Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Here’s my Thor: Love and Thunder review which stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson and directed by Taika Waititi. The film opens today, July 6 from Marvel Studios and now playing in all SM Cinemas nationwide!

So Thor is back for a fourth outing and it was a fun and emotional outing it was. But did it have substance or did it give us a clue as to what the future holds for Marvel films? Read more to find out.

In this fourth installment, Thor takes it upon himself to stop the killer known as Gorr the God Butcher from killing every god in the universe. He teams up with Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster and Tessa Thompson’s King Valkyrie. Thor and his team try to enlist the help of the gods from Omnipotent City and its leader Zeus.

Casting

Chris Hemsworth continues to prove that he was born to play the role of Thor and has good comedic timing. Pair that with Taika Waititi’s style and we have somewhat of a masterpiece. Natalie Portman’s role here as Jane Foster / Mighty Thor is more physical. I adore our beloved muscular waifu for her spunk and wit and bravery in the role and you can see that she’s also good when it comes to action scenes. They took a little swerve with Thor from the trailers where it looks like the film is on a soul-searching adventure. Instead, its actually an adventure of him stopping what could be a deadly threat.

We’ve come a long way from seeing her as Mathilda in “Leon the Professional”

via GIFER

Also there’s a nice sense of humanity for both Thor and Jane. Jane was adorable too with her little questions about being a powered being.

Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher was great. Bale carried the character with much depth and seriousness but clash that with the film’s overall silliness and you’re left in a crossroad. But physical and look, I thought he was an awesome, awesome villain.

I had a lot of fun with Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie character though. In Thor: Ragnarok, she felt like a plot device or a side character that we can totally forget but here, she was exceptional. Whether its her boredom with being the new ruler of New Asgard to dealing with crisis that befalls on their little community to some unresolved issues that we saw in Ragnarok but never really get to explore (again because she was a side character). Here we see various emotions for the character. Stoic but empathic and also proven to be able to carry herself in battle.

Adding in a few lines of dialogue in her nice heart to heart with Korg also shined a better light on her, what makes her tick and what makes her what she is right now. Oh and her interactions with Jane is so cute. I partly wanted to ship her with Jane although my real ship is Valkyrie and Captain Marvel.

The Visuals

Visuals are definitely slicker here plus I love the noir aesthetic that they applied in one set piece. Thor and Jane transforming or armoring up looked fantastic, that fight scene in Omnipotent City looked great and the visual effects that added in to Gorr the God Butcher really amps up the intimidation. Even Thor’s new goats, Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder are also a spectacle to behold.

 

Plot Stuff

I don’t want to spoil much for this written Thor: Love and Thunder review but I have to say that they did good on their Chekhov’s guns here. They mention something or do something, we get some resolution to it. The main quest for the characters? They get that neatly tied up before the credits roll. Even the Thor: Love and Thunder post-credit scene returns back to something that our heroes did.

But for me, they stumbled a bit because it feels like they prioritized the comedy and the set pieces rather than build the world, re-build the romance and chemistry, make the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) bigger than what it already is.

Humor

The good news is that the film has A LOT of comedy bits which is also the bad news especially if you weren’t keen on Ragnarok’s style. I’d probably hazard a guess that you’ll hate this more if you didn’t like Ragnarok. They dialed up the comedy from the first few minutes of the film. You’ll see a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle comedy including Thor doing a parody of Jean Claude Van Damme…

But somebody had the right idea of toning down the comedy whenever Gorr’s around. And there’s this scene that felt like a flop where Thor tries to do the Spider-Man route of being quippy but fails. But that could be the director’s intention.

Verdict:

7.5/10

Film was entertaining and colorful but it lacked depth and character building. It also features a potentially controversial ending that fans may or may not like but I’ll leave that bit to you. It’s still an entertaining popcorn flick but it doesn’t really push the future big event and opts to be self-contained. Its honestly confusing what they were trying to set out to do here. Was it really about Thor? Was it about Jane? Was it about Gorr? Man they could have main point and rolled with it. But its distended and all over the place. Don’t get me wrong, the film was a fun ride. But Marvel’s already show that they can give us heavy stuff from their Disney+ shows so why is it increasingly getting harder for them to do so with their movies?

Still, L&T is poised to earn a lot of money when it opens but I’m more concerned with what they really plan to do for the franchise and the succeeding phases.

Special thanks to SM Cinema! Catch the film on IMAX when it opens July 6!

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