Chris Hemsworth should get a special jacket. His God of Thunder is the first—and, so far, only—character within the grand Marvel Cinematic Universe to score four solo movies. The idea of getting four Thor movies would have seemed ridiculous 10 years ago; he wasn’t exactly the most beloved character standing next to a Robert Downey Jr. or a Chris Evans. That power ranking changed in 2017 when director Taika Waititi took the reins of the franchise with Thor: Ragnarok. Best known for his work on Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows, Waititi injected his irreverent, absurdist sense of humor into Ragnarok, virtually reinventing the character and allowing Hemsworth to flex his impressive comedic abilities. It worked! Gone were the straight-faced, Shakespearean interpretation of Thor’s mythos, replaced with dazzling colors and rapid fire jokes, and audiences and critics were thrilled. Hemsworth and Waititi reteamed for this summer’s highly-anticipated Thor: Love and Thunder—but the film has a concerning amount of difficulty in recapturing the magic. Waititi’s humor, while less charming this go-around, is still the movie’s strongest appeal, but Love and Thunder insists of speeding through jokes and plot points at the expense of character and emotional coherence.
When we last saw the God of Thunder in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, he set off with the Guardians of the Galaxy (who all make brief appearances in this film). Thor is pulled back into the orbit of old allies, Jane Foster and Valkyrie (franchise favorites Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson), to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from his quest to eliminate all gods.
Love and Thunder pulls from Jason Aaron’s popular Thor comic book run, including Gorr’s crusade and Jane Foster’s power-up as the Mjolnir-wielding Mighty Thor. While Waititi seemed an inspired choice to helm Thor’s Ragnarok reinvention five years ago, he seems out of his element with the weightier themes of these Aaron stories. Waititi faced some backlash over some jarring tonal choices in his Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit, but I actually think the director can display a deft hand at balancing comedy and drama, particularly with his fantastic early indie Boy and his later The Hunt for the Wilderpeople. However, in Love and Thunder, Waititi can’t quite thread the needle between the sillier elements inherent in these characters and the story’s meatier, thematically-rich ideas.
The signs of this inconsistency were present in Ragnarok, but that film’s emphasis on humor at the expense of more dramatic moments didn’t derail the narrative thrust of the film. There are two key dramatic scenes in Ragnarok—a farewell from Odin to Thor and Loki, and later a cathartic exchange between those brothers in an elevator—that Waititi neglected to give the necessary breathing room to let those emotional beats land, instead rushing to the next (admittedly funny!) bit. It didn’t damage Ragnarok, because a zippy, lighter film was a welcome interpretation to the audience. The problem with Love and Thunder is that the Aaron stories are dealing with more charged, dramatically-potent issues like cancer or kidnapping or even an operatic vendetta against the gods—issues that require a more delicate touch and less of the Marvel impulse to immediately undercut tension with a joke. The tonal whiplash from one scene to another (sometimes within the same scene) left me feeling emotionally unmoored and disconnected. Waititi again does not give important, dramatic scenes the time and nuance they need. Even when the jokes are working (and they often do!), the movie feels emotionally hollow. Fumbling key emotional through-lines robs the film’s climax of the dramatic weight it could and should have. It could have been an emotional gut punch, and it wasn’t.
This led to another unintended consequence. Waititi is a gifted comedian, and the rhythm of Love and Thunder is paced like a comedy. It’s brisk, hurrying from scene-to-scene and location-to-location, and for the sake of the comedy in a vacuum, that’s a smart move. But in the same way that speed lessens the emotional impact, it leaves the movie feeling hurried and overstuffed. We move so quickly from one plot point to the next that we shortchange natural character growth. It leaves the characters’ stories feeling rushes, even unearned, including Hemsworth, Portman, and Thompson. Hemsworth is always a delight (even if this reinvented Thor might be leaning too far into “dumb, meathead” territory) and Portman is a welcome return to the series, having exited after behind-the-scene’s conflict over the direction of 2013’s Thor: The Dark World. Their off-screen love story is thankfully fleshed out, but the mandates of the story don’t give us much time to ruminate on their reunion. And Thompson is given little to do at all; I’m curious how much of her story was sacrificed to a supposed mandate that this film clock in under two hours.
But no other character is deserved more by the rushed pacing than Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher, if only because I desperately wanted more time with him. Bale is the standout of the film: his Gorr is appropriately and enthusiastically creepy; comparisons have abounded to Stephen King’s Pennywise or the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His performance is captivating, unnerving, and tactile, and Bale is handed one of the better, justifiable motivations of any Marvel villain to-date. Credit to Waititi for actually displaying the arrogance of the gods (particularly Russell Crowe deliciously hamming it up as Zeus) to underscore how much Gorr has a point. If I’d had a seat in the editor’s bay, I would have gladly sacrificed some of the gods or New Asgard sequences for more time with Gorr doing his creepy thing.
I also want to mention that this movie looks great. Maybe I’ve spent too much time with budget-strapped Disney+ shows, but I don’t understand some of the criticism this film has gotten for its visuals. Maybe the criticism is fair, considering this is allegedly cost $250 million, but the movie was visually resplendent—particularly an extended, chromatic sequence in Gorr’s shadow realm.
In the end, Love and Thunder delivers a fantastic villain, stunning visuals, and the comedy, especially if you’re on Waititi’s particular wavelength—but it fumbles on underscoring dramatic weight in the scenes that deserve it. In spite of those problems, the film ends with such an intriguing premise for a new story, that I really wouldn’t mind casting my ballot for a fifth Thor movie. And that’s the true power of these movies: even with a mediocre entry, I still feel invested in these characters, but I worry if that goodwill will run out. When Marvel announced this recent slate of movies in 2019, the two slam-dunks on paper were Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Waititi back for another go at Thor, and the reception on both has been mixed. Conversely, I was ambivalent towards a prospective Shang-Chi movie and skeptical of the multiversal plans for a third Spider-Man, and those two are some of the best Marvel films we’ve seen yet. So it’s premature pronounce that Marvel is in decline, but the seams are starting to show in a way that it didn’t before—and with the added content of the middling in-universe Disney+ shows, their brand is starting to feel sloppy, and, perhaps worst of all, inessential.
Thor: Love and Thunder is currently playing in theaters. It runs 118 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences fo sci-fi violence and action, language, some suggestive material and partial nudity.
