Thor: Love and Thunder

There's a moment in this film that, genuinely, I think they might have added just to throw a wrench in the inevitable Cinema Sins video. If that doesn't tickle your interest I don't know what will.

Related to that, however, it's worth noting that to a certain extent this movie is more... self-aware than I think it probably should be. It's a movie that was written to know that it was a movie. Which could be a problem for viewers.

Visually it still delivered absolutely everything I hoped it would. The music, however... way worse than Ragnarok. Like, way worse.

I think this is the general sticking-point that will catch most people. There are cases where self-awareness can insert a tremendous amount of character into a film, just think of Scott Pilgrim vs The World or Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse. And there are moments where Love and Thunder matches that charm, but there are plenty of others where it feels off. Just watching the movie I suspect that in general most people will have fun, but you're going to walk away wondering why it just didn't feel like quite as much fun as Thor: Ragnarok. I mean, the cast was there, the production was there, the jokes were there... why is it that about a third of Love and Thunder just... fell flat?

Well, plenty of individual issues aside, I'd make the point that the main reason is that it knew it was a joke.

See, right from the very beginning of Thor's presence in the MCU there's been a certain amount of silliness surrounding his character. Not that his character was silly, per-se, but that the MCU knew that his character concept was silly, and they were willing to let that silliness drive some aspects of his character. Less-so in his stand-alone movies than in stuff like Avengers or Age of Ultron, but still, we were allowed moments like "he's adopted", "it will be no less painful when I kill you in this form", "ANOTHER! *smash*", and who could forget "but not the screams of the dead, of course. No, no... wounded screams... mainly whimpering, a great deal of complaining and tales of sprained deltoids and... gout."

Thor himself was earnest, devoted, and perhaps a little empty-headed. But meta-textually Thor himself, and to a certain extent the rest of Asgard, was always allowed to be silly. No movie did this better than Ragnarok, of course, which is silly to the extent of being comedy. But Love and Thunder shifts this dynamic more than a bit. It's clearly intended to be a comedy, like Ragnarok, but instead of Thor and his cohorts being silly in-world, about a third of the jokes, which are played as being particularly silly, rely on a gap in the 4th wall to work. These bits fall flat. Unfortunately that includes most of the jokes told via narration. Of which there is quite a lot.

The end result is a film that has a lot of great components which all feel disconnected from each other. Every time the movie seems to be finding its footing, there's some sort of 4th-wall-breaking piece of dialogue, or camera motion, or whatever, that throws it back off its feet. This happens repeatedly through most of the run time, right up until right near the very end. No spoilers, but suffice it to say the last 20 minutes or so manage to hold it together long enough to deliver at least a mostly satisfying ending and a couple of touching moments. I wouldn't say they managed to stick the landing, given how much time the movie spent just trying to stand itself up, but it did have its feet firmly planted by the time they threw that wrench at Cinema Sins.

Which, I suppose minor spoilers here, is a title-drop as literally the last spoken line before the credits roll. Again, this feels like it might be a deliberate poke at the popular YouTube critics, which is actually another 4th wall break. But it is right as the credits start, so I suppose the 4th wall is supposed to come down at that point anyhow.

So overall then Love and Thunder is fun to watch. I enjoyed watching it. Thor was great, of course, as was Valkyrie, it was fun to have the Guardians of the Galaxy in there for a bit, and it was lovely to have Jane back. Did I miss Loki? Yes. Was Gorr not quite as relatable a villain as Hela? Yes, though no shade on Christian Bale's performance there, which I thought was very good. Mostly I think the sword thing was very underdeveloped, so it was harder to understand what drove Gorr versus Hela, who's feud with Odin was easy to wrap your head around. But there were a lot of really entertaining things! And I don't want to say I'm easily entertained, but... well, the screaming goats never failed to make me laugh, so yeah. I will say the movie isn't as good as it could have been, seemingly because Taika lost focus when it came time to do the dialogue pass and add in all the jokes. But just because it's not as good as Ragnarok, easily one of the best superhero films ever, doesn't mean it's bad. Just set your expectations for Love and Thunder a little lower than that and you'll probably have a good time.

I will say though, Taika, that you really dropped the ball on that post credits scene. Like, sure, that was touching, and gently reassuring in its own way, and Idris Elba is obviously always a win. But just imagine for a minute how much more touching that would have been if it had been Frigga! You know, Thor's mother? Who died protecting Jane? You don't even have to change any of the lines, just the person delivering them, and it suddenly brings that whole thing full circle.

I feel like there's got to be some way to deep-fake that version of the scene...