movies: thor - love and thunder

It's been a hot minute since we last went to the movies, but I absolutely wanted to go and see Thor: Love and Thunder on the big screen. 

And not just because Chris Hemsworth shows his butt in this one. It is a nice butt though.

This movie definitely went places I wasn't expecting. Good places for the most part.

Let me get this out of the way first off, because I talk about all the good things in this movie.

I could absolutely have done with at least 15-20% less of the Taika Waititi-ness in this movie. Especially a lot of the overly cringe humour at the start of the movie. And, sorry, but I needed one to two short cameos from the character of Korg, voiced by Waititi, not to have him be in, essentially, the entire movie. 

He was funny in small doses, but as a constant presence, he's very grating. Keep the narration though, the narration is probably his best dialogue, even though, for the most part, it's fairly unnecessary.

That was part of the problem in general, there were a lot of "Hey, hey, hey, you remember that really smart or funny thing we did in the last movie? Well, what if we did it AGAIN, basically the same, but just added MORE of it? Would that be good, would you like that". And, for the most part, the answer is "No, not really".

Waititi wrote this script with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and, I feel like it shows. There are parts of this movie that are 100% Waititi... and then there are parts of this movie that I would have to say, by contrast, are all Robinson. Honestly, I like the Robinson parts much more.

I also, kinda didn't need the Guardians of the Galaxy cameo at the beginning. Partially because it was so full of the cringy humour I previously mentioned. Also, because I'm kind of over Chris Pratt in general. And he looked weird in this movie. Shlubbier. I don't know how else to describe it, other than to say that he looked like he was being played by a Chris Pratt impersonator. And not a great one either.

If they had dumped a lot of the cringy, pointless and, mostly unfunny "comedy" in the first part, then maybe they could have put more energy and attention into the part of the story that was actually important. The relationship between Thor (Hemsworth) and Dr Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). With, you know, 15-20% less of the TV sitcom "my ex and my other ex are now a couple" of it all.

I like Thor being slightly dumb. I don't know that I like Thor being THIS dumb.

It would also have meant we could have had a little more Tessa Thompson. Because she's always amazing, but she kind of got the sidekick who's not the comedic sidekick edit. Which, also, knowing what we know about the character of Valkyrie is very much the Gay Best Friend trope.

Also... didn't they promise... way back when they first announced this movie that they were going to let her gay it up properly in this one? Yeah, that didn't fucking happen either. To the surprising of exactly nobody. 

Moving on to the good things.

Despite my quibbles, I liked a lot of this movie. 

I really liked seeing Portman back. But then, I just generally like Natalie Portman. Seeing her get to kick ass, take names and be a big old superhero this time around was great.

I'm very, very tangentially aware of the plotline from The Mighty Thor comic books, where Jane Foster takes up Mjölnir and becomes a female version of Thor. And, limited spoilers for both the movie and the comic book series, has cancer. But that's literally all I knew.

Honestly, that's pretty much about as far as the movie dives into it. Not quite, but almost.

And she looked great in the outfit. With her... muscle suit? I couldn't tell, but I assume, if they can give Hemsworth a giant gut in the previous Avengers movie, then giving Portman a set of buff arms and shoulders wouldn't be that hard. Or else, you know, they pulled some Reverse Captain America CGI on her.

The one thing I didn't really dig was the helmet. I kinda assume it was a completely CGI helmet, it just sat on her face strangely. And it made her NOT look like Natalie Portman somehow. It was weird.

I will say, that for most of the movie, Thor is possibly the least interesting character. But there are moments when the script actually allows him to take things more seriously that he becomes the character that I love. Hemsworth is good though. And he and Portman have good chemistry.

Let's talk about Christian Bale for a moment. Until last night, because I've stopped watching any trailers for movies I actually care about, I had no idea he was even in this movie. And boy is he IN this movie.

Well, it would be more accurate to say that he's in the part of this movie that Robinson wrote. He also disappears for large chunks of this movie so that it can do bad comedy.

The character he plays, The God Butcher (or Gorr... although honestly, I don't actually know how anybody knew that other name, if the movie mentioned it, I don't remember), has, for most of the movie, the same issue that I've felt with most of the Marvel villains and definitely with the Thor villains, with the possible exception of Hel. Because Hel was great.

He's... mostly ineffectual. He doesn't REALLY feel like a threat.

The design of the character is cool, Bale puts in a great performance, and yes, he kills a bunch of gods... off-screen. And then fails to kill Thor for the remainder of the movie. Also, you know, something something plot... something something manipulating him not killing him. But still.

And I worked out what his arc was probably going to be about a third of the way into the movie. With the exception of one piece of information I didn't have at the time, I was basically right.

What I will say is that the sequence in the Shadow Realm is possibly the best overall sequence in the whole movie. Because, who knew that a modern Marvel movie in black and white was a thing that I wanted/needed. But it absolutely was. And given that Thor movies made by Waititi are made of technicolour psychedelic rainbows (albeit very beautiful ones), it was a nice contrast.

Honestly, for me, the best parts of the movie in general are from the Shadow Realm onwards.

Well, that and the visit to the Omnipotent City. Once I got over the shock of seeing Russell Crowe pretending to be Greek, but not pretending to have gotten old and chonky. 

Of course that scene also contained both Thor's naked ass as well as the two, delightfully named, Zeus Pretty Boys... Josh Heuston and Adam Todd... who are both very much unspeaking background actors but also very pretty. 

The whole scene was the right kind of comedic (for the most part).

Breaking down this plot in my head now... there's actually not very much to it. And once again, that's partly because they waste so much time at the start of the movie just being "funny".

What I didn't expect was that the scene in the movie that I found the most emotionally effecting would include... mild spoilers... Thor marshalling a bunch of kids to fight a bunch of shadow monsters. And, most especially, one small girl and a stuffed rabbit.

As I said at the beginning though, the end of this movie surprised me. Not completely, like I said, I'd mostly worked out where the villain's story was going, but I wasn't expecting the reveal of the true meaning of the title of the movie. And the final, final post credit scene... yeah, that one got me.

If I had to rank the Thor movies, I think this would come in a solid second place. With Ragnarok in first place (or at least, from my memory of it), the original movie in Third and Dark World in a dark and gritty fourth.

All in all though, an enjoyable time, when it got out of it's own way.

yani's rating: 4 thunder bunnies out of 5