Editor’s note: The following containsMAJOR spoilersforThor: Love and ThunderOf the original Avengers team, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) remains the most adaptable and malleable character, depending on what the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs of him. While we pretty much understand who Iron Man, Captain America, and Hulk are from the get-go, and Black Widow and Hawkeye remained ill-defined until fairly recently, Thor has become Marvel’s flexible hero. He can be the cocky prince to the Asgardian throne, a Lebowski-esque slacker, the decapitator of Thanos, a love-lorn romantic lead, or a space-exploring wanderer. Through the capable performance of Hemsworth, Thor can be everything and anything this universe wants.
The pliability of Thor makes him a fitting character for the chameleon-like director and writerTaika Waititi. While his sense of humor remains largely the same throughout his work, his films have covered various genres and subjects. There’s the vampire mockumentaryWhat We Do in the Shadows, the found family story ofHunt for the Wilderpeople, and his last film,Jojo Rabbit, which presents the Holocaust through the eyes of a child (and won Waititi an Oscar). Hemsworth and Waititi have worked together beautifully before with 2017’sThor: Ragnarok, which harnessed their inherent goofiness into one of the most enjoyable and insane films in the MCU. But in their latest collaboration,Thor: Love and Thunder, the license to do everything all at once seems to have become a trap, and as a result, the fourthThorfilm is too scattered and too disjointed to leave much of an impact.
From the very beginning, it’s clear thatLove and Thunderhas lofty goals but doesn’t know how to follow through on its ambitious ideas. The film starts with Gorr (Christian Bale), whose unrelenting faith in a god has led to the death of his daughter. When he comes face-to-face with this deity, he is told that there is no afterlife for him, all the promises that religion made were false, and his dedication was all for nothing. Following that, when Gorr becomes Gorr the God Butcher and ventures out into the universe to slay all gods everywhere, we can’t help but be on his side. Later, when Thor and the rest of his crew go to Olympus to warn Zeus (a delightfully over-the-topRussell Crowe), they similarly see the ignorance and self-centered nature of the gods. It’s almost as if Waititi thinks that Gorr is right.
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Despite this clear presentation of gods as monsters and the supposed futility of religion,Love and Thunderdoesn’t have much to say about this conflict. Bale is doing great work as the believer succumbing to the rage and retribution. Yes, he is disturbing as Gorr, but he also makes it understandable how his journey would lead down this path. Considering how the gods have acted, we can’t blame him for his choices. By the end of Waititi andJennifer Kaytin Robinson’s (Someone Great,Unpregnant) script, though, he has reverted to form, becoming little more than the villain the piece needs.
This disappointment continues with the return ofNatalie Portmanas Dr. Jane Foster—Thor’s will-they-won’t-they love interest for over a decade. After being diagnosed with stage IV cancer, Jane seeks out Thor’s old hammer, Mjolnir, and becomes The Mighty Thor. As this new Thor, Jane is just as powerful as the God of Thunder, but the longer she spends in this guise, the weaker she becomes outside it.
Waititi and Robinson make the relationship between Thor and Foster most interesting when plays with rom-com tropes (particularly when the film flashes back to moments that happened between franchise installments.) Clearly, Portman is having fun with her newfound role as a superhero. But her inclusion in the film and the resurgence of this romance is fairly one-note: the two realize they still have feelings for each other right before it’s too late. By the film’s end, Jane dies in the arms of Thor. Their relationship, sweet as it is, seems little more than a way to give closure to this part of Thor’s story—one that probably didn’t need a conclusion—and give Portman a proper MCU sendoff as she heads to Valhalla where she’s greeted byIdris Elba’s Heimdall.
Considering both Gorr and Jane’s powers are destroying them from the inside out, it’s a shame thatLove and Thunderdoesn’t do anything interesting with that readily available dynamic. Both are working against a ticking clock, yet there’s never any through-line that brings value out of that. Instead, Gorr represents the villain, Jane represents the love interest, and any deeper discussion about how these two storylines withinLove and Thundercoalesce is absent. There’s a nagging feeling that both exist soley to give Thor a new, adorable partner-in-crime in Love—Gorr’s daughter, who he resurrected with his dying wish. Early on, Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) mentions that Thor needs to find someone worth fighting for. He finds exactly that by becoming a father to Love. It’s an odd direction forLove and Thunderto end on, and like too many stories in Phase 4 of the MCU, one that makesThorfeel like yet another Marvel film setting up what is to come instead of telling its own story.
Overall,Love and Thunderattempts too much. In its relatively brisk run time we get the Guardians of the Galaxy, a pair of screaming goats, the gods of Olympus, a woefully underutilized Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), a jealous war hammer, and a mission to save a cage full of Asgardian kids. With all that and more, it’s spread too thin. Again, Portman and Bale are quite good here, but their initially intriguing characters become fairly basic by film’s end.
All this isn’t to sayLove and Thunderisn’t enjoyable, but it doesn’t offer enough to grab onto. Even my personal favorite MCU character, Korg (voiced by Waititi), doesn’t have the same level of humor that he had inRagnarok. At almost every turn, one can see great potential followed by disappointingly missed opportunities. Everything isfineand enjoyable, but there isn’t enough that sticks with the audience once the credits start to roll.
Waititi often works best when he embraces a single focus and sticks with it, as he did withWhat We Do in the ShadowsorRagnarok.His approach seems to only fall apart when he tries to stretch himself.Jojo Rabbitworks in bits and pieces, but the shifting from absurd comedy to moving Holocaust tale doesn’t coalesce as well as one would hope. The same issue arises inLove and Thunder, which tries to be a wild 80s-inspired space adventureandoffer a dark look at faithandwrap up loose ends from the first two Thor filmsandcreate a moving and hilarious story. By trying to do it all at once,Love and Thunder,unfortunately,becomes just mediocre in a bunch of different ways.
Thor: Love and Thunderis in theaters now.
