Written by Taika Waititi And Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Directed by Taika Waititi
Thor (to Gorr, re Jane): "You've won. Why should I spend my last moments with you, when I can spend them with her?"
Every once in a while, the mostly invincible MCU has a little wobble of sorts. The odd movie or Disney+ series doesn't quite escape the scrutiny of critics. It happens and with a franchise that has tried to experiment with it's current phase, this scrutiny has become a bit more intense. This movie in particular has certainly generated more scrutiny than solo movies in the past.
It appears that while a lot of people found Taika Waititi's shake up of Thor's world refreshing with Thor: Ragnorak, this romantic of sorts themed follow up has seen Waititi's format proving that sometimes lightening really doesn't strike twice. I have to admit myself, there are some issues with this particular installment that leave a bit to be desired.
First of all, you've got two very big storylines competing with each other in something of a limited time frame. The first one being our villain arc of the piece with Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) on the rampage to murder some gods and he's bored of picking off the lesser known ones. His attention doesn't take long to pivot on Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and he's not above taking the children of New Asgard to lure the himbo God of Thunder into his shadow realm.
Thor of course doesn't shy away from the fight. After going his separate ways from the Guardians Of The Galaxy (who add nothing to the main story at all), he's soon reunited with Korg (Taika Waititi), King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and ex-girlfriend, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) as they head to Mount Olympus and fail to get party boy Zeus (Russell Crowe) to help in their efforts to get an army against Gorr while royally pissing off the orgy obsessed God instead.
The MCU have had a mixed success rate with villains to put things mildly and while Christian Bale looked suitably creepy and delivered a fun performance as Gorr, I'm not sure he actually worked as a baddie. With the limited screen time he had, I think Gorr lacked a bit as a villain (except for one exchange when he had Thor and company bound and gagged in his realm) and his redemption at the end, while a bit of a dynamic game changer for Thor himself, did feel very rushed and unearned.
Then there's the Mighty Thor plotline with Jane Foster. In the comics, it's a storyline that factored in with the character having cancer and it's no different here. Natalie Portman definitely delivered a strong performance, was convincing in her action scenes as Mighty Thor and her romance with Thor itself got some reasonably good closure. However as with the Gorr storyline, the Mighty Thor arc while good undeniably felt rushed as well.
As for the much hyped LGBT content, it's another case of the MCU really doing the bare minimum. We did learn that Korg's species are all male and he does get a husband, there's at least one trans/non binary character in the mix and Valkyrie alluded to an ex-girlfriend of her own but didn't get a female love interest in this movie. I definitely on this front, the MCU can pick up the pace here.
- The mid credit scene introduced Brett Goldstein as Hercules with Zeus recruiting him to kill Thor.
- The post credit scene had Jane go to Valhalla with Heimdell (Idris Elba) greeting her. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) made their returns here too.
- Aside from flashbacks to previous movies, this was also a Loki free zone. We did however get actors, including Melissa McCarthy to reenact the events of the previous movie.
- Chris Hemsworth's daughter, India played, Love, the daughter of Gorr who Thor ended up adopting at the end of the movie. Lets just say she gave Mjolnir a bit of a makeover.
- Standout music: Guns n Roses Sweet Child O' Mine and Enya's Only Time.
- Chronology: It's a bit a while for Thor since the events of Avengers: Endgame
Thor: Love And Thunder definitely could've fleshed out it's two main stories better than it did and while I can understand that the humour wasn't for everyone, I felt it was the least of the movie's problems. Overall, there's definitely enough to enjoy with this movie but it's also a movie that maybe needed a little longer to breathe and should've been better than it was. Still, it has it's moments.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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