Oooh boy . . . so, we’ve finally reached one of the most infamous and hated Marvel movies ever. This is gonna be quite an interesting article, that’s for sure. Anyway, in this particular story, Thor’s journey resumes where we left off in “Avengers: Endgame.” After briefly joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor discovers a mysterious being (Gorr the God-Butcher) who is killing gods all across the universe. Therefore, he goes on a quest with Korg, Valkyrie, and Jane Foster (Thor’s ex-girlfriend who is sick with cancer) after she somehow reforms the presumably destroyed Mjolnir.
Full disclosure: it’s gonna be very hard to find a lot of positives for this film, but I still wanna be fair so I’ll try my best.
Pro/Con #1: Mjolnir and Stormbreaker
Mjolnir and Stormbreaker have served as a core part of Thor’s character. They have been his strongest weapons, devices to control Thor’s immense power, and ultimately, his tools to achieve victory. While they continue to do so in this film, one thing I’ve come to appreciate is how they’ve expanded on their lore. For instance, with Mjolnir, things get crazy when Jane travels to New Asgard in order to find the hammer and get answers about curing her cancer. However, the minute she comes into contact with it, the hammer reforms itself and gives her a brand new Asgardian form. Not only that, but Mjolnir can now shoot parts of itself like projectiles and come back to Jane, in addition to its previous abilities. What I find most interesting (and also heartwarming) is that all of this was possible because Thor put an enchantment on the hammer. Born out of pure love towards Jane, he told the hammer to always protect Jane no matter the situation. As for Stormbreaker, we all knew it was a Thanos-killing weapon with the ability to summon the Bifrost, but it turns out that’s not all the axe can do. It all becomes clear when Gorr pursues Thor and his axe, explaining that the weapon can also be used to open gateways to other planes of existence. This is where it serves Gorr’s plan to use Stormbreaker to reach an entity known as Eternity, where he’ll then make his wish to eradicate all gods in existence. With this revelation, Stormbreaker’s potential has reached brand-new heights! I mean, just imagine if Stormbreaker could carve a path to the Wakandan Ancestral Plane, Valhalla, or even the Quantum Realm! While it’s currently unknown if such feats are possible, it’s still very exciting to entertain the idea if it can reach one of the most powerful Marvel deities.
However, in spite of such admirable qualities, there’s still one that is cringy at best. To put it simply, I absolutely hate how they made Thor’s weapons sentient and almost life-like. For example, there was a scene where everyone is on the boat pulled by those two stupid goats, and Thor is looking at Jane with Mjolnir. Cue Stormbreaker, who just hovers by itself right by Thor, who quickly tries to quell its jealousy. In another scene, where Gorr finally unlocks the portal via Stormbreaker, Thor rushes up to the weapon to stop the process. But rather than simply lifting or nudging the weapon, his first instinct is frantically asking what it’s doing before begging it to stop. Interactions such as these are very awkward to watch, mainly because the weapons weren’t even remotely hinted to be sentient in previous movies. Instead, they were hinted or built up to be extremely powerful and near-indestructible weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, to see said weapons reduced to flat jokes, with Stormbreaker especially acting like a jealous ex-girlfriend, it comes across more as awkward and annoying. In addition, we don’t even get any kind of explanation for how or why they’ve suddenly gained such levels of consciousness, it’s just thrown in there for the sake of (failed) comedy. Basically, unless Mjolnir or Stormbreaker were designed like the Green Lanterns’ power rings or Blue Beetle’s scarab, they should only look and act like the inanimate objects they were supposed to be.
Pro/Con #2: Gorr the God-Butcher
I’m not gonna lie, Gorr was absolutely awful in this movie. However, before I get into that, I’d like to point out a couple traits that I believe are somewhat noteworthy. For example, at the very beginning of the movie, we immediately begin to sympathize with the character. We see Gorr as a faithful servant of his gods, wandering the desert of a distant planet with his daughter, both on the brink of death. After his daughter unfortunately dies, Gorr stumbles across an oasis where his gods resided. What at first was relief quickly turned into outrage as the gods flat out tell Gorr: “yeah we don’t care, we’re happy lounging around here.” I can only imagine how world-shattering this must’ve been for a faithful, optimistic man like Gorr. He loved his family, he dutifully served his gods with hope for a better future, only to get absolutely nothing in return. While his response to this injustice is definitely immoral, you can’t help but sympathize and even agree with Gorr’s bloody crusade regardless. I mean, would you react any differently in his situation? Moving on, though, I’d also like to point out the moment where Gorr kidnaps all the children of New Asgard. The reason for this is pretty simple: whenever there’s a situation where children are in danger, we’re all on the edges of our seats. However, to kidnap a whole town’s worth of children? Again, I can only imagine all the fear and anger that all those parents must’ve felt. In addition, it’s also a pretty brilliant ploy to lure Thor and take advantage of Stormbreaker, because no one would dare risk the safety of a child. So of course Thor would come running, even if they knew it was a trap. It may be a cowardly plan, but an effective one nonetheless.
But that’s enough beating around the bush, because it’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Even though Gorr’s potential and the legacy of his character were laid out in many comic books, Disney decided to neglect that potential and heavily underutilize one of Thor’s strongest enemies yet. First off, his story was nowhere near as deep or fleshed out as the comics. For example, comic Gorr never believed in the gods and was exiled from his tribe because of it. However, after a fight between a golden god and Knull (the creator of the symbiote race) fell to his planet, he not only discovered that gods were real but never did anything to help them. And that’s when he went on his crusade against all gods everywhere, fueled by the corruption of Knull’s weapon (which is actually a symbiote itself). From there, it’s many issues fleshing out the horrifying, animalistic villain that Thor would struggle to defeat. In “Love and Thunder,” however, none of that is present. Instead, his story is quickly rushed in the beginning, and then we don’t even see him kill any gods, except for a brief image of some remains (if that even counts). In addition, while Gorr is creepy in the comics, Christian Bale’s portrayal made this version of Gorr come off as a cringy kind of creepy (like watching a cosmic version of Jared Leto’s Joker). Further, he’s definitely not as threatening as he is in the comics. Aside from the fact that he’s killed many gods, he’s not shy to completely mutilate and torture them until they’re bloody messes on the floor. As if that wasn’t enough, he once made a “godbomb” that would’ve obliterated every single god in the past, present, future, and even outside of time had Thor not stopped him. Once again, movie Gorr completely misses the mark as he spends most of the movie creepily smiling and laughing, and all he really does is kidnap children. He doesn’t storm Omnipotence City with his vast army, he doesn’t even try to kill Thor when he had the chance in the Shadow Realm, he just kidnaps a few children and tries to take the easy way out by wishing all gods to not exist. And that’s another thing that CBR points out: the real Gorr would never seek the help of cosmic deities like Eternity, it completely goes against his character. Overall, Gorr’s brilliantly deep and complex story was dismissed in favor of a rushed and shorter story, all for the sake of fitting within the PG-13 limit.
Pro/Con #3: The Story
Love it or hate it, but I believe there are certain elements of this story that should be appreciated. For example, take the whole subplot with Jane Foster. We haven’t seen or heard from her since “Thor: The Dark World,” except for quite a few mentions about their breakup in movies like “Ragnarok” and “Endgame.” So to see her return with cancer gives us a mix of joy and sorrow, because it’s great to have a beloved and iconic character back, but we also spend the whole movie worrying about her health. Especially when her cancer gets worse every time she transforms into The Mighty Thor. Further, it’s simply beautiful to see Thor and Jane reunite after so long, begin to reconcile during their quest, and then finally making peace with each other during her death. Speaking of which, it was equally heartwarming to see Thor’s journey reach a somewhat satisfying conclusion. For instance, in the beginning of the movie, Thor was more of a carefree loner who was still coping with the events of “Infinity War” and “Endgame.” However, with Jane coming back into his life and over the course of the story, Thor opens back up and accepts the past. And even though Jane’s death hurt him deeply, he’s able to move on (in a sense) by accepting the responsibility of caring for Gorr’s resurrected daughter. Now, the execution for Jane and Thor’s story is definitely not perfect by any stretch, but I feel like we can at least appreciate that we got some closure for both of these characters. And some closure for the audience, as well.
If I fully focus on those aspects of the story, I’d probably like the movie a lot more. However, the whole plot is extremely sloppy at best and its execution is so poor that it leaves a horrible taste in my mouth. For one thing, and this is something that a lot of fans seem to agree with, but the humor is simply too much or overall doesn’t land. Thor has been noticeably goofier since Ragnarok, but at least they still gave him time to breathe and be serious, or just give him some moments to break down and be vulnerable. In “Love and Thunder,” though, 90% of the film is just one stupid joke or cringy line of dialogue after another. There’s the previously established bits of talking to his weapons, but then there’s that weird scene where he argues with Heimdall’s son about his name, like the kid wants to change it but Thor (as seriously as he tries to make it sound) insists that he keeps his “awesome-sounding” name that his father gave him. Like, why was that necessary? It wasn’t even funny. It doesn’t even stop there, as pretty much all the other characters are just a bunch of novice comedians. The worst example is Zeus, because he’s just as careless and carefree as Thor, but somehow it gets even worse. He makes an unnecessarily large emphasis on sexual jokes like taking Thor’s clothes off, or participating in . . . very inappropriate activities, causing the audience to feel very uncomfortable. Personally, I liked Thor better before “Ragnarok” and hated his goofy personality since, so why do I need a sleazy womanizer deity to make it worse? Finally, there’s just the issue of the plot being severely rushed. Most points in between scenes already don’t connect very well, but the ending is especially a disorganized mess. For instance, during Jane’s death scene, I honestly couldn’t take it seriously or feel bad because of all the humor that was shoved in my face. As if that wasn’t enough, Gorr decides to wish for his daughter to come back to life before he just dies. As noble and heartwarming as it was, especially when he was so close to eradicating all gods, it doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons. First, why wish for your daughter to come back but not also wish for yourself to stay alive too? Second, why did Thor decide to raise the kid of the guy who kidnapped all the children in New Asgard, killed countless gods, and literally tried to kill him and wish all gods out of existence? Third, there was no connection between Thor and Gorr to satisfy this plot point, much less one between Thor and the child. If it were a connection like, as a theoretical, T’Challa raising the kid of Killmonger, then it would make a lot more sense. But Thor literally met this kid for five seconds and, while it’s noble to raise her right, it just doesn’t fill the void in the audience’s hearts.
Conclusion
In summary, “Thor: Love and Thunder” is quite possibly the worst MCU movie (next to “Eternals”) that I’ve ever seen, and I absolutely don’t recommend it for any newcomers to the MCU. Even so, if we’re gonna have to live with a terrible movie, we might as well make the most of it. That isn’t to say I’m defending movies like this, but finding the diamonds in the rough make the pain more tolerable.
