I have been slacking over the last year on movie reviews so I am playing catch up now. Waconda Forever is written and I’ll post that one in a few days.
Love and Thunder was not as well received by the critics or the audience as other Thor movies. This is the fourth installment which is a bit of a rare feat in the MCU as far as individual character movies go. I feel like there are several factors that led to less than ideal reviews for Love and Thunder. First character fatigue is a thing and some of that may be present here. They also clearly tried to take a populist approach adding in the Guardians of the Galaxy characters as well as Korg who was widely adored in Ragnorak.
The script is a bit weak on this movie and it seems they tried too hard to bring in a bunch of character cameos and funny bits to shore up the sketchy writing and mundane plot. The movie played a lot like Ragnorak but without the excellent story elements and even if it had the same level of writing as Ragnorak doing the same thing over is rarely as good as round one. To further weaken the plot there is no explanation at all for Jane Fosters ability to wield Mjolnir. All we have is a flashback to Thor placing a protection enchantment for her. That was weird to leave that so ambiguous.
All of that mentioned, I like Love and Thunder more than the audiences did on Rotten Tomatoes. I think the critics were actually pretty fair on this movie, it was kind of weak. Somehow I still felt satisfied with it at the end. Love and Thunder was almost like a shark jump in that they clearly stopped taking the franchise seriously and just had a good time. The first two Thor movies were much more serious affairs. Ragnorak was the first one to kind of lighten things up and that movie was so brilliantly well done that they didn’t diminish the franchise with the humor and light-heartedness. This movie did kind of reduce the Thor franchise to a mindless money grab and some cheap laughs. Marvel however is really good at humorous dialog and funny cultural references, and on that front, this movie was excellent. I particularly enjoyed Korg’s funny narration stories he told to the children throughout the movie.
There was some content in the film that foreshadows some real possibilities for MCU Phase 5. After Thor embarrasses Zeus it seems at least according to the credits cut scene, Zeus may be a quasi villain in the future. Russell Crowe portrays him as a fat and happy Zeus in the movie, but takes on a darker tone in the credit scene.
It’s hard not to like Thor movies, even bad ones like Love and Thunder. Chris Hemsworth is just too damn good at Thor, he was made for that character. Natalie Portman has never really done it for me as Jane Foster but she was actually really good in this movie. Christian Bale was excellent as our empathetic villain. That guy has some serious acting chops. So all of this was enough to overcome a crummy script and dubious writing to push Thor: Love and Thunder to the left side of the movie chart, barely but its there.
The Evergreen Times 