Thor Love & Thunder Review

Thor Love And Thunder was one of my most anticipated movies of 2022 and it nearly dropped the ball. Love And Thunder follows Thor as he tries to find inner peace, but he gets interupted by Gorr The God Butcher, a being who travels across the galaxy, murdering gods. 

I was disappointed watching Love And Thunder because it took an intense storyline from the comic books and drowned it in lackluster humor. For the first half of the movie, it felt like every line of dialogue was a joke and before I could even register it, another joke would start up. I wasn’t able to laugh at any of the jokes because they felt forced. There needs to be some build up to make a joke funny, but this movie ignores that all together. The director Taika Waititi is known for his humor and it served him well in the previous Thor Ragnarok movie, but in Love And Thunder, Waititi missed the mark completely.

Thor’s character arc was another disappointing aspect of Love And Thunder because he digresses completely. When I last saw Thor in Avengers Endgame, he had confronted his grief and trauma and overcame it to become a better version of himself. In this movie however, Thor is arrogant, reckless, and extremely dimwitted; nothing like what he was by the end of Endgame. It was as if everything he went through in the previous films were scrubbed away and this Thor is a brand new character that fans are meeting for the first time. It was hard for me to find anything redeemable about his character.

Fortunately the second half of the movie was able to ease back on the comedy. I was able to catch my breath and connect with the story because the jokes were broken up at a reasonable pace. In those breaks, the movie reveals these high stakes for the characters and these scenes were beautiful. My favorite scene in Love And Thunder was when Thor and his love interest Jane Foster were in a hospital and they opened themselves up to each other in a way that brought tears to my eyes. Not a single joke was thrown in this scene and that made it a breath of fresh air. When Love And Thunder allowed itself to become serious, it was great.

Another highlight to this movie was the performances of Natalie Portman and Christian Bale. Portman as Jane Foster or The Mighty Thor was an inspiring character to watch because of her willingness to fight through both a terrifying villain and a terminal disease. Portman perfectly portrayed the strength and will of that character. Christian Bale as Gorr The God Butcher was absolutely terrifying as he brought his experience playing as a serial killer in American Psycho over to Love And Thunder. One of the images that stuck with me after watching this movie was the look of hunger in Gorr’s eyes as he was about to make a kill. I truly believed that he NEEDED to kill these gods and that made his cause that more horrifying. 

At the end of the day, Thor Love And Thunder barely managed to save itself from being classified as a bad movie. Most people will be able to find enjoyment out of this, but I don’t expect Love And Blunder to be anyone’s favorite MCU movie.