*WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER*
Let me be the first to say that Thor: Love and Thunder was a big step-up from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and that’s not saying much if you remember how Doctor Strange 2 played out. If you enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok, then I’m pretty sure you’re going to like this flick as well. The action scenes were amazing, the cinematography was masterful, the special effects were good (and questionable), and the comedy was amusing while also being a tad forced, but this was a good movie nonetheless. Let’s go into detail, shall we?
The Plot
The story opens with the origin of Gorr the God Butcher, the main villain of this movie, where we see him and his daughter wandering through a desert in search of shelter. Unfortunately Gorr’s daughter dies of starvation and dehydration, and Gorr is left to wander alone until he here’s an ominous voice calling him. He follows the voice to an oasis where the god he worshiped is chilling, and Gorr begs him for help, but the god just laughs at him. The god was in a chipper mood because he just killed the previous wielder of the Necrosword, a god killing weapon, and in a fit of rage Gorr uses the sword to kill the god he once worshiped. The sword curses Gorr with dark magic, and he sets off on his quest to kill all the gods.
Next we get some narration from Korg telling the story of Thor, which was pretty much a goofy summary of everything Thor has been up to till this point, and then we cut to Thor helping the Guardians of the Galaxy fight these fuzzy aliens who are trying to conquer a planet of peaceful aliens. The battle is over in seconds when Thor arrives, and when the Guardians were prepping to leave, they see thousands of distress calls from across the galaxy saying a “God Butcher” is killing all their gods. The heroes are confused until Thor see one of the distress calls coming from Lady Sif, so Korg and him quickly leave the Guardians to help Sif, but it was too late. Gorr already killed the god Sif was protecting and she lost an arm.
They travel to New Asgard, which has become Earth’s greatest tourist attraction, only to find it’s being invaded by shadow demons. Thor and Korg rush in to help Valkyrie battle these monsters, and Thor sees that New Asgard got a new warrior with the same powers as himself. He finds this new warrior on the battlefield to be none other than his old flame, Dr. Jane Foster, wielding a repaired Mjölnir.
So a little backstory, Jane has stage four cancer while also being born with a mutation that made her body resistant to the cancer treatment, so she had to look for a more “unique” form of treatment. Similar to how the Necrosword called to Gorr, Mjölnir called out to Jane to become the Mighty Thor. The hammer’s connection to Jane is hinted in a Korg narrated flashback of the love story of Thor and Jane, in it Thor tells Mjölnir to promise to always protect her (which is a step up from the comic’s explanation). Jane is just as strong and invincible as Thor when she’s in her god form, but her cancer worsens every time she reverts to her human form, so unfortunately old nordic magic is a temporary remedy.
After the battle is done, Gorr kidnaps all the children of New Asgard, which prones Thor to form a rescue team with Jane, Valkyrie, and Korg to save them and kill Gorr. This sends them on a journey to Omnipotence City, a meeting ground for all the gods, to gather other gods to help them fight Gorr. This does not go as planned since the head honcho of the city, Zeus (yes, the one from Greek myth), refused to help Thor because he didn’t want to start a panic amongst the other gods. This disagreement erupts into a huge fight, Korg’s body gets destroyed by Zeus’ Thunderbolt (reducing him to a talking head), Thor “kills” Zeus with the Thunderbolt, and the team make a run for it while stealing said Thunderbolt.
The third act is pretty straightforward. The team travel to fight Gorr on his home turf, they get their asses handed to them, Stormbreaker gets stolen by Gorr so he can use it to find the all-powerful Eternity to wish for all gods to be killed, Jane’s cancer worsens till the point where if she uses her god form again it’ll kill her, Thor ventures to fight Gorr and save the kids alone, Jane uses the hammer one more time to help Thor, Thor and Jane save the kids and destroy the Necrosword, but they fail to stop Gorr from meeting Eternity. The three of them get sucked into a dimension outside of the multiverse, and Gorr starts to make his wish. Thor tells Gorr that killing the gods won’t fill the void in his heart, and Gorr tries to justify himself by saying the gods took the love of his life from him, in which Thor says to just wish for them back. Gorr ends up wishing for his daughter to be resurrected, and as Gorr is dying (the sword was keeping him alive) he makes Thor promise to look after her, and Thor accepts. Both Gorr and Jane die in this scene, and Jane is remembered by the people of new Asgard as the Mighty Thor, the hero gave her life to save the innocent, while Thor is off saving the galaxy while raising Gorr’s daughter (who has some cosmic powers of her own), and the movie ends on a note that everything is going to be alright.
The two end credit scenes did hold some promise for interesting future movies. The first is with Zeus healing from his wounds while vowing revenge on Thor and the Asgardians with the help of his son, Hercules. The second scene has Jane being greeted by Heimdall at the gates of Valhalla, welcoming her to the afterlife for warriors. I will add that characters who ascend to Valhalla do have the tendency to come back to life, just putting that out there, but enough of plot talk, let’s get to the pros and cons.
The Pros
The fight sequences were fucking spectacular when edited with the correct use of CGI. The different worlds we got to explore in the movie were stunning, and this movie opened up new horizons for future movies who want to dive into a more mythical theme. The introduction of the other gods opens the playing field for more diversity since Marvel can now include more religions and mythologies to create new heroes and stories. We got the first glimpse of this in Moon Knight when we learned of the existence of the egyptian gods, and there was also a cameo of the Wakandan panther god, Bast, in Thor 4 during the gather of gods (Bast is sitting below Jane):
Another pro for this movie were the scenes between Thor and Jane, and I especially enjoyed the flashbacks of their happy times together. This movie also showed us that Thor becoming an Avenger and Jane becoming a world renowned scientist caused them to drift apart and eventually breaking up (kind of a dick move that Jane dumped Thor with a letter), but I’m glad that the love they once had for each other was still prevalent throughout the movie (we get a smooch scene and a “I love you” scene).
Valkyrie was still a badass as usual, Jane and her shared some good chemistry. Korg was more involved in this movie than he was in Thor 3, and it was nice to see him hook-up with another Kronan to make a rock baby (did find it funny that Kronans procreate by holding hands inside of a mountain for a few months). Christian Bale did a great job as Gorr, he really made the character his own, and his performance paved the way for new sigma male/American Psycho memes for the internet to enjoy. The movie was pretty good, but it did have more issues that outweighed the good.
The Cons
I said before that Christan Bale did great as Gorr, but my one issue with Gorr was that he was barely in the movie. For a movie with a villain labeled as “The God Butcher ”, we didn’t see a lot of god butchering. The first two acts of the movie made Gorr look like an afterthought rather than an imposing threat. I know he kidnapped a bunch of kids, but most of the audience knew he wasn’t going to hurt or kill any of them since we saw earlier that he’s a grieving father. More Gorr scenes would’ve made my viewing experience more enjoyable, and there are a lot of fans who agree with this sentiment. Gorr was one of Thor’s most vicious enemies in the comics, and I don’t think this movie did him any justice.
There was also a lot of forced comedy in this movie, which I guess can be blamed on us because MCU fans enjoyed the hell out of Thor 3 because of the comedy, so predictably the studio and Taika Waititi focused more on the comedic aspect during the writing process. I was one of the people who loved Thor 3 for the comedy, but the humor was too much in this one. Hell, there were even some moments where the plot felt rushed and still trying to figure out what kind of movie it was trying to be. Also let’s not forget the CGI:
There were more than a few moments when the CGI looked like shit, and this movie had a $250 million budget for fucksake! A bunch of fans and myself are starting to notice that most of the new Phase 4 movies and tv shows are showing a significant decline in CGI quality as of late, and with that came the news stories about VFX workers claiming that Marvel Studios was a terrible work environment with bad pay and outrageous deadlines to meet. Almost every media outlet is talking about the grievances VFX artists are sharing from their time working at Marvel, thus explaining the decline of CGI. I might further explore the situation in another blog, but here’s link to a video explaining what we currently know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jaC4yh3RbM
Final Thoughts
This movie was an entertaining watch, but it unfortunately fell flat in a lot of areas that can’t be overlooked. This is not to say that Thor: Love and Thunder was a terrible movie, but it could’ve been better. Just like with Doctor Strange 2, I had high expectations for Thor 4 simply because we were getting the live action debut of Gorr, but the fact that Taika Waititi focused on making a “family-friendly” movie instead of a balance between seriousness and comedy like he did with Thor: Ragnarok was disappointing, so I give this a 7.5/10. Hopefully Thor 5 will be better if it gets greenlit.
What did you all think of Thor: Love and Thunder? Did you love it or hate? Is this the best Thor movie to date, or do you think this movie could’ve been better? Let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear some feedback from my readers. Anyway that’s all I have for you today, so be sure to leave a like and subscribe if you haven’ yet to get notified when I upload new blogs. This is your friendly neighborhood cosplayer saying goodbye, and see you next time.
Hall of Mercs 