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Thor: Love and Thunder – A Shocking Failure, Electrifying Success or An Insulated Mediocrity?

Love and Thunder Main Pic

Thor: Love and Thunder is the MCU’s latest entry to its ever-growing list of films to hit the big screen. Interestingly enough, Thor is the first character in the MCU to get a 4th film. So did it do the character any good? Eeeh…

Thor: Love and Thunder was released early this month and, well, regardless of how good or bad you think the quality of the film is, it didn’t do too bad when it comes to earnings.  As of the writing of this article, Thor: Love and Thunder has earned over $500 million worldwide, already doubling its estimated budget of $250 million, and the film is bound to make a couple more million in the remainder of its lifespan in theaters.

But earnings don’t always translate to how good a movie actually is, here’s my take on how the movie did:

Plot and Delivery: Interesting concept ruined by unnecessarily comedic delivery

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Gorr The God Butcher

Plot: Gorr was a man from an unknown world that was under the “guidance” of the god Rapu. Gorr and his daughter worshipped Rapu and upon his daughter’s death, Gorr finds his way into Rapu’s domain. He soon realizes that the god his people worshipped was actually a self-centered being who cared nothing for his subjects and worshippers.

Sensing Gorr’s distraught and hatred, a powerful ancient weapon called All-Black the Necrosword chooses Gorr to be its next wielder and Gorr uses the sword to kill Rapu before vowing to kill all gods and turning into the God Butcher.

Fun fact: though his design seemed to be influenced by Aztec or Mesoamerican mythology, Rapu doesn’t actually exist in any real-world mythology.

Thor and his allies find the God Butcher’s trail of death and try their best to stop him and his army of shadow monsters from gaining the power to fully wipe out every god from existence. All the while Thor tries to discover his true self, especially now that he’s not the only Thor in town…

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Marvel’s New Thor?

Review: The main gripe a lot of people had with Love and Thunder (or at least I did) is the fact that it leaned way too hard on the comedy, even for a Marvel movie. And that’s saying a lot. I really like the concept of a man shunned by the gods and turning into their undoing, it’s just that the writers seemed to inject humor into almost every aspect of the movie.

And, hey, to make it perfectly clear, I actually love MCU humor. I know it can get really cheesy but that’s part of the franchise’s charm. Though some Marvel films deal with some really dark or adult themes, at their core they’re movies made for kids and that’s the audience they’re trying to please the most. I really enjoyed Marvel’s more comedy-heavy films like Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy too.

The difference is that even those films knew their limits. Love and Thunder just overdid it. It was reaching the point where characters started behaving uncharacteristically just to force another joke into the writing.

I know Marvel is using Phase 4 to test boundaries and go into unexplored territory to see what else works and what doesn’t, so I hope they learned their lesson with how far they can push their comedy with this one.

Characters: ???

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Starlord and Thor saying their goodbyes

As I mentioned above, the forced humor started invading the characteristics of Love and Thunder’s cast. Almost all of them blended into the same joke-cracking ha-ha funny man. So I’ll just talk about the ones who I thought gave the movie more.

I loved Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster/Mighty Thor. I was a little concerned that they’d suddenly turn her character into some hero who was already somehow better than Thor. But I’m glad to say that they actually gave her a learning curve with her asking her more experienced companions like Thor or Valkyrie how the whole superhero thing works. She was also dealing with a lot more than the other characters in the movie but at the same time didn’t really steal the focus of the movie from Thor Odinson.

Christian Bale as Gorr was easily the least comedic character in the film and therefore stood out the most. I was worried Gorr was going to be another easily forgettable Thor villain like Malekith, but no. He brought a sense of seriousness that the movie seriously lacked. Just wish there was more of it.

Visual Presentation and Special Effects: Great, but it’s Marvel so of course it is

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The children kidnapped by Gorr

There was a scene or two where the CGI/special effects looked really bad (That scene with Heimdall’s son telepathically talking with Thor looked like they hired me to handle special effects), but they were outliers. The majority of the movie was still the gorgeous world of fantasy and magic Marvel has just gotten better at crafting throughout the years.

Music: The  Would-be saving grace if it weren’t too late.

Thor: Love and Thunder’s version of the Marvel intro

Marvel makes tons of mistakes or decisions that the fans dislike in their movies. But one of the things that they’ve consistently done that the fans have liked is their choice of music. And Love and Thunder was no different.

From the rock version of the Marvel intro theme to Sweet Child O’ Mine to the techno themes playing behind the scenes, every music choice suited the movie’s theme and what was happening on the screen.

Conclusion:

Would I say Thor: Love and Thunder is bad? No, that’s a little too far, there were definitely good moments and the humor did land every now and then. But I hesitate to call it good either.

I don’t think it’s as bad as people hating on it say it is, but it’s also not as good as some hardcore Marvel fans might tell you it is either.

Overall Rating: 5/10

Ever wonder why the gods from Omnipotence City didn’t help in the fight against Thanos?

Written by Adrian Pilanga

A lover of all thing nerdy, well, ALMOST all things (I'm looking at you every bad movie adaptation of video games ever). There's nothing better than talking about the things you're a huge fan of, so here I am.

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