Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

It’s been five years since Thor: Ragnarok. Friends had convinced me to go sight unseen and I sat down expecting a mostly-serious movie with large scale battles befitting the titular Ragnarok. That it turned out to be a goofy buddy comedy with stylish flair and awesome music blew me away. It almost single-handedly made me excited about the MCU again after struggling with Ultron.

That explains why, after waiting for the Doctor Strange sequel to arrive on Disney+, I was seated for the earliest possible showing of Thor: Love and Thunder. This was one I was excited about that promised the silliness and panache that could elevate yet another Marvel movie. And, although this entry lacks the consistent tone and laugh-a-minute frenetics of Ragnarok, I had a good enough time with this latest film to overlook its flaws.

To describe Thor: Love and Thunder is to describe two very different movies. On the one hand we have plucky Thor (Chris Hemsworth), still psychologically recuperating from the events of Infinity War and Endgame and traveling with the Guardians of the Galaxy out in space. When someone attacks New Asgard, he returns home to fight alongside King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson)…but also Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who has managed to wield Thor’s fractured hammer, Mjolnir, and is doing hero work while cosplaying as her ex. The two hit it off again and set out with Valkyrie and Korg (Taika Waititi) to petition the universe’s gods for help in a story that maintains the cheer, humor, and genre fluidity of Ragnarok. 

They need help to take on Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) who is, ahem, butchering gods left and right. But Gorr’s villainy is not uninspected: the film actually opens with an extended sequence detailing the tragic Job-like origins that lead him to wielding the Necro Sword and cutting down immortal beings. I appreciate that background info—especially in a film that skates by without other origins thanks to prior films—but Bale’s film is entirely separate from Hemsworth’s, Portman’s, and Thompson’s. Unlike Cate Blanchett’s Hela in Ragnarok who went campy in her menace to match the vibe of the overall film, Bale is self-serious and hissing in a Gollum-esque turn. While Thor’s scenes thrill in glitter and pizazz, Gorr drains color from the screen in every scene he touches. 

This is surely intentional, setting the film on a collision course toward an inevitable battle between those opposing forces and films, but I’ll admit it can be jarring to jerk around between tones so frequently. Even when the Thor story meets somber moments, it still maintains a lightness; Gorr, though, delivers pure gravity in those other scenes. At its worst, watching Love and Thunder felt like dancing between air conditioning and oppressive heat: it’s ultimately fine but it definitely can leave a bit of a headache in its wake. 

The positive of that dual-movie setup, though, is that Love and Thunder soars visually no matter which you’re watching. Gorr’s scenes are desolate, dusty, and harrowing; there’s an undercurrent of horror when the gangly gray Bale shows up in the shadows with his haunting dead eyes and summons nightmare fodder in monochromatic grays. But the best sequences appear in the other half: these are epic music videos with kinetic battles between silhouettes set against flashes of color with iconic metal ballads driving them forward, their every shot feeling original and inventive. The story here is good enough but the movie could have been a nothing burger and still coasted to engagement as a visual and aural feast. 

But the story—Thor’s half, at least—is a win as well. Thor has similar beats to previous movies (charming, a bit self-aggrandizing, but we’ll-meaning and heart-felt), so a lot has to ride on the audience buying into the renewed romance angle…and Hemsworth really sells it. While Portman has a glimmer in her eye and an energy I don’t recall from her previous two MCU entries, it’s Hemsworth who makes this story of gods a human story. His Thor is still wounded, cocksure on the outside but uncertain and afraid of letting himself be hurt again even though he is gaga over Jane from the first moment he sees her in battle armor. There’s more here but, to avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that this provides a great reminder of how wonderful Hemsworth actually is on screen, with far more range and charm than I’d submit his arrogant immortal character deserves to posses. If Ragnarok was the MCU’s buddy comedy in the MCU, Love and Thunder is its rom-com and it works. 

There’s not enough for Thompson to do here, which is a shame: her Valkyrie is a rich character with personality and relatable problems (addiction, job dissatisfaction, trust issues) and Thompson is a blast in basically everything, but the script devotes so much attention to Jane and Gorr that we get only brief hints of the charismatic lead Val could be. On the flip side, the film acts as though director Waititi’s Grog is the funniest character in history and, while he definitely has moments, his jokes more often struck me as one-note or fail to land and his narratorial voice felt poorly-chosen if not entirely unnecessary.

Love and Thunder also suffers from the frequent Marvel problem with stakes. Early on, I was ready to credit the film for resisting the temptation to let the known universe hang in the balance. Gorr’s conflict was with gods and he kidnaps some children—these are smaller conflicts than the usual films submit. But in a blink partway through we’re traveling to elaborate god tribunals that seem plucked directly from a Star Warsprequel and racing to wish-granting ancients and, whoops, my bad EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE. It’s not bad, particularly with such pathos from multiple characters at so many junctures, but this is otherwise a film about intimate, personal drama born from ill-fated love; every time the stakes grew bloated, some of that authentic emotion chipped away. Not all of it, mind you—I teared up in three places—but enough to deflate some of the better storytelling.

On the whole, Thor: Love and Thunder suffers the most from comparisons to Ragnarok. This new entry is less funny than its predecessor, swings violently between tones, and offers 33% too much whimsy than I needed (although your mileage with screaming goats, a dozen cameos, and talking to weapons may vary). Ultimately, though, I enjoyed it a lot. I found real grounded emotion in Thor and Jane’s relationship story, numerous action sequences had me grinning, and the music was familiar but so grandiosely matched by the visuals that I couldn’t look away. Far less consistent than Ragnarok it is, but Love and Thunder firmly lands among the better stuff the MCU has to offer. I could and would watch it again, and I look forward to doing so.