Thor: Love and Thunder

dir: Taika Waititi

2022

Not that it matters, not that the world cares…

I was determined to review this Marvel flick before the latest, current Marvel flick. The difference between them isn’t just intent and timing.

The biggest difference is while the existence of Love and Thunder is amusing to me, seeing as it adapts the storyline where Jane becomes The Mighty Thor, with bulging biceps and all, and wields the magical hammer Mjolnir, the thing is, I don’t really care about it that much as a movie or as anything else.

I care about the sequel to Black Panther for a number of reasons, so that will be a very different review.

This? Well… It’s silly, as we expect most things that involve Taika Waititi to be, but there are levels at which the silliness in his films is charming and enjoyable, and levels at which it is grating and the opposite of fun (which is known as “work”).

Love and Thunder is painful and grating in a lot, A LOT, of its running time. It’s actively painful. The most obvious example of this is the inclusion of two screaming goats as a form of transportation for the core crew on their adventures. It’s one of those gags that, like Sideshow Bob stepping continuously on rakes, is dependent on going for such a length of time that it stretches the bounds of what we consider acceptably funny, past that, to the point where the absurdity makes it even funnier.

The more stuff grates here, the more the goats scream, the more painful it becomes. It doesn’t, at least for me, at least on this first watch, go back all the way back around to being funny again.

Oh, no. Definitely not.

It’s not like I was hungover when I was watching it. Or drunk. I imagine it would have helped.

You may think Thor or Jane Foster are the main characters, but really, there are two other main characters, being Gorr the so-called God-Butcher (Christian Bale), who is in a different movie from Hemsworth and Natalie Portman, and Korg (a CGI pile of rock voiced by Waititi himself).

Korg narrates everything that happens with a voice that would irritate puppies and kittens after more than 10 seconds of exposure. He narrates so, so much crap. It’s nice that Waititi has figured out his model for working in flicks in that, when it’s a for-hire gig (not something he’s written and directed off his own bat), he insists that there’s a role for him, and if it’s a returning franchise entry, his part has to expand, regardless of how superfluous that character is to anything that happens or should happen.

I mean, I “like” Korg, and even I didn’t see much need for him to be the lynchpin of the movie here.

There’s simultaneously a lot going on and not much to really care about. When I question my feelings as to how I feel about seeing Natalie Portman again as Jane, the idea of it is a pleasing one, the image of her in the armour with the hammer is an enjoyable one, and the storyline feels like it should be a meaningful one. After all, the character, absent from the other recent Thor flick or the other recent Marvel ones he’s appeared in, is back. And she’s battling stage 4 cancer.

And, past a certain point, the only thing keeping her alive is the magic hammer. It gives the two heroes the chance to reconcile, to reconnect, to fuck, I guess, and then accept that there’s nothing they can do in the face of the inevitable.

What a character arc. It’s meant to parallel Gorr’s path as a character, where he goes from being a reasonable mortal chap whose daughter is dying, who vows to finds the gods of his world or pantheon to save her, who, disgusted when he finds out that they don’t care and let her and everyone else die, vows to kill all gods with the help of a magic sword.

Then, as a villain who sets about killing all the gods, he eventually, confronted by the heroes, who can’t really do anything against him, chooses pretty much to die as long as it lets him resurrect his daughter in his place.

I am… confused as to how I’m meant to feel about any of this stuff. Because the truth is I didn’t feel too much.

There’s been a running motif in the Thor flicks for a while of Asgardians, and, later on, New Asgardians, I guess, really liking the tales of Thor’s and Loki’s etc adventures being performed for them as plays, with Matt Damon and other hacks like Sam Neill, Hemsworth’s brother and even Melissa McCarthy playing Hela this time around. It’s kinda excruciating, but I guess it could be funny. So, it’s a pantomime telling a story of a different story. This flick, at times, with scenes with Portman and Hemsworth, feels like a pantomime of a pantomime of a pantomime.

And there I was hoping something else would happen. Other than having to listen to Guns N’ Fucking Roses continuously.

As Gorr begins his rampage against the gods, with there not actually being an explanation of what a “god” is in this universe, Thor thinks that going to a place where a bunch of gods hang out, being Omnipotence City, will be the solution to everyone’s problems, because then all the gods could form a posse and go kill Gorr before he picks them off one by one. Again, at no stage did I actually understand what “god” meant here. Does it mean someone with a shiny outfit who’s been alive for a long time, or someone with a religion based around them, or does it just mean any being with supernatural abilities?

Which means all the heroes and all the villains in all these fucking Marvel movies? Are they gods in the eyes of us mere mortals?

But there are the deities of whatever religions exist in this universe, and they hang out there like it’s some kind of galactic senate, and they have a boss, being Zeus(?) Zeus is played by that famous Greek actor Russell Crowe.

Now, this isn’t going to mean anything to anyone born after the year 2000. And yes, I am flattering myself thinking a) anyone reads my reviews, b) anyone between the ages of 0 and 100 reads my reviews and c) anyone 40 or under reads my reviews or any of the complaint letters I send in to the newspapers on a daily basis. But no-one under a certain age, who isn’t Australian, who isn’t most likely someone who grew up in Victoria, or New South Wales, possibly, would have any idea who or what the Comedy Company was.

And they wouldn’t know who the character of Con the Fruiterer is or was, played by famous Greek comedic actor Mark Mitchell. With all of that said, I can pretty much guarantee you that Russell Crowe remembers Con the fucking Fruiterer.

How do I know that? Well, because reasons, main one being, he sounds exactly like Con the Fucking Fruiterer in this goddamn flick where he’s playing Zeus, leader of the gods, cappo di tutti cappi, boss of all bosses.

And he has the lightning bolt to prove it.

This sequence at Omnipotence City is too much, and sad, and a bit funny at brief times (like the dainty manner in which Zeus prances down some steps), and, it’s a lot, but one of the words I fail to conjure when describing this section, or many parts of the flick, is the word “ great” or “good” or enjoyable or fun.

There’s a kind of twee meanness to how the film approaches the Thor character this time, sort of implying that, for all the supposed “growth” the character may have undergone over so many instalments, despite looking like the child of a pirate and an angel, that he’s something of a fuckwit and no-one can really stand being around him too long. Maybe that’s Waititi’s revenge on Hemsworth for being Hemsworth?

Waititi seems also to lean into his quirkiness to the extent that it becomes an aggressive exercise to see how much we can tolerate and still pay good money to see a film directed by him without complaining. Even I, with a skyhigh tolerance for quirk get fucking sick of it sometimes.

If I enjoyed any parts of the flick, or was genuinely curious as to what was going to happen, it was when Gorr was talking or doing anything. The weird accent that he adopts (weird for him because he was born in Wales and grew up in Bournemouth, and has absolutely no reason to sound Cockney) actually kinda sorta works for this character. And I actually buy his motivation for wanting to kill the kinds of gods who promise to heal their worshippers, or protect them from harm, and who do nothing out of spite or indifference.

I don’t really get why a magic sword lets him kill everybody, since everyone has a magic weapon that lets them do magical things (until the plot doesn’t let them anymore), but that’s okay while it lasts. Too many bloody gods as it is, these days. Time to thin the herd.

He does, at one point, kidnap a bunch of Asgardian kids, which I am not a fan of. There really wasn’t a sense that he was going to harm the kids, it is funny when he horrifies them unintentionally during storytime.

The resolution at the end requires a number of characters making choices that are the opposite of what they stated they wanted, and that’s okay. It’s okay to admit that Chris Hemsworth can be fun as a comedic performer, has large muscles, and has nothing really interesting to do or say as this character anymore. It’s never going to actually grow in any meaningful way or do anything too different from anything it’s done before.

So it’s okay for everyone involved to do something else. I’m sure Natalie Portman won’t regret not playing this character again. She’s done plenty. Tally ho, so long, thanks for all the fish and all that.

6 ways in which if I say that the film’s resolution involved Thor adopting Love you wouldn’t believe me out of 10

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“It feels more like a promise than a curse. So, this is my vow: all gods will die.” – from your lips to, um, God’s ears - Thor: Love and Thunder