Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder
119 Min
Cert 12A

Cast Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Tessa Thompson

Director Taika Waititi

I went into this film hoping to like it while fearing that I wouldn't, unfortunately those fears were realised. 

The plot here is promising with Thor facing down Christian Bale as Gorr, a God-killing vengeful force, but Bale disappears for long stretches of the story. If you come to this film hoping to see Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy then you will be sorely disappointed as all the comedy potential shown in Endgame is dispensed with in one scene which is sadly also my least favourite scene of the 119 minute runtime. 

As someone who thinks that Taika Waititi is mildly amusing at best it sometimes feels that everyone else in the world (Taika included) has decided he is the greatest comic genius since Richard Pryor. This reputation seems to have prompted him to lean even more into the comedy aspect of Thor whether it fits the scene or not. 

There is an inconsistency of tone here, shown most in the aforementioned scene with the Guardians where our hero is a bumbling, oblivious idiot which completely undoes all of the solid character building that was done in Infinity War and Endgame. If you were a fan of the fake play in Ragnarok then you are in luck as the joke is re-hashed here almost identically while a scene with Valkyrie and Jane dancing to a portable speaker is almost offensively unfunny. Some jokes do land but a couple (screaming giant goats and Stormbreaker being jealous of Mjonir) are hammered to death.

On the positive side the pre-credit scene and a section almost entirely shot in black and white are excellent and show how good a director Taika actually is, fuelling my wish for him to make a completely serious project one day even more. 

Christian Bale steals every scene he is in and shows what an Oscar winner can do when not burdened with 'comedy' schtick, a fate which sadly befalls Russell Crowe as Zeus. The Gladiator star hams it up admirably but failed to raise a single laugh in my screening. 

Hemsworth and Portman still have great chemistry, particularly in the more emotional scenes, but Tessa Thompson isn't given anywhere near enough character development and the less said about the child actors the better. Overall I would place this just below the 2011 original if ranking our Norse God's films but I fear this will be hailed as a modern masterpiece.

 ★★★☆☆