Photo by Mary Evans
By Asher Berkner
Thor: Love and Thunder is a downgrade after all that director Taika Waititi achieved with his previous Marvel film, the great and critically acclaimed film Thor: Ragnarok. The repeated jokes, tropes, and all-around story just fall flat compared to the other film, and this sequel may have been one of Waititi’s worst films to date in an otherwise good directing career.
We once again follow the tale of our hero and Norse Viking Thunder God, Thor, once again portrayed by actor Chris Hemsworth. After losing much of his hero-like and god-like self and taking a step down from the Thor we saw in Thor: Ragnarok, the people of Asgard have settled into a port town called New Asgard after the real Asgard was destroyed in the previous movie. Their leader, King Valkyrie (played by Tessa Thompson), has helped them acclimate to life on Earth, which includes being a tourist attraction. Fighting alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor gets his very own action sequence where he turns into his old self and absolutely demolishes his enemy using his trusty ax that he calls Stormbreaker, accompanied with a Guns ‘N Roses song. But with no one to celebrate with, he realizes that he is alone and has no one to love.
The film then brings in a different and very changed 2nd hero in Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor’s past love interest from the previous films during his better days of glory and triumph. Now, she wields the broken pieces of Thor’s hammer Mjolnir,turning into her own version of the Norse god, but with an interesting twist. Every time she uses the power, it makes her less human-like and capable of being one, which is not so great for her as it is revealed to the audience that she has stage four cancer.
The adversary this time around is Gorr, the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale, a character who has lost his only daughter to the selfish behavior of other gods and is chosen to wield an ancient sword called the Necrosword, as he creates an army of beasts to kill all other gods.
This is where things start to get bad. In what becomes one of the worst scenes in the film, Gorr attacks the town of New Asgard, while Thor also sees Jane Foster for the first time in about eight years. The mix of unsuccessful creepiness and comedy and joy that the two have met each other again is terrible. Gorr should be a main part of this scene but barely gets any shots here, and too much time is spent fighting his monster minions. The scene falls flat, missing the chance to play up an unfortunate moment where all the children are kidnapped. It’s done so badly that it’s almost forgettable that it ever happened, even though a great deal of time is spent in the movie trying to save these kids.
In order to stop Gorr and save the stolen children, Jane, Thor, King Valkyrie, and Korg (Thor’s rock buddy from the previous film) all visit the Greek god of lightning Zeus and the other Gods, who all live in one giant palace, where they all sit around having parties and not doing much. They don’t see Gorr as a threat. Zeus simply laughs at Thor. After this, nothing interesting happens in the movie. The humor once again falls flat, and the jokes aren’t anything special.
In the joke department, this movie lacks originality, whereas Ragnarok did get that right. While the plot doesn’t have all that much that interests me, I love the idea of Gorr, but we don’t get to see him much as a character after the beginning of the movie where we learn his origin story. I had hoped for a good look into how Gorr had gotten to the height of this power and maybe further motivation into why he was doing such things. Later on, Waititi presents the Jane and Thor romance. It’s not a bad part of the story but comes sort of out of nowhere.
The biggest takeaway from Thor: Love and Thunder is that it shows no sense of direction, as if Taika had a decent storyline without a map or big vision on exactly what would happen.
