Thor: Love and Thunder

The hysteria around this film it’s pointless, I didn't find it any worse than Waititi's previous entry. It's almost heretically disrespectful to the comic book genre, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and as someone bored to death with most Marvel movies who sees the whole of Phase 4 as a degradation of everything the entire Marvel universe stands for, this film actually made me happy. No one speaks seriously, no one delivers pathetic speeches, and if anything, you can feel Waititi's irony in it; Gun´n´Roses gives it the right note of rebellion, and the annoying goats that a lot of people complain about take up only minimal space. Bale's Gorr is great, he has a believable dramatic arc, and Russell Crowe and his lard-soaked character finally got a meaningful use, I enjoyed his Zeus a lot. Normally I'd give 3*, but I'm rooting for crazy nerds like Taika, cinema needs people like him. (2022-09-25)

Too much of the same in Waititi's delivery. What was fresh last time has now become annoying. It's like a five year old directing, just cramming all the ideas in, not realising that if he gives a joke three seconds after a fateful scene, he'll be killing the whole thing. That said, we have a potentially very interesting bad guy, and even Thor's relationship with Jane Foster has some interesting depth. I remembered that video from The Onion featuring Chris Morgan, the writer of Fast and Furious, and he was a five-year-old boy. This is exactly the same thing. Waititi is having fun, his stars are having fun, and I'm bored because the movie, despite a ton of action, a lot of humor, and some strong emotional scenes, is neither engaging, nor funny, nor ultimately interesting. When Marvel first rolled out, I had a terrible time watching each film try to at least partially grasp the genre. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was at its core an old-school spy thriller, Iron Man a techno thriller and Thor honest-to-goodness fantasy. Now all that gone. Now it's just a movie by Taika Waititi, a director who can't give a film any dramatic shape. And he can't even manage not to be ironic and not cut his own scenes. Instead, he crams flying goats and has them scream hilariously about twenty times. Most of the time it was all slightly embarrassing. (2022-07-07)

The alternation of serious themes and humour for small children may have worked with Jojo Rabbit (though I didn’t like it too much there, either), but Waititi’s style is incredibly annoying, like a drunken clown you kick out of a kid’s birthday party, but he keeps on coming in through the window. As a result, the new Thor didn't work for me, neither in terms of humour, nor in terms of the dramatic level that the creators were trying to achieve, which is a recurring motif in Marvel movies of the last few years, for which I can more and more often say as a positive only the cliché that they are colourful and moving. And I would put the word positive in quotes. (2022-08-08)

An even bigger Thor: Ragnarok than Ragnarok itself. Overloaded action, 80s explosions, workable pathos, and a standard of taste trampled somewhere in the dirt. Thor has found the utmost limits of self-parody in his quest, and even though the public doesn't need to know him like this anymore, I couldn't be happier. It was a bold choice to alternate between the most infantile lines, the almost melancholic mood, and a theatrically demonic enemy, one that's not worth trying to overcome because it might not even be possible without disrupting the entire concept. (2022-12-29)

Phase 4 is without a doubt Marvel’s weakest – Black Widow, Eternals and Dr. Strange are all mediocre comic book movies and it shows in the ratings (the days when every new Marvel movie was in red are over). The new Thor may not be a revolution, but it is definitely the most fun and the best of the aforementioned three. I would have preferred to see someone other than Taika Waititi in the director's chair, his style doesn't suit me that well, I wasn't too keen on Ragnarok either, probably because it was too similar to Star Wars, but I enjoyed Love and Thunder. The plot is simple and it doesn't bring anything particularly interesting to the MCU universe, which is a bit disappointing, but as a fun, colorful, funny and effective blockbuster it works reliably. The chemistry between Hemsworth and Portman is awesome, Christian Bale plays a solid creepy villain for the first time in a long time in a Marvel movie, Gorr the God Butcher. He stole all the scenes to himself and added some darkness to all that colour. The humour is rather juvenile but there were a few laughs (Korg and the goats were the most entertaining – their roars always made me laugh). the music was also good and the emotions work in the end. The action isn't exactly spectacular and it's not my style, but it suits the film. (I have no idea if I will ever get more intimate and contact action like in Captain America: Winter Soldier). I was disappointed with Russell Crowe as Zeus. Story 3/5. Action 4/5, Humor 4/5, Violence 0/5, Fun 4/5 Music 5/5, Visuals 4/5, Atmosphere 3/5, Suspense 3/5, Emotion 3/5, Actors 4/5. 6.5/10. (2022-07-07)