Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to Earth on the trail of a new threat: the god-slaying Gorr (Christian Bale).
After Gorr kidnaps the children of Asgard, Thor, Korg (Taika Waititi), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and his former flame Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) join forces to rescue them.
Watching Black Widow, I felt like I had hit a wall trying to write about Marvel movies.
If you liked Ragnarok like I did, there is much to enjoy in Love and Thunder.
The biggest problem I had with it was that nothing had stuck in the brain. The story is kind of a combination of a couple of promising threads, but when it was all over it felt like nothing had happened.
For a good portion of the first act it feels like a rerun of the previous movie’s jokes. That’s great if you loved Matt Damon and Sam Neil’s appearance as actors - they are back.
I was looking forward to Natalie Portman’s return - she is great but like everything in the movie it felt like she was barely in it.
The movie’s plot is also odd. Christian Bale plays a man betrayed by his gods who is determined to slay all the deities in the universe. Maybe because the threat is so focused on godlings I felt no real stakes.
The film tries to make the threat stronger by having Gorr kidnap New Asgard’s children but they just feel like a plot device. The threat is also diminished by the humor and the fact that Thor keeps interacting with them via a psychic link.
One issue I have with the film is that I do not think it threads the needle between the dramatic component and its comedic sensibility.
The humour is poking fun at the ludicrousness of Thor juxtaposed with everyday reality but so much of the movie takes place in formless cosmic spaces. Ragnarok benefited from being set in one place (that was represented by physical sets).
The story also feels like a different movie from the tone.Neither tone nor content fully negate each other, but they feel at odds throughout the movie, meaning that big emotional moments do not connect.
It is a pity because I think there is some potential here.
The way Jane is dealing with her cancer is interesting - it is nice to see a character who is not treating it as a death sentence. Jane wants to carry on living.
I could not help having the sneaking suspicion that Jane’s plotline was the filmmaker’s way of giving Portman something weighty to chew on.
Portman and Hemsworth work well together and it is a pity that the movie around them feels so formless. I feel like the movie would be more interesting without the villain or his scheme. A looser plot structure would have served Jane and Thor’s story more effectively.
As is, it feels like we have been dropped into a single issue where a thousand different plots are happening.
Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie is dealing with being the king of New Asgard - she is basically reduced to a supporting role. Waititi’s Korg also returns, but he feels like a callback to the last movie.
I have seen some criticism that these later Marvel movies lack a sense of an overarching arc. I am glad they do not, but it feels like this movie could have lost the need to hit all of the tropes.
Ragnarok felt like such a breath of fresh air and so it is disappointing that Love and Thunder feels more rote - it feels more like a traditional comedic sequel, with repetition of a lot of jokes, familiar bits (if you enjoyed ‘Immigrant Song’ in Ragnarok, you get a medley of 80s metal songs here, to lesser effect) and a few celebrity cameos.
As with almost all Marvel movies, the bad guy role is thankless. Christian Bale joins the list of heavyweights who have appeared in the franchise and made almost no impression - he is good but he is barely in the movie.
A few beats stick in the mind - Thor’s tense relationship with his ex Mjolnir and current weapon Stormbreaker is hilarious - but overall Love and Thunder is not as memorable as its title would suggest.
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