
....or so I thought.
Yeah, if the fan feedback from Doctor Strange 2 was all over the place from great to mediocre. I can already feel the backlash for this one coming in full force. The word of mouth from this one is pretty bad. And I can certainly see why. If you thought that the MCU comedy aspects have become too much...then Thor: Love and Thunder is the poster child of everything wrong with the MCU right now.
Okay let me give some perspective to some of the backlash Thor: Love and Thunder is receiving right now. The exact same team that made Thor: Ragnarok has come back again to make the latest Thor movie. And it is no surprise as to why that is. I don't speak for everyone when I say this, but Ragnarok is hands down the best Thor movie and I'll even go as far as to say that Ragnarok is one of the top five best MCU movies, period. Taika Waititi perfectly blended his style of comedy in with a big budgeted MCU adventure and was able to bring even more layers of complexity to the character of Thor. A character who is now the biggest star of the MCU if you ask me from my perspective. With Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans both out, Chris Hemsworth is arguably the biggest star of the MCU at the moment. His character continues to evolve over time and let's just be blunt and say that in a series that needs a big star to push the series forward, Thor's arch is far from over with each passing film finding more and more for him to explore about himself.
Which amazes me because prior to 2017, the past six years of Thor really weren't that interesting. His relationship with his father was interesting; hell Thor's relationship with Loki was incredibly interesting. But Thor himself? He's just a god. A god with powers and speaks in eloquent speeches and war cries. Who also happens to be in love with a normal human from Earth. Not really much to Thor himself except saving humanity because he's a good guy. The first Thor movie was fine on that aspect alone because it played out like a Shakespearean tragedy. At least it is better than the sequel, which I'm sorry but that movie is just bad. Not terrible like Iron Man 2, but easily the second worst MCU movie...or at least 2A/2B with Eternals. Another boring movie. So considering Thor: Ragnarok more or less took the Thor formula, flipped it on its head, and took what was good about the other two Thor movies, added some comedy, and basically subverted our expectations as to what a Thor movie will be. Yeah Ragnarok was a critical and commercial smash.
So where did this one go so horribly wrong? Okay let me just get my personal opinion out of the way first because a lot of you are reading this thinking I hated it. I did not actually. I thought it was fine. Chris Hemsworth is still incredibly interesting as Thor. I thought his arch went roads I didn't initially expect and I'm kind of glad it went the way it did. Because I'm going through a similar arch in my life of getting ready to experience my one true purpose of my life with the same results that Thor ended up with responsibility wise at the end. So yeah, consider me finding his arch totally relatable in a sense. Also the comedy was hilarious when it was good (key words: when it was good). Christian Bale was amazing as Gorr. More on this later, but when he was on screen, he was killing it. And finally, this was the best use of Natalie Portman in the Thor movies yet. I absolutely respect the fact that she put the work in to physically be The Mighty Thor.
We good? Good. Because while I did think this movie was fine....I 1000% percent get the hate for it and I would be lying if I said there wasn't some truth to those claims because Christ this movie was a mess. The bad in this movie was absolutely inexcusable. And before you all think I'm about to rant for days about all the problems I have with this movie, but I got to be honest with you all....I'm more fascinated with all the terrible aspects of this movie than I am enraged by it.
Like take a look at this. Is this the most surreal MCU movie ever made? What sort of director openly riffs his own failures? Especially when this has a 200 million dollar plus budget. You're literally being paid to not make those sorts of mistakes. Quit laughing at how bad your own movie is!
And if you think that's my biggest problem. Oh no, we are just getting started.
-Remember at the end of Avengers: Endgame when they were hyping up the Asgardians of the Galaxy? Yeah the Guardians are only in the movie for like five minutes and really don't contribute much to the plot whatsoever. That was a dynamic I was very much looking forward to being further explored. And then it wasn't.
-Then you have Korg, who was very entertaining comedic relief in doses from Ragnarok. Now he's a main character and he more or less has become a Minion type character. Whether you love or hate those Minion moments, I think we can all agree that anyone who tries to rip-off the Minion formula completely misses the mark. And that is more or less what Korg is now. An oversized minion.
-The goats. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can see them in the trailer briefly. They are in so much of this movie that I can't even begin to picture whose bright idea that this was to bring back one of the most overused memes of 2013. Screaming goats were obnoxious then and are still obnoxious nine years later. Every time they appeared onscreen was a friendly reminder that Taika or Kevin Feige or whoever decided we needed screaming goats in 2022; doesn't give a shit.
-Valkyrie is criminally underutilized in this movie. Plain and simple. It is almost a travesty how much of an afterthought she was in the second half of this movie.
-For as better approached the romance between Jane and Thor was in this movie compared to the first two...they just don't have the chemistry to fully invest me. I mean both Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman tried dammit and there were a couple scenes towards the end that did work...but for more than half this movie, I just did not want to see these two end up together again. I put most of the blame on the script, which is full of romantic comedy tropes that are so formulaic that it flirts between almost charming and very cringe throughout.
-There is a love triangle between Thor, Mjolnir, and Stormbreaker. The chemistry here is more believable than it was between Thor and Jane.
-Russell Crowe as Zeus. You've got to see it to believe how absolutely ridiculously bad he is.
-It is downright criminal what they did to my boy Gorr. If you don't read the comics, Gorr is one of the biggest threats in Thor lore. Like the movie said, he's a god butcher. And in the comics, he does kill three different versions of Thor. You would think that Gorr would be built out in the movies to be this formidable threat- he's not. He's just this guy who seeks vengeance due to the power of the necromancer. And like I said, Christian Bale acts his ass off with the amount of time he is given. But I can picture him being absolutely forgettable if anybody else played him than one of the best actors in the business today in Christian Bale. I can't believe the same guy who gave us one of the best MCU villains in Lady Hela played fantastically by Cate Blanchett; nearly butchered Gorr and his story.
That would normally be enough to consider this one of the worst MCU films of all-time, right? Well, all of this didn't really frustrate me like I said. Honestly, some of the times I caught myself laughing at this. I guess you could say that I was able to turn my brain off a bit more and enjoy it as a popcorn flick because the action scenes were directed well and the visuals were stunning. Which they definitely were. And they inserted the comedy sometimes at the most appropriate time.
Which leads me to my biggest complaint. The one true complaint that did bother my experience of this movie. The tonal inconsistency. I get that they wanted to make this a romantic comedy that was heavy on the comedy. The comedy aspect of Ragnarok was one of the reasons that was the best Thor movie. But here is the reason the comedy didn't get as grating then as it does now. Because in Ragnarok, they were able to perfectly balance the comedy and the story. When the story of Ragnarok got too heavy handed, they threw in some comedy to make it more light-hearted. They were also able to balance out the comedy so it wasn't at the expense of the story they were telling.
Not in Love and Thunder. The comedy took way too much of a toll onto the story that you couldn't tell if the movie was being sarcastic or if it was being serious. Like you couldn't tell if we were supposed to laugh or if the direction was misleading the tone the scene was trying to portray. Look, I enjoy laughing while I'm at the movies. Comedies are still one of my favorite genres for that reason because I enjoy turning off my brain for a hour and a half or more. But when the comedy comes at destroying the tone of your movie is when the comedy starts to get grating. And the MCU has had this problem brewing for the last year and a half or so. Like in Shang-Chi, when we were learning more bout Shaun's tragic family backstory and then we get Awkwafina throwing in some lame jokes that ruined my investment in the story. Or in Eternals when we get some out of nowhere bad jokes from Kingo and his assistant during the dramatic moments. I get that is the MCU's thing now to try and be more light-hearted, but Love and Thunder just didn't balance the comedy out well at all.
So how would I rate this? I still don't know two weeks later. I mean I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to act like the backlash isn't wrong. I totally get it. I was disappointed that the same team that gave us Ragnarok more or less were directionless when it came to adding more to the story of Thor. But that doesn't stop Thor from being a compelling character. Because I think this movie did just enough to make me still want to see more of Thor and his adventures. Despite this being a huge downgrade from Ragnarok, I still am completely invested in Thor as a character, so the movie still did enough right. The things they got wrong though were still too much to not ignore. In a way, this still gets a recommendation. Just don't expect me to want to watch this again for quite a long while or even defend it.
Final Grade: C+
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