Thor: Love and Thunder

Fol­low­ing his brief slide into alco­holism and man­ic depres­sion in Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Love and Thun­der finds Chris Hemsworth’s silken-haired pro­tag­o­nist back in full god mode, vib­ing his way through var­i­ous cos­mic scuf­fles along­side the Guardians of the Galaxy. Yet sav­ing the day doesn’t hold the same pull it once did. Thor may be back to his best buff self, but there’s a sad­ness behind those pierc­ing blue eyes, an unshak­able feel­ing that some­thing has been lost.

Upon answer­ing a dis­tress sig­nal from a fel­low Norse war­rior, Thor learns of the exis­tence of Chris­t­ian Bale’s sad dad turned overzeal­ous athe­ist, Gorr, who car­ries an ancient sword capa­ble of slay­ing immor­tal beings. He returns to New Asgard – a hith­er­to qui­et fish­ing vil­lage trans­formed post-Thanos into a gar­ish liv­ing theme park (what was it Mar­tin Scors­ese said about Mar­vel movies?) – to find Gorr wreak­ing hav­oc. After some pos­tur­ing and pyrotech­nics, Gorr spir­its a group of chil­dren away to an unspec­i­fied cor­ner of the uni­verse, there­by restor­ing Thor’s sense of purpose.

Amid all this chaos, Thor is reunit­ed with his old flame Dr Jane Fos­ter (Natal­ie Port­man), now sport­ing her own super­hero get-up as Lady Thor, and bran­dish­ing a famil­iar met­al tool. There’s a run­ning theme in Love and Thun­der of pow­er­ful weapons that have a cor­ro­sive effect on those who pos­sess them. In Gorr’s case, the leg­endary ​“Necros­word” he wields has poi­soned his body and soul, leav­ing him look­ing like Nosferatu’s strung-out old­er broth­er. Jane, mean­while, inex­plic­a­bly acquires Mjol­nir in an attempt to cure her of a ter­mi­nal ill­ness, only to find that the mighty ham­mer is slow­ly drain­ing her ener­gy. Even Thor’s new piece, Storm­break­er, has a tem­pes­tu­ous side.

And so, with his trusty ex and less than trusty axe in tow, not to men­tion his (lit­er­al­ly) stone-faced side­kick Korg (once again voiced by Wait­i­ti) and Tes­sa Thompson’s Valkyrie, Thor sets off on a quest to van­quish Gorr and bring the kids home. Wait­i­ti, of course, has long held an affec­tion for inno­cence, for telling sto­ries that remind us of the pre­cious­ness and imper­ma­nence of youth. He is a film­mak­er who sees the won­der in the world, and in pre­vi­ous fea­tures Boy, Hunt for the Wilder­peo­ple and Jojo Rab­bit, he demon­strat­ed an uncan­ny knack for cast­ing child actors who per­son­i­fy his own wide-eyed, whim­si­cal sensibilities.

The biggest sur­prise in Love and Thun­der is how it wastes its pint-sized sup­port­ing cast; the plucky young­sters whose fate rests in Thor’s hands remain on the periph­ery through­out, and save for a short but very sweet scene late on, Hemsworth is giv­en lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty to mean­ing­ful­ly inter­act with them. Instead, Wait­i­ti and Jen­nifer Kaytin Robinson’s screen­play ramps up the roman­tic stakes, switch­ing from swash­buck­ling space romp to teary can­cer dra­ma while faint­ly blur­ring the line between mythol­o­gy, fan­ta­sy, and sci­ence (in this way the film resem­bles a West End pan­to ver­sion of Dar­ren Aronofsky’s The Fountain).

Where Thor: Rag­narok was unpre­dictable and unruly in the most thrilling way, Love and Thun­der by con­trast feels safe and for­mu­la­ic. Wait­i­ti is too pre­oc­cu­pied with try­ing to land the same jokes, and he bur­dens the film with a wishy-washy love sto­ry which even by the MCU’s low stan­dards feels shal­low and per­func­to­ry. Rus­sell Crowe’s cameo as Zeus, in which he appears to be chan­nelling, bizarrely, Har­ry Enfield’s crude Greek car­i­ca­ture Stavros, is fun while it lasts. But this is an oth­er­wise flat and unin­spired entry to a sub-fran­chise that seems to have lost its mag­ic touch.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.