Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor has been a big joke for his whole existence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The first film is a parody of bad opera, the second is the serious one and way down in the list of popular Marvel movies, the third a revelation of comedy in the MCU, and the fourth is comedy overload. For some reason, a lot of MCU fans didn’t like Love and Thunder. Somehow they were expecting something serious even though the serious one is their least favorite, and complained how awful Love and Thunder is because it’s funny. Maybe a lot of the fans didn’t like it cause it’s a romantic comedy.

Love and Thunder blends romantic comedy into the style of previous movies loaded with  banter and slapstick and outright goofiness. Everything begins darkly, with the kind of bad guy backstory an audience rarely experiences. A father loses his daughter, then loses respect for the god he so strongly revered. Then all the other gods, some of them friends of ours, begin to meet their end at the hands of this vengeful father. Thor has been bumbling around the china shop of good guy intentions, creating more chaos than the bad guys in his efforts to vanquish evil. This is how he ends up with two battleship sized screaming goats. Jane, the only woman he ever loved, is dying of cancer until one day she goes to visit Mjolnir and a funny thing happens. Muscle-y hi-jinks and loads of goat screaming ensue.

The simplistic plot barely intersects Marvel’s vast universe story-lines, and that’s okay because everything is a set up for yet another joke. There are jokes telegraphed by the filmmakers that are just as funny waiting for the punchline as seeing it land. There are visual jokes as bad as coastal tourist stage plays. There are so, so many physical jokes, mostly of a violent nature. There are a lot of ways this movie is funny, and by the end of it I felt punch drunk from the ton of jokes landing on me.

Cameos by well hidden A List actors seems to be a running gag in the movie. I described the bad guy in my notes as, “Voldemort’s third cousin twice removed.” His appearance felt like an inside joke on another franchise, a sort of hidden cameo. Try to spot Matt Damon, Melissa McCarthy (and Ben Falcone, of course), Luke Hemsworth, and Russel Crow. The music was heavily skewed toward Axl Rose songs (Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City, Sweet Child of Mine and November Rain are all in Love and Thunder.) I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but one of the secondary characters shares the singer’s first name and is a fan. I liked all the cameos and it got even better when I noticed the Hemsworth name crop up several times in the credits.

This Thor movie is a rich stew of every kind of humor, from base to elegant from subtle to hammer-time.  It is relentless in its humor and I for one found it hilarious if not exhausting.  The music works much better in this Thor than the last Guardians of the Galaxy, and I never get tired of watching Chris Hemsworth flexing and goofing around and taking himself so not seriously.

LINKS:

• Thor: Love and Thunder – Marvel.com Official Website
• Thor: Love and Thunder – Disney+ Official Website
• Thor: Love and Thunder – IMDB
• Thor: Love and Thunder – Wikipedia

CFR: In Addition

When Mildred told me she was reviewing Thor: Love and Thunder I was so happy! It is a Marvel MCU movie so of course I went to the theaters to see it. And yes I liked it a lot. In fact, the last scene brought tears to my eyes of joy.

Ok, look critics are a bit right about this movie: It is silly and funny. Sometimes Thor’s character doesn’t make sense from the last movies we have seen him in. My hubby said he acted like an idiot sometimes.

HOWEVER! TIMEOUT AND PEOPLE LISTEN UP!

The MCU is BRILLIANT because it is bringing comic books to the screen! Am I the only one around here who has read 10 years of a comic book title straight through? Perhaps. One thing you learn when you read a comic title straight through for 10 years is that the book CHANGES. That’s right! Depending on the writer, editor, artist, all of the above, the comic title can change drastically. So what? You read it, and you keep going. Or you don’t.

So it was no surprise to me that Thor: Love and Thunder had a different and silly feel. Both Hemsworth and director Taika Waititi wanted to go far out on this project and made it extra goofy. You could argue that it went too far. You could also say, chill out and freaking enjoy it!

Yes I laughed out loud many many times. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I liked watching the characters be silly for a change. So much grief and doom happened in Endgame I was glad for a change. To go into detail I must alert to SPOILERS.

I loved seeing Jane (Natalie Portman) and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) work with each other and with Thor and Korg. Oh they were so much fun! I love how they supported each other and the men with the same friendly camaraderie. I enjoyed seeing Jane and Thor on screen again. I really like those two. I also applaud that romance in this movie celebrated the queer. Excellent.

As for the music – wow! I have loved those G&R songs for years and I was deeply moved when the ending orchestra passage of November Rain played. I had to lip sing along.

I will say though that I thoroughly enjoyed this romp and for me the ending was pure superhero magic.

The title gave a lot away about what this movie was going to focus on: Love. Often in our culture when we see the word love as part of a title we think romantic love. Therefore we assume Thor and Jane are getting back together. Or not. Could be a tear jerker. What we don’t think is that love, along with the feeling of connection and belonging, can and does go way beyond romantic love.

In the end, what Thor was searching for the whole movie, was indeed love that gave him the feeling of belonging. The love he got was through a foster daughter (played by Hemsworth’s read daughter India -SCHWEET!).

When Thor and his foster daughter finish the movie with Thor giving the little one lessons that his mother gave him, if that doesn’t stir your heart, well, I don’t get it. There is Thor talking about protecting those who are smaller and weaker and stopping bullies. Isn’t that what every great superhero is about!?! They then look over a beach where smaller, weaker beings are about to be slaughtered by bigger bully beings. So Thor and his niece – she calls him Uncle Thor – run into battle to save the smaller beings.

You hear Korg, played by Taika Taitit say that these two are fighting the good fight for those who can’t fight good. And for those who knew them, they were simply called Love and Thunder.”

It still makes me cry.

Now that’s a super hero ending.