What does it mean when a “Thor” movie seems uncertain about who Thor is?
The newly released “Thor: Love and Thunder” is the fourth solo movie for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and is his ninth appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet, for much of the mercifully brief (by MCU standards at least) two-hour running-time, it feels like the entire production team is still trying to figure out who Thor is. It’s a startling place to be more than a decade into the inception of this version of the character, but it’s in line with a feeling of ambivalence that defines a lot about this new film.
Ambivalence might not be the word that first comes to mind when we think of the aggressively goofy, and pop-culture referencing antics of Taiki Waititi’s interpretation of Thor. It was Waititi’s reinvention of the character in “Thor: Ragnarök” (which, like “Love and Thunder”, he also wrote and directed) that many felt to be the right turn for the character in the wake of a previously more serious iteration. Ahead of the very-serious tragedy of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”, the humorous cadence of that entry felt like a breath of fresh air, but years later in the wake of the newest of phase of the MCU Waititi seems to be stuck in the same register to very different effect. What was previously fresh air has grown stale in “Love and Thunder.”
Early in “Thor: Love and Thunder”, the team from “Guardians of the Galaxy” seek out the heroic god to help them in a fight against monsters somewhere else in the galaxy. The moment reeks of the kind of obligatory cross-over that feels less dramatically cogent and more just forced engagement with moments for Peter Quill and Thor to out-bluster each other. It leads into one (of many) fight montages where Thor brandishes his weapon with a careless bravado that feels slightly out of synch with the more measured version of the man we last met in “Endgame”. At the height of saving the day, Thor destroys the cathedral of the aliens he has set out to save. The moment has the shape of a joke: aw shucks, look at this goofy lug of a man. But it does not feel genuinely funny in a way that displays any well-earned punchline or offers anything revelatory pursuit of humour. Moreover, for Thor it feels incongruous. After having lost every member of his family over the course of his time in the MCU, earning a clear sense of sincerity in his approach to his godliness, and undergoing the sharply earnest character arc in “Endgame,” the moment feels anomalous. This feels like the “Thor” of a decade ago. What gives?
There are many moments like this during “Love and Thunder”, where the characterisation of Thor shapeshifts depending on what punchline Waititi wants to throw at us. It makes “Love and Thunder” incredibly easy to watch, but also incredibly unrewarding. It is like a tapestry of discrete jokes and bits that combine to form a movie that feels more like a shrug than anything intentional. In truth, there are several things of import happening in “Love and Thunder”, there’s just rarely a sense that the players involved are very engaged with it – to the point that moments the plot seems to be working up to only happen off-screen. One major instance of this is in the reintroduction of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster to the MCU, in her much-advertised turn as the Mighty Thor. Despite the potential light-heartedness of that plot-point, the actual reason is less delightful. In a rare bout of real-world tragedy, Jane has been diagnosed with cancer and its only by wielding Mjolnir that she is able to stave off the bodily effects. In a startling bit of construction, though, Waititi robs the audience of Jane’s initial transformation into Thor. Later, when Jane and Thor do reunite, the chemistry between Hemsworth and Portman feels punctured when Waititi’s script writes them both as if they have not grown since the first “Thor” more than a decade ago. Their banter becomes a case of diminishing returns.
The visual landscape of the film also seems similarly thrown together. It is intriguing in parts, but never coheres into a whole that offers any genuinely thoughtful perspective on the things happening in the film. The needle-drops (Abba, Ciara, Guns N’ Roses arrive with a self-satisfied smirk, as if their very existence is enough to convince us. Beyond the specific things about “Ragnarök” that has turned into an acclaimed MCU entry, there’s not enough said about the way the myth of “Ragnarök” worked was in subverting our expectations of the God.
But, when everything is a joke, it begins to feel like very little is inherently funny.
All these films later, the fact that this new “Thor” finds Thor, yet again, struggling to find his purpose feels like a limitation from a film that seems happy to thrust Thor into varying strange situations, but without any real sense in adding an element of urgency to them. Enter the obligatory villain, to add some level of stakes to the story. And it’s here that “Love and Thunder” unravels.
“Love and Thunder” does not open with Thor, but in the desert where we see an emaciated and balding Christian Bale as Gorr and his daughter struggling through a drought. Even as he pleas for the help of the gods, his daughter dies. When confronted with the gods he has prayed for, Gorr is disappointed that they are indifferent to the plight of humans. A god-killing weapon, the Necrosword, summons him and Gorr begins his vow to kill all gods. It’s an ambitious cold opening for a film which is about a god. And it sets up a potentially intriguing dilemma for the film to solve. Even as the murderous attentions might be ungainly, the central crisis that the gods don’t care about the regular folk is profound and it’s an earnest concern that is out of step with the rest of “Thor” which feels insouciant about any and everything. A sharper, “Love and Thunder” may have used that same ostensible carelessness to do a shift late in the film to explain why the gods do matter, but Waititi declines this assignment. Instead, he asks us to root for Thor, not because Thor is able to make any grave announcement for the value of gods, but because he is Thor and because we know him. It’s a weak reason to fall back on and it makes the final showdown between villain and hero feel lopsided and pointless. Why exactly are we rooting for the persons the film wants us to? And even more, why does any of this even matter? Bale is trying his best to inject a seriousness into the role that Waititi’s goofiness undercuts. Worse yet, most of his arc happens offscreen and at the end is resolved in a move that feels emotionally false, even as the very last scene in the film attempts to argue for its sincerity. It’s clear to see what “Love and Thunder” hopes to gain from the final scene with Thor, but it’s one that they never successfully justify.
Am I taking this all too seriously? Possibly. On purpose. “Thor” is a joke after all, so why am I not laughing? It occurs to me that what Waititi is depending on in “Love and Thunder” is that we only think of jokes as a gateway to non-sequitur delights rather than something substantive. And as far as unrelated sequences go, “Love and Thunder” has many. An underused Tessa Thompson appears as Valkyrie, more to offer a sounding board to Thor and Jane than anything else, and to herald the use of R&B hits from the aughts – both needle-drops occurring as if punchlines to jokes that the film can’t quite make sense of. Further afield, Waititi voices Korg, a Kronan gladiator, who introduces an MCU watered down version of queerness that feels as ambivalent as everything here. But beyond the steady rat-a-tat-tat goofy energy, “Love and Thunder” feels like its expending a lot of energy to seem light and funny without every really feeling organic. The closest it offers to artistic creativity might be a late sequence done in black-and-white but even here the film’s visual flair feels like copies of sequences we’ve seen done better elsewhere. It speaks to the general dullness of “Thor: Love and Thunder”, mercifully brief and generally unspectacular. Not quite godlike.