First Take: Thor: Love and Thunder - the God of Thunder meets the God Butcher

Spoiler free as usual. Because both Thors would send me to Valhalla.

SYNOPSIS: Thor enlists the help of Valkyrie, Korg and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster to fight Gorr the God Butcher, who intends to make the gods extinct.

One of the nice things about writing these reviews on site (something we do for special occasions) is hearing the reactions of cinemagoers coming out of screenings. And with this latest Marvel effort, audiences seem to be in two camps. There’s the ‘that was brilliant’ camp, and then you have the ‘still not sold on Phase 4’ camp. I’m firmly inbetween them- because while Love and Thunder delivers the humour we expect from a Thor film, it does feel like a bit of a tonal mess.

This isn’t Taika Waititi’s fault, as writer/director he has become very protective of these characters, especially as he has become Disney’s favourite man lately (he’s popping up everywhere)- but for a 1 hour 59 minute film, it does feel like a lot has been trimmed from his and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s script to make it ready for the multiplexes of the world, especially considering how dark this gets for a 12a, something which has become a common theme across the Phase 4 movies. It is shot well by Barry Idoine, and it is a joy to have Michael Giacchino (film music’s purveyor of the pun) scoring another MCU film.

As for the cast, it is obvious that Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman and Waititi had a lot of fun making this movie (even with all the Covid restrictions that they will have shot under), but the standout role is Christian Bale going full method as Gorr- arguably one of the MCU’s better villains, the way he makes this character come to life is worth the price of admission, and once you add some Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel) to the mix with a side order of Russell Crowe, and you have enough ingredients to make an entertaining, if a little predictable MCU movie.

THE VERDICT

Love and Thunder will do very well on name value alone. But it just doesn’t reach the highs of Ragnarok- yes, the humour is there, and so is the soundtrack to boot, but to put it simply Marvel are going too hard into their ‘future story exposition’ stage. Let’s get some more entertaining ways of moving the overall story forward, because Spider-Man No Way Home is still the standard to beat for Phase 4.

RATING: 4/5