Thor: Love And Thunder Has Struck Cinemas And Everyone's Mixed On It

Since the revival of Thor’s character in the movie Thor: Ragnarok, the character has seen a shift in popularity with many people enjoying a much more comical take on the character.

Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder continues on this trend, with the foundations of Ragnarok and two Avengers’ movies helping move the plot along.

Before I saw this movie, I saw a lot of people have mixed feelings, with some people absolutely hating the thing and others praising it. So as Jerry Seinfeld once said, what’s the deal?

I went into this movie expecting fun times and not having the fate of the multiverse resting on my shoulders and suffice to say I got what I wanted. Thor: Love and Thunder doesn’t align itself with previous Marvel movies like MOM and Spiderman: No Way Home, instead the movie is its own thing and it’s great.

We join Thor on a spiritual quest to find himself, he’s still cruising with the Guardians as we saw at the end of Endgame. He only tends to fight when asked for help and even then, he’s still the obnoxious god we all recognise.

However, when an unknown maniac is killing off gods like it’s nothing, Thor must defeat this threat before it wipes out all gods known and unknown to mankind.

The plot for this movie is simple and effective, I think a lot of fans are getting a little exhausted about the multiverse already. Sure, it’s super fun and if you put it in a movie you better know I’ll be in a cinema seat, but over the course of 2021-2022 we’ve seen big multiversal movies and shows.

• Wandavision

• Loki

• What If?

• Spiderman: No Way Home

• Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness

• Ms Marvel

The movie’s villain, Gorr the God Butcher was excellent, though he could have done with more screen time. Christain Bale lends an excellent performance, he’s menacing and creepy, but you still feel his pain and loss.

The way Bale plays the role sometimes reminds me of the Joker, ironic I know. From his mannerisms to his little laughs when he knows he’s scaring someone, it’s all good and definitely improves and elevates the movie.

Thor himself, played by Chris Hemsworth, doesn’t seem to really change to me. Sure, the movie tells you he’s changed, but has he? By the end of the movie, he’s learned to be more open and honest with people, to not push them away. But didn’t he learn that in Ragnarok?

Hemsworth still does an amazing job as Thor, and Waititi’s perception of Thor is still my favourite version, but I don’t think that character has gained much growth since Endgame.

I love Natalie Portman and the Mighty Thor, and I wish she would have stuck around. Yes, the post credit scene showed us she was in Valhalla with Heimdall (Which was a nice surprise to see), but does that leave room for her to come back or is it just peace of mind for the audience to know she’s ok?

I loved everything about Mighty Thor, from the creation to the costume. I loved the reintroduction of Jane Foster and where she is after the snap, unfortunately she has stage 4 cancer much like the comics. Through this determination and stubbornness to live, Jane equips the powers of Thor herself and fights crime.

The only downside is that being Thor is actually killing her, again similar to the comics, but I liked the reveal in the movie. The quiet sit-down moments with Thor and Jane are some of the best scenes in the movie, the pure determination and fight in her as she begs Thor to let her fight Gorr is heartbreaking.

And even though she still shows up in the end fight, you don’t feel happy you feel sad, just like Thor. You know she won’t make it through the fight, that the cancer has made her weaker and the hammer is only adding to it. So yes, you feel like Thor in this scene. You want to cheer because of the superhero entrance, but you just don’t.

Jane’s death felt dumb but when following along with the story it made perfect sense. I do hope we see Jane Foster’s Thor again, as it was a great character and I just love the look of the costume way more than the regular Thor outfit.

Other returning characters like Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie and Waititi’s Korg are great in this movie. The duo works well together and offer some great tender scenes that you wouldn’t expect from an alcoholic and a rock.

I love how they retell stories from their past, with Korg talking about love and mating on his planet and Valkyrie opening up a little bit about the loss of her girlfriend. And can I just say this is the best representation of the LGTBQ+ community in any Marvel movie, and only leave it to an icon like Taika to do it.

I appreciated guest appearances from characters like Daryl from the small miniseries that came out around the release of Civil War and Ragnarok. Other additions like Meek and Matt Damon as Loki were fun too. I am sad we didn’t get the return of Jeff Goldblum; he was a standout star in the third Thor movie, I would have been happy if there was just a small cameo.

The special effects in this movie were decent, I won’t lie and say I’ve not had a small issue with Marvel’s special effects for some time. I think ever since the release of Black Widow the effects have dropped to a certain quality. Sometimes it can look great like in Moonknight or Wandavision and other times it can look like you stuck a famous actor in front a cheap green screen like in Black Widow and Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

I hope Marvel does kick it up a notch, especially when CGI is a big part of your movies; it’s what makes the worlds you throw us into believable.

Overall, I enjoyed Thor: Love and Thunder. I can understand where people may have dropped off or why they didn’t like it but from what I can tell the movie was just meant to be fun and different and it certainly achieves what it set out to do.

I loved the music; classic rock really suits the character. I also was amazed at some of the visuals, I adored the shadow realm and just certain moments where the scenes seemed to slow down as if they knew you’d want to screenshot this moment later and use it as your laptop wallpaper.

Sure, there were some things I didn’t like about the movie but they were either minor nitpicks or a personal judgment; I’m looking at you screaming goats, the bane of my existence.

Thor: Love and Thunder gets 3 out of 5 lightning bolts from me.

Thor: Love and Thunder is currently in cinemas.