Thor: Love and Thunder review

Chris Hemsworth is "thundering and sensitive" in Taika Waititi's latest Thor, writes Caryn James.

Otherwise, even a snap of the fingers that pulverises half the population ( Avengers: Infinity War) can be reversed in another film ( Avengers: Endgame), and if that fails there are infinite alternate timelines and universes to play with. En-route to the big final battle, Team Thor try to enlist help in Omnipotence City, a land of deities ruled by the head god, Zeus, hilariously played by Russell Crowe in golden armour and a Greek accent that is, I'm guessing, intentionally comic? There has always been a meta theme in Thor's character, as his ego makes him hyper-aware of his image and stature. Hemsworth is given much more to work with and beautifully navigates the shifts from comedy to drama. "There is nothing after death except death," the false god who has failed him says. Portman's role was announced three years ago and Mighty Thor is right there in the film's trailer. The irreplaceable Chadwick Boseman's early death means there will be no more T'Challa in the Black Panther films, as far as we know. Fortunately, Hemsworth is better than ever at making the character the most human, lifelike and appealing of gods, a regular guy except when he's saving the world. If Waititi was saving that image as a big reveal, the strategy was pointless. Soon the familiar characters are threatened by a new villain, Gorr (chillingly played by Christian Bale), who has become disillusioned with gods in general. ( Doctor Strange has his qualities but he's not a witty sort.) In Love and Thunder, Waititi injects more emotion than in Ragnarok and goes for weightier themes, about nihilism and belief, love and death. We see that she is seriously ill but get only a hint about her new identity until the moment Thor spots her in full battle gear.

'Thor: Love and Thunder' suffers from a lack of both of the elements present in its subtitle, and is an astonishing step back from 'Ragnarok.'

The deficit of care in this phase, however, remains troubling, at least in comparison to the previous films in the MCU. There were always dogshit filler movies meant to act as stop-gaps between important and/or risky films, but they didn’t define the whole of a given era like they have now. Credit’s due: At least they didn’t make a meaningful attempt to conceal Mighty Thor’s identity, which was one of the most irritating things about that arc (editorial dictate seeming to get in the way of good storytelling, which is a tale as old as time in comic books), and gave it a proper ending, though they did jettison the whole reason that the storyline was in any way coherent on a character level. Once Gorr kidnaps Asgardian children as a means of luring Thor and his magic axe to a confrontation in a shadow realm, the foursome decides that they need help, and so they seek the aid of Zeus (Russell Crowe) and other Gods in order to stop him. Yet a number of things have been changed: Gorr is now a true believer in a gold-suited God who let his followers (including Gorr’s daughter) die in the desert while he enjoyed the bounty of an oasis, which simplifies some of the complexity of his character; and instead of attempting to create a “Godbomb,” which only can be stopped by three Thors from throughout history (Young, Current and King), he’s seeking to wish the Gods out of existence. The bare bones of Aaron and Ribic’s story are preserved: A vengeful mortal named Gorr (Christian Bale) has acquired a mythical weapon known as the Necrosword, which can slay Gods, and only Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and buds can stop him before he finds a way to rid the universe of deities altogether. – and Ribic’s gorgeous Vermeer-colored artwork gave the storytelling a painterly majesty normally reserved for material much grander like, say, the destruction of Pompeii. Yet above all else, it was metal, which is to say that it was both hyper-serious and knowingly ridiculous, as well as somewhat blasphemous, at least to comic nerds (for an even bigger head-trip and something genuinely worthy of the Vatican’s scorn, check out Aaron’s The Goddamned, which is a brutal revisionist retelling of the book of Genesis from Cain’s perspective). Whatever Taika Waititi is – a swell comedian, a decent filmmaker, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter – he’s not goated with the metal sauce.