Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder review by Dominic Rizzi

Written by: Taika Waititi (story by) & Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Directed by: Taika Waititi

Rating: That’s Hot

Thor attempts to find inner peace but must return to action and recruit Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman)—who is now able to wield Mjolnir as the Mighty Thor—to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), an intergalactic killer wielding a weapon known as the Necrosword, from eliminating all gods.

Taika Waititi has proved himself as the greatest troll in Hollywood. The man went from making quirky comedies that felt grounded to making some of the biggest and most popular blockbusters of the last couple of years. Now he's got an Oscar, he's gearing up for a Star Wars movie, and for his next installment in the MCU, he literally just cut loose and ran, and I mean NOTHING was untouched in this movie. He went after religion, his own employers at Disney, relationships, memes, you name it and it was mocked somehow. 

Unlike Ragnarok, I feel that the blending of tones was handled much better this time around, and Chris Hemsworth might be the best he's ever been as the character, and that's saying a lot considering he's the character who's probably undergone the most changes and retcons in the 11 years he’s been playing Thor. Waititi also brings out career-best performances from Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, and Russell Crowe in his 5 minutes of screentime, and even provides a new and interesting path for Thor’s journey to continue. The movie suffers from the usual problems of being way too fast-paced for its own good and not really having the strongest story, mostly just slingshotting the characters from location to location until they reach the final destination and stop the bad guy, but it’s still able to reach a satisfactory and emotionally fulfilling conclusion. I think that while Multiverse of Madness was more thrilling, this is definitely more heartfelt.

Written by Dominic Rizzi