Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
dir. Taika Waititi
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2022 Marvel Studios
Kids, get out your popcorn, and let me tell you a story about the space Viking, Thor Odinson. This isn’t Thor as seen in Kenneth Branagh’s terminally boring 2011 outing, which made the mythical god and his world as dour and operatic as possible. No, this is Taika Waititi’s Thor, which we got a snootful of in Waititi’s previous outing with the character, Thor: Ragnarok. As in that film – which influenced the general comedic direction the character has taken in the non-standalone MCU movies in which he appears – Thor, in Waititi’s hands, is here for a good time. But, it’s important to note, he’s not here only for a good time.
Right below the surface of all the sight gags and screaming goats in Thor: Love and Thunder – I laughed out loud more than once at those giant screaming goats – is effective and heartfelt pathos that gives the picture its emotional anchor. That’s Waititi’s stock-in-trade. As can be seen as far back as 2010’s Boy, through 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, to 2019’s Jojo Rabbit and his work in the MCU, Waititi uses all the goofy humor to disguise more serious themes. His technique is as fresh and entertaining here in Love and Thunder as it’s ever been.
Say what you will about this forth standalone Thor effort, you can’t pretend that Waititi isn’t squarely in the middle of his wacky aesthetic. That’s why I’m confused by all the hate being registered against the movie in general and Waititi in particular. As I write this, Love and Thunder holds an approval rating of 66% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the fourth worst-received of all 29 MCU movies to date. That’s compared to Ragnarok’s much healthier 93% approval rating.
Where’s the disconnect? From what I’ve seen – I try to mostly avoid reading full reactions to a movie until after I’ve written my own review – people think Love and Thunder is more of what we already got with Ragnarok. My question to that reaction is: what were you expecting from Taika Waititi? Was there disappointment when Hitchcock released The Birds, and it turned out to be a dark psychological thriller that used one horror (birds going berserk) to explore another (fear of abandonment)? Was the reaction to Scorsese’s The Irishman a lament that he was making yet another gangster film?
I had an absolute blast with Thor: Love and Thunder. I lost count of how many times I literally LOLed at any number of the gags Waititi built into his screenplay. It was a refreshing feeling to leave all of the MCU baggage waiting at the station while I simply enjoyed the story Waititi was telling me in the here and now. I didn’t need to worry about the mythology of the last 28 movies, or how what was happening in Love and Thunder would affect the next twenty-eight.
I engaged in an impromptu experiment for Love and Thunder. As is the case with most cineastes, I always try to refresh myself or do my homework before walking into the latest movie in a series. For Thor, I might have tried to revisit the first three of the character’s standalone entries, or, at the very least, I would have rewatched Waititi’s Ragnarok.
As it happened, Rae and I decided on the spur of the moment to see Love and Thunder. I had seen Thor once – in 2012 or so. I skipped Thor: The Dark World completely after being thoroughly underwhelmed by the first film, and I saw Ragnarok once, in 2017, during its theatrical release.
Turns out, not doing my homework didn’t affect my enjoyment of Love and Thunder at all. Waititi imagines the obligatory in-movie refresher segments as campfire tales being spun to Asgardian children by Korg, the Kronan gladiator who met and befriended Thor during the events of Ragnarok. (I borrowed Korg’s opening line in the movie for the opening line of this review.)
Korg tells the kids (and us) about Jane Foster, the astrophysicist who broke Thor’s heart eight years ago when she ended things with the Norse god. We catch up with Jane as she’s receiving chemotherapy treatment to battle stage IV cancer. In an act of desperation, Jane visits New Asgard, which has become a tourist destination akin to a Disney theme park. (What are the odds of the existence of an exuberant email from a Disney executive celebrating the synergy in reminding viewers that they can visit one of Disney’s fine amusement parks after leaving the theater? Probably pretty high.)
Jane hopes that the shards of Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir, will impart some healing ability to her if she is near it. Mjolnir was destroyed during the events of Ragnarok, and Thor is now using the axe Stormbreaker as his primary weapon. Jane gets more than she bargained for on her visit. Because of an enchantment Thor placed on the hammer years earlier to protect Jane, Mjolnir reassembles and bonds itself to her. She is now the Mighty Thor. Due to the transformation, Jane is cancer free, but only when she is wielding the power of Mjolnir as a god. When she changes back to plain Jane, she discovers that becoming the Mighty Thor is actually sapping her of her strength, making her weaker and more vulnerable to the terminal cancer.
It's here that I’ll point out Thor: Love and Thunder’s biggest weakness. At this moment, when we discover the stakes for Jane – at about 45 minutes in – I was able to predict almost every dramatic beat to come for the rest of the movie. It’s a weakness, but it never really bothered me, because I was having too good a time and laughing too hard to care.
Reviewing a comedy is tricky, because what makes each of us laugh is so subjective. If the jokes worked for you, it’s easy to fall into the trap of simply describing a laundry list of all the bits that made you laugh the hardest, which isn’t terribly insightful. I will, however, relay the gag that made me laugh the hardest, because it perfectly encapsulates – in roughly five seconds of screen time – Waititi’s comedic vibe.
Thor has a personal relationship with Mjolnir. He speaks to his mighty hammer, and, although we never hear it respond, we are to assume that the hammer can understand Thor and that the god can hear and understand his hammer’s responses. Throughout the movie, Mjolnir registers with Thor its (his?) displeasure at how things ended between them. Thor’s new weapon, the axe Stormbreaker, is also sentient, and is visibly jealous of Thor’s old flame.
At one point, Thor calls after Mjolnir, as Jane is walking away with it. He says something about all the great times they’ve had together, oblivious to the fact that Stormbreaker can hear every word. As Thor looks wistfully in Mjolnir’s direction, Stormbreaker slowly – almost imperceptibly – moves into the frame from the right. The axe is essentially staring Thor down. In that perfectly timed bit of comedy, reminiscent of a silent film gag from Keaton or Chaplin, Waititi made me believe I saw betrayal and anger emanating from an inanimate object. I laughed harder at this simple reveal than any other joke in the movie.
And there’s plenty of opportunity to laugh. At one point, Thor, Jane, Korg, and Valkyrie, the ruler of New Asgard, travel to Omnipotence City, a place many gods call home. Running the show, naturally, is Zeus. Russell Crowe gives one of the funniest performances of his career in this one-scene cameo. Crowe masterfully punctures his reputation as a tough guy – both on and off screen – with a campy Greek accent and a paunch that telegraphs Zeus’s singular focus on pleasure. (The primary focus of the meeting in Omnipotence City that Thor and company crash is to decide where the next annual orgy will be held.)
Thor and his allies make the trip to Omnipotence City – Waititi wowed me with an eyepopping 360° pan of the 100% CGI Golden Temple – in an effort to raise an army of gods in response to a deadly threat. In the opening minutes of Love and Thunder, we meet Gorr. His daughter, Love, is dying, and Gorr calls out to his god for help. When no help comes and Love dies, an insidious weapon known as the Necrosword gives itself to Gorr.
The Necrosword is a magical blade that can kill gods. In Gorr’s rage and despair at losing his daughter, Gorr kills his own god and vows to do the same to every deity in the universe. He is now Gorr the God Butcher, and Thor must stop him at any cost. Waititi skewers our real-world leaders as venal and ineffectual when he portrays the gods in Omnipotence City – where they are hiding from Gorr, since only gods know its location – in the same light.
Christian Bale is featured as Gorr the God Butcher in what will probably be his only swim through the MCU. (I have to imagine his character’s close-ended story arc was a major selling point to convince the actor to suit up for the MCU.) Bale brings a satisfying pathos counterweight to all of Waititi’s comical shenanigans. Through Gorr, Waititi explores the idea that love is ultimately more powerful than either hate or revenge. This culminates in the most moving climax to an MCU entry since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
That sentiment is echoed in the reunion of Jane and Thor, who has been quietly devastated since Jane left him eight years ago. In Waititi’s hands, Thor: Love and Thunder is perhaps the MCU’s first true romcom. (It’s arguable that the first Thor is a romance, but it’s far too dour for the com to accompany the rom in describing it.) Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman’s on-screen chemistry is palpable; it’s helped by the fact that the majority of their scenes together are fun and feather-light.
Waititi’s impeccable sense of comedic timing and his stars’ dedication to the bit – especially Hemsworth, who is hysterical here – means that I have a new favorite MCU movie. It was incredibly refreshing to forget the mythology for a few hours and strap in for an exciting, hilarious adventure from the most singular voice in Kevin Feige’s stable of filmmakers.
Why it got 4 stars:
- This movie is simply a hell of a lot of fun. If you need to laugh, Thor: Love and Thunder should do the trick. It made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Is this the best ever use in a movie of Enya’s Only Time? Possibly.
- It is worth the price of admission alone to see Thor (via Chris Hemsworth, with the help of a lot of CGI) prevent two massive vehicles from destroying him by using the splits to hold them in check.
- If you like your movies to come with a wall-to-wall Guns N' Roses soundtrack, this movie is for you.
- I was forced to wonder if making these movies is starting to feel like one long audition to the people starring in them. In one scene, Hemsworth and Portman are having a conversation, and it’s quite clear that nothing surrounding them is real. They were most likely standing in a giant room painted completely green. It renewed my appreciation for how hard it must be to act as if there is an entire landscape existing around you that isn’t there.
- As an atheist, I love that almost every god we encounter, from Gorr’s cruel deity to Zeus himself, is a self-absorbed, fascist dictator. I have to imagine that if god is real, he’s very much like Donald Trump.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Saw this at a late-afternoon weekday screening. I think there were only five us in attendance. Thor: Love and Thunder is currently playing on every screen in the country, and will (most likely) be available on Disney+ by late August. It’s a fun, dazzling ride on the big screen, though.