Our SPOILER-FREE impressions of Thor: Love and Thunder
Gather round worshippers of Thor, God of Thunder, for your divine patron is soon to descend from on high (Marvel Studios is actually headquartered on Mount Olympus now). I have been foretold his arrival by the Oracle of AMC theaters, and I will tell you all about it.
Okay, enough of that. Thor: Love and Thunder comes out tomorrow. Read on for my SPOILERS-FREE impressions.
Thor: Love and Thunder brings the violence, forgets the comedy
Let’s start with the main reason people watch these films: the fights. The fights are good! Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and company pull off a lot of creative moves that set these battles apart from other movies in the genre. Thor does a split kick, that’s pretty hot. Meanwhile, the Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman, returning to the franchise after sitting out Thor: Ragnarok) has a hammer that can split apart into pieces and come back together, which is neat. At one point, she does this metal-as-hell move where she flings the pieces of the hammer away, then presses the top of the bare handle up against a monster’s jaw so that its head is crushed in by the hammer’s pieces as they reform. And not to spoil anything, but we also get to see a famous Greek God and their weapon; the movie has a fun interpretation of it.
Violence is the movie’s strong point, and there’s a lot of it. Unfortunately, the film has a weak point, too: the comedy. I’ll probably be in the minority here, but most of the jokes stink. A good deal of them are focused on how dumb or oblivious Thor is, which is very tired. As for the other jokes, they either telegraph themselves far too obviously or are tired in other ways. There’s a recurring joke about Thor’s new weapon being jealous over his obsession of getting his hammer back. It’s funny because weapons don’t usually get jealous, you see. Also, I pray to the Gods of every pantheon that you like those videos of goats that scream like humans.
Christian Bale rules Thor: Love and Thunder
Cristian Bale plays the villain Gorr the God Butcher, and he is hands down the best part of the film. His character adds the weight and emotion and threat that the movie sorely needs, and it goes with him whenever he is not onscreen. I wish the story took more advantage of him and the possible dynamic that he and Thor could have shared as a God and Godkiller. Gorr is a villain we can feel sympathy for, even if he goes a bit heavy on the Voldemort aesthetic.
The movie starts strong by giving us Gorr’s interesting backstory, but the plot overall feels disappointingly barebones. I was hoping for something that had more to say. Honestly, watching this, I felt no sense of stakes at all. Don’t get me wrong, the stakes are written in there, I just don’t feel them. Overall, the story is very linear — go here, then go there — and doesn’t ever throw you for a loop.
So, those are my general thoughts on Thor: Love and Thunder; we’ll get into the nitty-gritty SPOILERS tomorrow, after it opens.
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