Movie Review - Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder [2022]

Hmm, this one is a bit... interesting. There are actually a lot of things that I really like about this movie. Having Thor face his previous losses that left him in such a terrible state in Endgame... adapting the much-maligned 'Lady Thor' (no, Mighty Thor!) Jane Foster version of the hammer-wielding god of thunder in a way that doesn't only make sense for her character, but for Thor as well... adapting Gorr the God-Butcher from the Thor: God of Thunder miniseries, and giving us yet another very easy sympathetic villain...

Oh, hey, and let's not forget the amazing Guns N' Roses inspired soundtrack! 

It's just that... where Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a movie that tries to smoosh together multiple movies (Dr. Strange being a mentor; Scarlet Witch's tragedy; the Illuminati multiversal stuff; a horror movie's worth of jumpscares) and managed to give us a solid movie out of it, Thor: Love and Thunder... probably could've used more time in the editing room. And I'm saying it as someone who likes the movie. But seeing the scenes that were cut, and after watching it for a second time and thinking about what was kept versus what was taken out... and really considering some plot holes in the larger MCU... but perhaps the biggest thing is the jarringness of trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice with Ragnarok's much-loved irreverent jumping from comedy to seriousness. Love and Thunder tries to go even further with it, tackling heavy romantic plot points with Thor and Jane's separation and Jane's imminent death, and also tackling generally heavy plot points about Gorr's god-hating complex and everything... but while the Jane Foster stuff I'd argue did work out pretty well (romantic development is also a bit easier to slot with the tone of the movie) the Gorr stuff... I'm not sure how much of it is due to the cut content -- of which this movie has a lot -- or if the God-Butcher is simply not the right villain for this movie. 

And a lot of the stuff with Gorr kind of feels like... lip-service, to perhaps use a slightly more harsh term? A lot of the backstory is a nice, truncated version of the backstory of his comic-book counterpart. Someone who kept faith in his god while his entire tribe and his child gets killed by the desert, and eventually sees that gods can be killed and gets corrupted by the god-killing weapon, the Necrosword. This movie even gives Gorr a much more personal stake by having him meet the god he worships, Almighty Rapu, who's as dickish as you can get. 

But then most of what Gorr does is kind of off-screen, because we cut off to Thor. And... it's fun stuff. You kinda have to open a movie with fun stuff, and having Thor blow up owl-alien space bikers set to the tone of Welcome to the Jungle while the Guardians of the Galaxy watch is pretty fun! Thor and Korg basically end up ditching the Guardians in record time, though, making me kind of wonder why the Guardians are involved at all. There is one speech by Star-Lord that becomes relevant in Thor's search for love, but that's not something that has to be exclusively delivered by him... so I wonder if something got changed in development. 

Also, he gets two goats, which... okay, yeah, they're pretty annoying. I feel like I don't loathe them as much as some critics do, but they are pretty distracting and I do wish that they shut up just a little more particularly in the second half of the movie. 

Thor separates from the Guardians to investigate a string of dead gods, which basically honestly amounts to just him finding the corpse of Falligar, finding an armless Sif (in a pretty fun dark comedy moment) before going off to New Asgard, Earth. Again, this whole sequence does happen a bit too fast and while finding multiple dead gods would be repetitive, it is something that really would've built it up a bit -- I wonder if some of the god characters in Omnipotence City later could've been turned into Gorr victims at some point?

While all of this is going on, Jane Foster is suffering from cancer, and... it's a pretty great way to re-introduce Jane, actually. We get to see her story build up a little, including the welcome return of Darcy and Valkyrie, before she walks around New Asgard and sees the shattered pieces of Mjolnir from Thor: Ragnarok. There's a rather clever way of integrating comedy and the MCU's long continuity by having a tongue-in-cheek tour play recap Ragnarok's events, and Jane becomes the Mighty Thor off-screen. 

Both Thors arrive to fight the shadow monster armies of Gorr, which is actually framed in a very horror movie aesthetic way -- something that's even scarier when you realize that the monsters are going for the children asleep in the houses. I would also praise the little montage of Jane and Thor's past which both explains Jane's disappearance post-The Dark World, and also sets up the dynamic between the two -- particularly the fact that they still have the hots for each other. It's a pretty great moment!

It's just kind of a shame that the movie becomes rather scattershot after this, introducing aspects of the universe that really should've deserved something far more triumphant. The fact that we're introducing so many cosmic aspects of the universe without acknowledging the events of Infinity War/Endgame does really feel a bit bizarre. Even a non-committal 'well, we swore an oath of non-interference' that the Eternals did would've worked! Omnipotence City is a place where the other gods hang out in, and... we don't really define too much of what is a god or not, we don't answer anything about whether this is just a wacky planet in space or if it's more metaphysical, or what these gods are doing -- at least during the Thor movies, surely?

We get to meet Zeus, played by Russell Crowe, and he's a massive braggart with a funny accent. There are apparently deleted scenes (that I've not watched) that makes Zeus out to have a bigger role in both being a mentor to Thor, or to direct our heroes to the plot-relevant places, but all we get is kind of just orgy jokes, naked Thor jokes, the revelation that Zeus is scared of Gorr's Necrosword, and instead of an info-dump about the Necrosword (why can it kill gods?) we get a whole bunch of exposition about Eternity, a heretofore never-mentioned-before cosmic entity that apparently does basically the same thing that the Infinity Stones do -- grant a magical wish. Our heroes fight Zeus and his minions, Korg gets blasted and reduced into a head, but Thor seemingly kills Zeus and steals his Thunderbolt weapon before they make their escape. 

While all of this is going on, we get a scene of Gorr being a creep to kids. Christian Bale does ham things up, sure, but... I don't know. It's not as bad as some Phase II MCU villains, but there are a lot of subtle details to Gorr -- like how his shadow-monsters are modelled after his daughter's drawings, or that he mutilated himself to get rid of his religious tattoos -- that are there and I feel like we could've have added so much more to Gorr instead of this?

On the way to Gorr's Shadow Realm, we do get a nice, heartfelt scene between Thor and Jane, and... again, we get moments like these that are pretty sweet and well-done, and really justifies the 'love' part of the movie title. The Shadow Realm fight is also rather classy, with the realm sucking out all colour and rendering this part of the movie black-and-white... except when Mjolnir or Stormbreaker's lightnings sparkle, at which point they light up some of the area around them in colour. Very, very cool! Throw in some shadow monsters from Gorr, and it gets even cooler! And... again, I think this is one of my biggest frustrations with Gorr. He raises some good questions, like talking about Valkyrie and Jane and attacking them where it hurts -- Valkyrie losing her sisterhood in a fight of the gods, and Jane's doomed mortality -- but we really don't get any payoff to this, not really. 

Gorr steals Stormbreaker during the fight and peaces out, leaving our heroes on Earth. Valkyrie is too wounded to continue, while Jane Foster is apparently drained of her strength every time she uses Mjolnir. Again, there's a nice dramatic sequence here with jane and Thor discussing being a hero and having a chance to live a life together with their rekindled love...

And then we cut away to... some part of space that is never really explained, but Gorr is using Stormbreaker to open the Bifrost Bridge to enter Eternity's realm. Thor arrives with Zeus's Thunderbolt and finally meets up with the children (which, after watching this movie twice... I don't really care for) and grants them the power of Thor. And... again, they kind of really serve as a huge distraction and not even randomly making one of them Heimdall's kid really makes their lengthy screentime any more interesting. We get Thor and Gorr fighting, before Jane finally joins the battle with Mjolnir, saving Thor at the cost of her own life since transforming with Mjolnir drains her strength. 

We get a typical hot potato of plot devices, but ultimately Gorr manages to enter Eternity's Realm. And... again, this scene is acted rather well by the three actors involved, but Gorr really doesn't have the character development we needed. And it's, again, extra frustrating because we do get some amazing moments with him, but I guess the moral is... 'Gorr is hurting and the real cause of his hurt is the death of his daughter'. There's really barely any buildup to Gorr recognizing Thor as a 'good dad' that he would trust the thunder god with his newly-resurrected daughter, really... again, something that I felt like the movie had all the pieces with the kidnapped children, but we really didn't get any of that buildup. 

And this part of the climax just kind of feels rushed. Jane dying in Thor's arms is at least properly built up (even if there are a not-insignificant amount of mood whiplashes throughout the movie), and you could infer Gorr wanting his daughter back... but then Love is resurrected (with the implication that she's a cosmic god-thing herself?), Gorr dies, Jane dies, and... cut to the epilogue where the kids are back, and Thor apparently adopts Love and the two of them run around the galaxy with Thor raising Love as his daughter.

And... again, I do feel like this movie, which is one of the shortest Marvel movies out there, could've actually benefited with a longer runtime. A bit more clarification on the exposition. A bit more buildup on Gorr, and the whole parental angle between Thor and Gorr that feels a bit jarring. A bit less goats, a bit less reliance on Korg's exposition. I don't think Love and Thunder is as bad as its detractors make it out to be -- there are some really great moments here, and I would praise the Thor/Jane stuff a lot. But there are also a lot of stuff that makes the movie feel somewhat haphazard in how it jumps from one plot point to the next. It's a shame, really, and I think that's why this movie is so frustrating -- that there is actually the basis of a good movie here, but smooshing together the Jane stuff and the Gorr stuff in a primarily-comedic movie feels very jarring and would've been much better with a bit more time in the editing room. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
• 
  Zeus is revealed to have survived from his wounds, is pretty pissed off at superheroes for taking over the place of gods, and the camera pans to his son Hercules.
• Jane arrives at Valhalla, where Heimdall welcomes her. 
• Past Movie Continuity: 
• Thor is briefly seen with a hat that says 'Strongest Avenger' with the adjective scribbled in marker, noting the little argument he had with Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok. 
• The hand-kiss in the New Asgard hospital is a nod to how the two separated at the end of Thor.
  
• Valkyrie tells Thor "don't die", a line she also says when Thor goes off to fight Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.
• Movie Superhero Codenames: A point of contention for Jane Foster, who tries to use the insistent terminology of "Mighty Thor". Thor, Gorr, Korg, Zeus and Sif all don't really have code-names; while Valkyrie continues the exception of never having her real name Brunnhilde be spoken. 
• Favourite Action Scene: Definitely the battle on Gorr's weird colourless planet. It's experimental, sure, but the lightning bolts giving all the colour as they flash in and out is definitely a very memorable and striking visual!
• Funniest Line: "Perhaps your arm is in Valhalla."
• Statues of Infinity, Uatu the Watcher, the Living Tribunal and several Celestials show up in the final battlefield. Of them, Uatu was last seen in the MCU in What IF?, the Celestials in Eternals and the Living Tribunal in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In addition, two Celestials are shown in the Omnipotence City. 
• Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder (or Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr) are actual characters from the real-world Thor mythos, a pair magical goats that will instantly regenerate even after their meat is eaten. 
• In her brief appearance, Sif wears her classic comic-book outfit. Thor's classic original costume also shows up in Korg's montage; while his Ravager jacket brings to mind 90's Thor, Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike. 
• The shot of Thor and Korg looking at the corpse of Falligar the Behemoth is noted by many fans as a nearly perfect recreation of a panel from Thor: God of Thunder #3, the comic run where Gorr debuted. While only shown for a brief glance, a shot in the Guardians' ship show a group of gods hanging from chains -- which are the first gods that comics!Thor found in that storyline.