Thor: Love and Thunder 2022
I had high hopes for this movie and I even went back and watched the first two Thor movies, which I had never seen, since I knew this movie would be about Natalie Portman’s character, Jane Foster, who didn’t appear in the other Marvel movies. I had enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok so I hoped with Taika Waititi back directing, this movie might be a return to form for Marvel. However reviews were barely positive, so I went in with lowered expectations. I think they probably let Taika Waititi go a little too much and maybe Chris Hemsworth as well. It is a showcase of goofy, mostly dumb humor, and Hemsworth hamming it up as a clueless heroic jock. That is a real shame because Thor was set up as a pretty interesting character, a spoiled and impulsive young prince who learns leadership before having his kingdom cruelly destroyed. The clumsy storyline here revisits the romance between Jane and Thor as if instead of being abandoned by the writers, was actually going on behind the scenes of the Marvel movies. That relationship doesn’t work as well in this movie. The broadness of the jokes here overshadows a subtler sense of humor that had worked before. And the bad guy seems borrowed spiritually from the last Marvel movie as, once again, a parent mourning their children decides the only appropriate action is to kill everyone else’s children. The movie is still fun enough to watch, but is almost cartoonish, even with a couple of cameos by other Marvel characters. Also a story arc in this phase of Marvel still doesn’t seem to have materialized. Entertaining, but also kind of dumb, and disappointing.
Written: 08 Jul 2022
Owned on: UHD, Blu-ray, Digital