It really irritates me how bad Love and Thunder is
So I know the film will have its fans. You're entitled to your opinion as am I. I often found myself defending Ragnarok because of how different it was in tone to the first two movies and how it, effectively, turned Thor into a joke character.
Ragnarok was fun and helped make Thor a fun character to watch. I've also been a massive fan of Taika Waititi's in the past. Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows and Jojo Rabbit are among my absolute favourite movies, but if ever there was an example of success going to the head of a creator, it's Taika.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna say things about the movie people haven't said already. About its treatment of Gorr the God Butcher, played by fucking CHRISTIAN BALE! (and not actually featuring him butchering any Gods), its terrible introduction and treatment of Jane Foster's Thor, but in the build up, I was incredibly excited for both of these things.
Conceptually, Taika had on paper what could have been the best MCU movie potentially ever, if done right (and if he cared). Again, he had Gorr, he had an "Asguardians of the Galaxy" set up literally handed to him ready, he had the possibility of doing Jane Foster's Thor. But it's such a clear example of someone seeing their own success and phoning it in to a degree that was not just an insult to followers of the MCU, but to cinemagoers in general.
Maybe I sound dramatic (and I probably am), but I'm just irritated and insulted every time I remember this movie exists. The MCU is not short of its bad movies and shows, we all know that, but I would argue that L&T is among the absolute worst of the bunch, but it's an example of something that could have been truly something special if Taika actually just cared about what he was making.
Oh, and that's not even mentioning the pathetically awkward bluetooth speaker product placement.
Ragnarok was fun and helped make Thor a fun character to watch. I've also been a massive fan of Taika Waititi's in the past. Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows and Jojo Rabbit are among my absolute favourite movies, but if ever there was an example of success going to the head of a creator, it's Taika.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna say things about the movie people haven't said already. About its treatment of Gorr the God Butcher, played by fucking CHRISTIAN BALE! (and not actually featuring him butchering any Gods), its terrible introduction and treatment of Jane Foster's Thor, but in the build up, I was incredibly excited for both of these things.
Conceptually, Taika had on paper what could have been the best MCU movie potentially ever, if done right (and if he cared). Again, he had Gorr, he had an "Asguardians of the Galaxy" set up literally handed to him ready, he had the possibility of doing Jane Foster's Thor. But it's such a clear example of someone seeing their own success and phoning it in to a degree that was not just an insult to followers of the MCU, but to cinemagoers in general.
Maybe I sound dramatic (and I probably am), but I'm just irritated and insulted every time I remember this movie exists. The MCU is not short of its bad movies and shows, we all know that, but I would argue that L&T is among the absolute worst of the bunch, but it's an example of something that could have been truly something special if Taika actually just cared about what he was making.
Oh, and that's not even mentioning the pathetically awkward bluetooth speaker product placement.
Commentaires
But Jesus Christ, Love and Thunder is despicably bad in my opinion. It's a fascinating example of how the style of humor and storytelling of an action comedy like Ragnarok can be cranked up just a little too far and become a total disaster. I'm still mad *for* Christian Bale. I'm convinced that he would've been a bad choice even if the movie was as great as Ragnarok was. He should be in a movie with a Tone closer to Thunderbolts/Eternals.
As it is, there is damn near no point to the Deviants
I thought they would handle it like the Skrulls in Captain Marvel being refugees from the Kree
I enjoyed DW more than IM3 personally
"How?"
"CaUsE wE're cOnneCteD" 🥺😂🖕🏼 🚗 💨
Too much Sentient Storm Breaker.
Little too much Goats
Too little Gorr doing Gorr things
Worst MCU movie by far, felt like a corny shitty kid movie.
By the end of L&T I wanted to shout "shut the fuck up!!!" At my screen whenever he talked.
Gorr not getting to butcher any gods is another massive problem.
Ragnarok has a similar tone to L&T but the movie has actual stakes by letting Hela be a real cold hearted psycho to balance out the stuff on Sakaar. L&T doesn't seem at all interested in having any real stakes and outside of Jane dying of cancer I found that the movie also lacks any emotional weight.
Personally I’d strip out almost every other joke and just keep those ones to remind the audience that it’s all a bit ridiculous but everything should’ve been played straight for the seriousness of gorr
Not as bad as Capt America Brave New World or The Marvels but it comes pretty close,
It still managed to have strong themes of trauma, and getting better. I think Natalie Portman did great.
The action was great, the fight scene that's all black and white except for their powers was amazing.
I'll never understand the overwhelming hate this movie and Eternals get. Both great movies. While people keep praising black panther or shang-chi, while being just alright, bordering on boring.
Basically I disagree completely with all you said.
but what am I saying? I'll watch all of what they put out.
And before people say that Jane's use of Thor's power killing her was in the comics, that particular story element didn't need to be part of the character and actress' return after a real-world decade of absence.
GOTG is one of those rare MCU trilogies that can be enjoyed as a stand-alone. Yes, GOTG3 has the fallout of Endgame (which wasn't part of Gunns original script. He did have plans for Star-Lord and Gamora that didn't involve her death), but Gunn was able to weave it together in a way that this trilogy still holds up.
So in that context, having Thor suddenly show up in GOTG3 would be confusing to a non-MCU audience in the future who decides to just watch the Guardians Trilogy.
I believe there was a potential MCU Special called Asgardians of the Galaxy, which would have just been like a 1-hour thing on D+ that connected both, but that was dismissed quick when Gunn did the holiday special instead and Taika agreed to take one for the team and have the Guardians be in Thor. There was also the writers strike and Gunn's suicide squad/ DC commitment, that moved these schedules around and allowed for it.
Gorr wants to kill the gods and bring back his daughter, so he needs to find eternity and get to her to make his wish to bring her back.
In this movie, he 1. Kidnapps Alex, who has the all sight and 2. Steals Stormbreaker which has a Bifrost power. The reason? He wanted to goad Thor into bring Stormbreaker to him with the kids and use it as the key to Eternity's Gate.
Why the FUCK was Stormbreaker the key? An axe that got made like 2 years ago for a different reason and purpose.
How was the plot not, Gorr needs Axel's Allsight to FIND Eternity at the centre of the universe and then Stormbreaker to use the Bifrost to get there and then kill the kids to end the next generation of Gods?
It just breaks my brain how the plot doesnt use its own pieces in a way to execute its own plot.
The set up with him having a "daughter" at the end can lead to some good stuff. Imagine if this kid becomes Angela or something
Sorry, it just bugs me.
My biggest issue with the film is that it felt like no-one was taking it seriously. I don’t mean that tonally in the sense of me wanting a serious movie, but even making a comedy is a job. I wasn’t as enthusiastic about *Thor: Ragnarok* as most people, but that was a needed reconstruction, while *Love & Thunder* was a Flanderisation of what made its predecessor work.
Every time I think about that movie I get pissed off.
Too silly. Massive waste of Gorr. Too many kids in the story (always a bugbear of mine).
I hope the first thing they do is kill off Gorr's kid, which turns Thor violent.
Others like Captain Marvel, Black Widow or Multiverse of Madness I at least had a period of “well it was alright I guess…”, but with Love and Thunder it was “wow that was dogshit” the second I left the theatre lol
Ragnarok is in my top 5 MCU movies and Jojo Rabbit is quite literally my favourite film ever but man did Taika miss the mark with this one…
Love and thunder was this for me too. It was the first one I didn't re-watch as my wife and I have a tradition of double watching marvel movies.
The second was Quantum Mania.
Christian Bale and Natalie Portman absolutely carry the whole film on their shoulders, and I feel bad for Hemsworth as a result. His character has been flanderised to an extent that I can no longer take Thor seriously, despite his story being one of the most tragic in the franchise.
Throw in the poor CGI, those fucking goats, the waste of the Olympians, the paper thin story telling, and Taika's insistence on humour over emotional impact, and it's a genuinely bad film.
And if they had taken Cassie out in general
I love Gorr. Anybody who says they didn’t get enough Gorr or wished they’d seen him butcher gods make me imagine them complaining that they got Anthony Fucking Hopkins to play Hannibal Lecter and he only killed two people and didn’t even eat anybody in Silence of the Lambs!
Thor’s journey is wonderful and his best development since the first Thor. I love that he tries to hide his pain with humor the way the Guardians do and he finds that he’s terrible at it. When he drops it and finally lets himself be vulnerable he finally grows up and grieves and takes responsibility for himself. It’s beautiful.
My only complaint is I wish the goats didn’t scream quite so much or quite so loud.
I genuinely think this movie has a lot to be proud of and a lot of the things people criticize it for has a narrative purpose that resonates really well with me.
People say they wasted Gorr, but like you said the opening is brutal, every scene he's in is captivating and they wrote the movie around him being absolutely correct. He has a lasting effect on Thor's ideology.
I don't know man, I think this movie came out at a time where YouTube, MCU rage bait was at an all time high and unfortunately, by daring to be a little different from the "God of War" Thor the internet seems to want, this gave them too much of a target and all the criticism around it seems to be shallow memeing. Or maybe Im wrong. Who knows.
Bale as Gorr is great. Slightly campy but very menacing. I agree that we don't need to see him killing more gods.
For me, the story of Thor is one of perseverance through tragedy and loss. By the time we see him at the end of Endgame, he has accepted and internalised his grief. The catharsis of seeing his Mother again during the time heist and the moment of "I'm still worthy" is important. The serious Thor that we see fighting Thanos/handing over the mantle of King to Valkyrie is where I'd have liked to have seen L&T pick up. Instead, we get the whacky/goofy version again and it feels like a regression.
Seems kind of in bad taste given that Ragnarok, in spite of its humor, still revealed Odin to be a fraud and a colonizer
But I laughed a lot.
Then I realized something about it, the entire movie was told from the perspective of Korg telling kids a story of what happened. Emphasizing comedy and theatrics over reality, especially for the kid audience.
Once I realized that, I sat back and enjoyed the ride.
I liked Ragnarok because it still had a lot of emotional depth (even if the jokes were too much for some people). But L&T is just horrible.
Marvel seems like they don't know what to do with Thor character. I wanna say it seems like they're scared to make him too powerful even though he rightfully should be by now. But since they've introduced characters like Void, and god of stories Loki, and Doctor Doom, I hope they give Thor the power amp he should have. The avengers are getting folded against Doom let's face it 🙏🏾🙏🏾😭
I love Thors character so much and it's actually sad they've turned him into a joke.
If you can get behind that idea, the simplistic storytelling and goofy gags start to make at least a little sense; Korg would definitely view the “rivalry” between Mjölnir & Stormbreaker (probably the worst part of the movie, IMO) as a jilted-lover story.
Like holy shit it felt like this director self insert was dropping one liners in almost every fucking scene. Shut the fuck up man lol
The opening to Thor 4 is masterful. Idk what about Gorr was lacking. It was a pretty complete fall and redemption story.
Between "Asguardians of the Galaxy" or "Lady Thor"... Is this just a case of headcanon getting in the way? Sure, those ideas can be their own movie. It doesn't sound any more compelling than what we got.
You are very wrong then, buddy.
God, if only more scenes had been like that one when Gorr traps Thor, Jane and Valkyrie and talks to them. Tessa Thompson and Christian in particular got a chance to flex their acting in that (too brief) moment and Natalie is always a delight; sadly, the script was too busy with an axe cuckolding a hammer or some goats to give Oscar winners some actually good material to work with.
Taika is an immensely talented director, so I 100% feel like he was the right person to tell the Jane cancer story. But he didn't really try to. He shot a bunch of scenes to fulfill a contract with Marvel and then tried (and mostly failed) to assemble them into something coherent in the editing room. You can't convince me that he truly tried his best to tell a story that's right up his alley and this is the movie we ended up with. I wouldn't believe you even if I didn't know about how Taika shot a whole other movie's worth of scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Marvel needs to go back to the drawing board, and actually think up engaging overall stories for each phase, and character, instead of just hoping they will stumble into something that might work.
Me too.
It feels way more like he took the feedback of what everybody enjoyed about Ragnarok, and went way way too far. And it just wasn't the right story for him to be adapting in the first place. You don't take the comedy guy and try to adapt a God butcher... Anyway that's my take but I really enjoyed reading your thoughts!
This was one of the post-Endgame movies I was most excited for. I had some gripes with Ragnarok, but it still breathed new life into my interest in Thor. On top of that, the then-recent Disney+ shows (shows that were now getting acknowledged by the films) had me feeling we were in for a wilder, more experimental phase in this setting, which might include the creatives being given more freedom to let their creative juices flow.
And... Waititi may've been given more room, but the juices did not flow (or I didn't like the mixture this time). The time of death for my benefit of the doubt was right about when Zeus started flipping around his lightning bolt like a 7yo wanting to show you "this really cool trick" he learned two minutes ago. That's when I went from *Huh, that was odd; I wonder where it's going* to *Wait, was that it?.*
That's not to say there was nothing I didn't enjoy. Bale was great as Gorr (though even he I thought was a bit hokey at times). The queer representation in this movie was refreshingly casual. It could still probably be edited out, but at least it was more than one blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene (which still would've been more than Ragnarok).
But my favorite part might be Zeus' credits scene. Crowe finally something to do that wasn't "Greek accent funny," "skirt funny," or "orgy funny". He legit felt like an egomaniac whose pride had been more than a little jostled, and was ready to rain down pain and destruction for the indignity. A war between gods and superheroes centered around one who is both truly interested me... shame it's probably been dropped like an ugly Spartan baby.
But my gosh, the rest of it. I thought I knew what "Marvel Humor (disparaging)" meant with AM&TW. I thought I saw the worst with What If's party Thor episode. But this had me rolling my eyes and thinking *Please, just shut up!*
Then there was Thor's underdeveloped arc (he wanted kids?), and those friggin' GOATS!!
At least someone enjoyed something out of the film
Its his goofy best friend (that's also a rock) telling everyone about the great adventure and redemption of the greatest guy (and god) that there's ever been. In his opinion.
So sure things might not get every detail right. But we aren't following Thor, we are following a retelling of Thors adventures from a very biased source.