The gods must be crazy! Thor: Love and Thunder

“Thor: Love and Thunder” is a deeply silly, goofy movie with a lot of heart and if it’s not top-tier Waititi or Marvel, it gets credit from me for zigging where I thought it would zag and for bringing a robust freshness to the often formula-bound MCU.

The movie opens on a grounded tragic note with Christian Bale’s Gorr losing his daughter and being chosen by the Necrosword to slaughter all the gods. We scroll up to Jane Foster getting her chemo and then onto the framing device of Korg unspooling the tale we’re about to watch. And what unspools is at first kind of clunky. 

After we leave Jane (Natalie Portman reprising her role from the first two Thor movies) and Kat Dennings’ Darcy (can we please give Darcy her own series?), we’re off to a clunky start with Korg as exposition machine and a rocky Guardians of the Galaxy segment. Hemsworth is way too broad and Thor way too dense in this stretch. Quill and the gang are given shorter shrift than seems to make sense (I wasn’t expecting a Guardians flick, but Thor is so annoying in this portion, it’s a wonder they didn’t jettison him off into deep space without a ship). 

To be sure, there are some fun moments of a superhero slapstick variety in Thor’s saving the day, but it seemed so graceless compared to the seamlessness of the previous entry. Also, there’s an unevenness not just of tone (which actually kind of works) but of editing and character that leaves bumps throughout the movie’s brisk running time (literally, under two hours at 119 minutes!)

Not that any of this prevented me from enjoying the film immensely for what it does accomplish. 

Without going into too much detail, Waititi and his screenwriters have brought a sense of closure to Jane Foster’s arc, given Thor an added dimension to his narrative, and added an interesting cosmological element to the MCU that I trust they’ll address over time. Along the way, we get some wonderful performances, particularly from Portman and Bale, but also, from Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. If I have issues, it’s with Waititi’s Korg and believe it or not, Hemsworth. Don’t get me wrong; I love these guys and what they’ve done with the characters; but in this case, both are ill-served. 

Korg is an on-going exposition dump (and of course, funny when not stuck with doing so much storytelling that really could have been done differently) and Thor is at the mercy of going through a midlife and/or identity crisis and at the same time, burdened by not-so-glorious purpose of providing a kind “big galootishness” that may have been there since the beginning, but was tempered by having to act with other, more complementary characters like the Hulk, Loki, and for that matter, the Grandmaster. Thor reads as more genuine when the character building moments that follow the action beats feel more organic and less wedged in to support the narrative. 

Counterpoint: this is new terrain for the God of Thunder and there is a consistency in his genuine good nature. Still, there are moments when Hemsworth’s line readings are a little too much or there’s a missed beat in delivery. (I’m thinking of his chat with Valkyrie as the group is getting ready to enter Omnipotence City, the aforementioned Guardians sequence, and even in some of his moments with Jane (it’s also difficult and a little unfair to have to play against Portman who is a study in letting the eyes do the work). The latter could also be a matter of awkwardness when two exes meet up after years of unfinished business.

Speaking of which and here’s one of the moments when both Portman and Hemsworth shine: I didn’t know that I’ve always wanted them to do a rom-com. Conceptually, that’s what this movie provides in part, but it literally creates one within itself via a montage (narrated by Korg, of course) that had me filling in dialog and wondering who to talk to about getting this made.

This leads us to the stronger emotional beats. In the first film, I didn’t completely buy their relationship (I really don’t remember much of “Thor: the Dark World” except for how lame Malkieth was as a villain and how good Hiddleston was as Loki) and felt like Portman was wasted on a not very compellingly scripted character. “Love and Thunder” makes up for it and we get to see her have a field day with Hemsworth and Thompson. 

Hemsworth rises to the occasion as Thor begins to articulate how much the relationship meant to him and how much Jane means to him. That she’s fighting stage four cancer as both Jane Foster and The Mighty Thor adds a gravitas to Portman’s performance that grounds these moments more authentically than anything we typically see in these films. There is a genuine pathos and giddy joy throughout these scenes with Jane exploring her powers (“Asgardian space magic”!) contrasted with moments when she releases Mjolnir from her grasp and relapses to her human form. It is gutting and packs a ton of emotional heft. 

The added issue is that the hammer is weakening her human resistance to the cancer the more she uses Mjolnir’s power. This is an echo of and correspondent response to Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher’s use of the Necrosword that corrupts and kills those who wield it. Bale is the other great presence that looms over the tale.

It was once an easy trope that Marvel had a villain problem. They were not interesting as characters, not really very threatening or credible as threats enough to be taken seriously, and some were downright forgettable. But every so often, one would come along that was more fleshed out if still not much of a threat and eventually, it happened. Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan brought us Eric Killmonger and the MCU would never be the same. Thanos followed and I would argue that more recently, Dafoe’s Harry Osborne/Green Goblin was another stunning example of what these figures can be. To be sure, Loki would be in the list, and perhaps Wanda Maximoff, both characters whose tragedies and traumas molded them into the beings they are now; not necessarily outright evil but certainly misguided and lost. The fact that I’m tip-toeing writing about them to find the right words is an indication of how complex these characters can be. I would add Gorr to the list, easily.

The last of your people, cradling your dying daughter in your arms and then being mocked and humiliated by the god you had been faithful to would be enough to turn anyone into a disappointed supplicant (or outright atheist). The Necrosword chose Gorr as its vessel for slaughter (still don’t know why the sword exists in the first place) and he wielded well, murdering “low-level” gods (according to Zeus, who would know a thing or two about who’s where and on what tier). I did sympathize with Gorr and admired the way that his disappointment and disgust with the gods mirrored Thor’s disillusion with Zeus and the other gods when he attempted to rally them to his cause to stop Gorr. The thematic calls and responses in the script are well-placed and cement the more craggy aspects of the story.

Speaking of Zeus, I haven’t seen Russell Crowe have this much fun since “The Other Guys”. Dear…god? He’s a hoot. I never liked Zeus, frankly. He was vain, capricious, petulant when he wasn’t petty, and overall, a rapacious prick. So when later in the film, he asks “when did we become the joke?” I was silently thinking, “when were you not?” In any case, Crowe’s scene, from his entrance to his apparent demise, is a hoot. However, after his small-mindedness and his ridiculous attempt to intimidate Thor, you really did see Gorr’s point, if you hadn’t earlier.

I really want a Bao, God of Dumplings movie, too. 

Another component to the film is Waititi’s handling of the Asgardian children’s kidnapping by Gorr and absconding with them to the World of Shadows. Typically, something like this would be another “wedged-in” trope, but here we’re dealing with archetype of children vanishing as payment or pawns and under Grimm-level circumstances. The kids are pre-teens and Heimdall’s son Astrid, sorry, Axl is appointed their leader by Thor and boy, are they plucky. That said, Gorr does terrorize them and the sequences in the “spider cage” in the World of Shadows is actually disconcerting. Sure, you know that they will be okay, but if we have learned anything from “Stranger Things”, it is that kids will be traumatized if it serves the narrative.

To set your mind at ease, Thor deputizes the children as Asgardian warriors and shares (“for a limited time only”) his powers with them and this provides one of the best action sequences in a Marvel film ever. Seeing a legion of toddlers and pre-teens with glowing eyes wielding electrified tools and toys and decimating an army of shadow demons is one of the funniest and most exhilarating sequences I think I’ve seen in one of these movies. There’s a little kid practically dancing around some centipede-like critter that she cleaves in two with a smile on her face that had me in stitches. That one and another where a little girl with stuffed toy uses it to shoot decimating beams out of its eyes pretty much nailed everything I like about these films when they finally let loose.

This kid cracked me up, doing a little dance around one scary denizen in the Shadow Realm before slicing it in two. With a smile, of course! 
https://youtu.be/wxACYzbXzAc

The driver of all this action is that Gorr needs to get Thor’s Stormbreaker to summon Eternity (the anthropomorphic incarnation of eternity at the center of the Universe (our universe? Does this Eternity exist in the other universes in the multiverse?) and the assumption is that he will request the deaths of all the gods at once. Yes, Eternity will grant the wish of the first person who summons him. In order to get Thor’s battle axe, he kidnaps the children, steals Stormbreaker and hies to the center of the universe.

Prior to this, we’ve seen Jane’s condition worsen and Valkyrie wounded by Zeus’s thunderbolt wielded by Gorr (Thor ran Zeus through with the old god’s own weapon…it was pretty badass, is what I’m sayin’). Thor looks to be on his own to go kill Gorr and bring the kids back. Jane, of course, wants to go with him, but Thor seems to be able to talk her into staying with the promise that they will face her battle with cancer together. Needless to say, Jane Foster does not stick to that script. 

In the showdown with Gorr, Thor does his best to destroy the Necrosword but Gorr is proving to be more formidable. Jane arrives as Mighty Thor and together, she and Thor destroy the sword and Thor is able to retrieve Stormbreaker but too late to halt the arrival of Eternity or Jane’s death. Thor handed off Stormbreaker to Axl to get the children back to New Asgard on Earth and finds himself in a waterscape (a daylight version of Vormir where the survivors of the Soul Stone find themselves). 

Gorr is seen about to propitiate Eternity and is now returned to his human form, himself dying from the Necrosword’s defilement. Thor tells Gorr he’s won, do whatever he wants but why should he, Thor, spend time with him, when he could be with Jane? Thor tells Gorr that he could bring his daughter back and Gorr can’t see it; she will be alone. In that moment, Jane (Portman delivering one of the best parting looks ever) says she won’t be, and dissolves into gold dust signifying a hero’s demise and departure to Valhalla. 

Gorr calls his daughter to him and Thor silently assures him that she’ll be under his protection. Again, this is one of those affecting moments that as I was watching almost felt like it should not have worked, but I was happily wrong.

I have to mention that I was disappointed that Valkyrie’s arc remains unfulfilled. I was harboring a hope that she and Jane would have more time and if not a full blown relationship, at least something more substantial than what we go. In any case, Thompson and Portman were provided enough subtext to utilize and exploit. You sense that there is real affection between them, and I suppose that Waititi made cuts for expediency’s sake such that the relationship remains subtextual. I say this because there was a sequence of Jane in New Asgard demonstrating her powers and working alongside or at the behest of King Valkyrie. Mighty Thor does cal her “Your Highness” at one point, which I take to be a holdover of that other, excised narrative strain.

More importantly, though, when this movie was announced with Portman holding Mjolnir at San Diego Comic Con in the Before Times, Thompson seemed psyched that because she was now king, the first order of the day would be Valkyrie finding her queen. Apparently, this is not the case. 

At least, returning to the action, Valkyrie gets to flirt with one of Zeus’s handmaidens, albeit briefly. Korg’s part of the tale is more substantial. First off, Zeus reduces Korg to rubble during the fracas at Omnipotence City (which resulted in Thor vanquishing the God of Lightning) but it turns out that Korg’s species is pretty much immortal; their mouths survive (actually, his whole face), so he can continue telling the tale and providing exposition and his body eventually reconstitutes itself, to boot.

We learn that Korg is the progeny of two dads. The way this happens is that two males of his species (are there females?) hold hands over a lava pit for a month and at the end of that time, a baby appears. Korg tells us toward the movie’s end that he met his mate and they followed suit with a progeny of their own.

All of this was for the most part, deftly handled and the story told was infused with humor and goodwill. If I have issues with off-notes for some character beats (Thor, mostly) or that some sequences felt flat or fell flat, these were offset by Waititi and company pulling together in the latter parts of the film. 

Being a Marvel film, of course, there will be a sequel. “Thor will return” takes the screen after the end credits and post-credits scene (which sets up that eventual return). That said, there was no other mention of the wider MCU or any obviously connection with any of the more recent films. I think you could probably watch this as a standalone without familiarity of too much of the preceding Phase Three since exposition abounds throughout.

Waititi remains a compelling storyteller but I wonder if he overstretched on this one. The film is brisk but with elements that hint at what might have been a grander tale. If I am disappointed, it is only because I really do enjoy these characters but feel like they are due more than what I saw here. 

I really want a Portman/Hemsworth rom-com.

POSTSCRIPT: the MCU’s cosmology problem

I’m not overly concerned about some grand unified theory of the Marvel multiverse, but with both “Thor: Love and Thunder” and the “Ms. Marvel” and “Moon Knight” series, I am wondering where the various pantheons reside. What are the gods, after all? 

If I take Zeus’s meaning about how humans worshipped them in the past, are there specific humanoid or other life-form species that are assigned or created by these other beings? And where do the Celestials fit in? Was that a Celestial that I saw in Omnipotence City as Thor and the gang fled after apparently killing Zeus and stealing his thunderbolt? 

In the comics, the gods of Olympus were very much differentiated from the Eternals whose names and often, powers, mirrored one another (the gods were more powerful and pissy about the Eternals). Can we assume the gods of the different world systems preceded the Eternals’ arrivals?

Also, in the source material, Eternity was a tangible form of eternity, but as I mentioned earlier, does each universe within the multiverse have its own e/Eternity? Mathematically, this could be a thing when discussing set theory and I suppose, also in physics. Soooo, in the MCU? I guess anything’s possible.

All of this sort of falls into endless discussions about power levels, too. Conceivably, there are some god-level beings who aren’t gods in the comics and in the MCU, but what does this mean? We know Carol Danvers or Wanda Maximoff could have handed Thanos his lunch. For that matter, Thor should have been able to finish him off (if he’d gone for the head). But why are they considered so feeble at other times?) In other words, plot armor sucks.

Of course, in theory, Dr. Strange could have wrapped up the Infinity saga by using the Time Stone to reset the past or travel back into it to a time prior to Thanos’s coming. On the other hand, there are other universes and this one - “ours” - is only one. “In the Multiverse of Madness” got this across ably. I can accept that it might also somehow tie into variable power levels and why sometimes things happen that in another world (or story) wouldn’t. 

At the end of the day, of course, these are fantasy films. The rules are fluid and flexible and to be sure, I don’t come to this place for logic or ironclad plots. The characters are engaging and it’s more about the sheer fun of seeing them interact and meet the challenges that test them as “people”. 

It’s this last where the MCU has succeeded so ably. Casting is a lot of this; you need actors who can lend substance to scripts of sometimes wild variability. At the very least, however, the characters need to be written well, else the actors are left out to fend for themselves. 

Shwarma anyone?

Barry Baz Idoine has been a principle cameraman for the likes of Michael Mann, Denis Villeneuve, and Paul Thomas Anderson. This is only his fifth movie as cinematographer and his approach has matched the comic book epic nature of the tale. He uses a brighter color palette and even in the showdown in the Shadow Realm, while it does get visually dark, it isn’t nearly as murky as these set pieces sometimes are. HIs compositions hark back to the likes of N.C. Wyeth or Frank Frazetta and this lends the film a genuine sense of connection with an older storytelling tradition. Click or tap with your finger on the pictures below to see full screen and/or launch a slide show.

Chris Hemsworth by Maxfield Parrish!

Thor lending his power to the young Asgardians.