Love & Blunder: Waititi loses focus on the legacy of Thor.
Watching Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder is about 65% like watching Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin. What they share are the deep flaws of when a director runs the material into a self-indulgent lampooning direction, and loses sight of what originally makes it Mighty.
Understandably no film is ever going to translate a comic directly. The medium is different, so adjustments & liberties necessarily must be taken. Yet anyone who has read the very dramatic terminally-ill Jane Foster as Thor comic book run, and the seriously pathos-laden & doom-filled Gorr the God Butcher storylines should realize that these two things are absolutely not foils for comedy. They're stories that deal with peace-making one's own mortality juxtaposed with carrying on an immortal legacy, while the other addresses faith in the divine being justified or not and what the expectations of that belief are. Those are amazing and weighty things that move and push boundaries for comic narratives, like the metamodern exploration of what it means to be a superhero in Watchmen, or the consequences of age & world change in The Dark Knight Returns. Likewise, Thor has never been a rubber chicken gag and to treat it as such isn't the right choice.
While there are comedic moments in the other films, they then served to develop the characters, not parody them, or undermine the story. And Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok worked when mainly placed in the context of Sakaar, this hypercoloured, madman ruled, don't-know-what-to-expect alien planet. That totally allows for goofiness & contrasts of who all those characters are versus the nonsensically unfamiliar strictures they're up against. Plus those dialogues between Thor & Hulk/Banner both provide laughs and work to show the two Avengers sorting out their otherwise dysfunctional team relationship. And when that story bookends, first with Odin's passing & dark Hela's rise, to later finally get back to Asgard and its prophesied demise, Blanchett & everyone else just brings it so hard, you feel that gravity, and it's there that Waititi at least tonally respects the 60-year-old comics legacy he's had the unexpected privilege of being handed.
By contrast, Thor: Love and Thunder's nearly a clown show.
Jane Foster's Thor & Gorr the God Butcher's costumes aside, everyone else seemed like they were dressed in plastic & nylon knockoffs of what hero quality garb should look like. When Thor doubles down armor to gear up in a what's supposed to be a more King Thor-style costume, he instead looks like a walking lowrider with an overstated paint job. It's all just silly & tragic, especially for a $250M film.
Actingwise, both Hemsworth & Portman's performances are way too "on", dialed up to some meth-brained level, Hemsworth being past overaware & awkward, Portman equally squirrel-delivering near-histrionically what's been scripted. Given how great they acted before in the first two, it has to be the director they've been given, on top of possibly not their best takes chosen by Waititi. Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie manages to deadpan really nicely throughout the film, even dialing down Portman in a good girltalk moment, and she looks so bomb diggity in that formal men's suit that you know she's undoubtedly King of New Asgard.
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Many scenes have abrupt transitions, leaving the viewer to feel like there's missing reels. There's not enough long shots in fights to establish the action, and the adversaries tend toward the throwaway as they get struck down on the margins of the screen. And fan favourite Kat Dennings' Darcy Lewis only gets one scene!?! One! Given the exact theatrical runtime of two hours, I suspect there has to be a wealth of deleted footage that will appear on the home release.
On a couple positive notes, Thor 4 introduces Thor's unnamed war chariot goats, Toothgnasher & Toothgrinder, who've been cleverly given a very unnerving aspect. And the Omnipotence City scene introduces the comic's exploration of different pantheons to interact, conflict, or ally, panning & cutting to show off some pretty cool figures (though Russell Crowe's modern Greek-accented Zeus [do the Asgardians speak with Scandinavian accents? No, they don't] totally jumps the shark) from other mythologies:
And at night's end, NorsePlay is grateful for any The Mighty Thor film whatsoever, but we're warning you that Thor: Love and Thunder is the least of the quartet as its most astray installment, which I hope doesn't spell the end of the franchise despite itself. If you're a fan of the Thor films already, you're as in as I was, but if you're expecting the Wagnerian & mythological setpieces that belong in a Thor story, brace yourself for some misplaced farcical Waititi vaudeville instead. We've gone from Odin's cosmic narration to Korg's cheap laugh malapropisms, and a God Of Thunder who discovers what it means to be the King Of Asgard, to a self-deceived fool that makes his back a mosaic of many bad tattoo choices. Waititi's so busy being cute, he just doesn't treat or respect what Thor truly is enough this time around, and we can hope it's his last not just for Thor but for the MCU.
My constructive suggestion to Marvel Studios would be to take advantage of their multiverse aspect to find a differing Thor, perhaps even explore Red Norvell as a grimmer, meaner, ironically more Asgardian than Midgardian Thor, and perhaps bring back Thor: The Dark World's director Alan Taylor to handle it right.
History will not be kind to Thor: Love and Thunder. Twenty years later, Schumacher actually had the grace to apologize for his mishandling of Batman & Robin, admitting, "I was scum. It was like I had murdered a baby." Perhaps Waititi will one day realize he very well could've been Marvel's own God Butcher.
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Afterword: NorsePlay would like to explain this negative review. I usually present Norse Mythology-related constructs that are meritorious or positive, but this is the oliphaunt in the longhouse, it's just too big to ignore, and as NorsePlay's regular audience I suspect that my expectations are more in-line with yours, so I'm dutifully posting critical thought as to why this film doesn't work on the level of honoring its modern pop cultural origins or the spirit of its preceding source material. You're welcome, and feel free to share your thoughts on any of that below.
Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology, field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.
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