Hogan Reviews

The latest Thor film is an interesting one as I found it more palatable than Ragnarok but a lot of people have been really down on it, citing reasons that I was previously down on Ragnarok for that I feel Love and Thunder addressed. Well, different strokes and all that! So let’s take a closer look at the further adventures of Thor…

While this is the fourth Thor standalone film its more logical to say it’s the “second Taika Waititi Thor film” as this and Ragnarok bare so little resemblance to the two that came before it that it feels like an entirely different film series. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is once again an airhead “dude” instead of the more plain hero we saw to start with but once again Hemsworth shows great comedic timing so it works more than it doesn’t. He starts the film still with the Guardians of the Galaxy and after a training montage to show how he lost all the weight he put on during his last appearance he soon strikes out with just Korg (Taika Waititi), who thankfully doesn’t feature as heavily as he did in Ragnarok as while he’s funny in places I found he ruined a lot of scenes last time by Waititi giving himself some funny lines to say. The pair do get a set of screaming goats which … I don’t know, just never made me laugh. *shrugs*

Thor, looking all … um, lovely and thundery?

The other key protagonist here is the return of Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who much like the comics has gained the power of Thor through picking up Mjolnir while also undergoing serious cancer treatment. This is where I was worried given Ragnarok’s tendency to undercut any drama or tension by inserting a gag in the middle of it, thankfully this isn’t the case with Jane’s struggle with cancer, nor the fact that whenever she uses Thor’s powers her cancer gets worse and the inner battle between wanting to do good with what remains of her life compared to slowly dying in the bed but living much longer. Thor, after the initial shock, is very much against the love of his life dying any quicker than needs be, which made the final showdown all the more dramatic… in places. I’ll get to that in the spoiler section, obviously. Either way though the Jane-Thor dynamic works really well here and doesn’t feel like a “female version of a male hero for the hell of it” situation like it could’ve done.

Our main antagonist this time round is Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale. He lost his daughter and all he held dear but never gave up hope that his God would save him in the end, only to find his God and get treated like crap by him, “Oh he’s one of mine…” the God says while rolling his eyes, then he outright tries to kill him. Made you really feel for him as he picked up the nearby “Necrosword” and slayed his people’s own god. From there he set out on a quest to, well, butcher all Gods. He nearly kills the returning Sif (Jaimie Alexander) who manages to tell Thor about him targeting New Asgard on Earth next then vanishes until the end of the film, sadly. Also introduced are other Gods including the Greek pantheon led by Russell Crowe’s Zeus, who chews more scenery than even Jeff Goldblum did in the previous film with added super-exaggerated accent. This is something that was funny to start but overstayed its welcome…

I hate disliking Crowe’s Zeus in the end because he clearly had so much fun acting it out!

The film does have some fun set pieces towards the end, and a large group of captured children are the big goal Thor and co. have and they manage to not be too obnoxious, which is handy for child actors. Sadly the plot does devolve into Gorr trying to find a magic planet that can grant any wish, which is something of a lazy plotline I have to say, even if the performances held the film together regardless and the finale managed to satisfy despite the simple narrative.

Overall Thoughts:

Hmmm… I was going to jokingly put “Thor blimey!” like “cor blimey!” but I’m sure a lot of visitors wouldn’t get it so… this sentence explaining why I didn’t put that sentence will do instead. Hooray!

Thor: Love and Thunder was a lot like Thor: Ragnarok in tone and presentation except this time the more serious moments were allowed to have impact and not get undercut by gags. That being said a lot of the stand-alone gags didn’t land for me this time round, especially some screaming goats and Russell Crowe’s Zeus, which is a shame in the case of the latter because I found it funny to begin with… Overall a fun time, especially “free” with my Disney + subscription, but not the big blockbuster some might be expecting and certainly not recommended if you didn’t find Ragnarok very funny…

In order to stop Gorr Thor tries to plead to the massive council of Gods led by Zeus but gets nowhere so he, Jane, Valkyrie and Korg attack and eventually steal Zeus’ Thunderbolt weapon and head to face off with Gorr. The film ends on the magic wish-granting planet where Thor saves the Asgardian children and imbues them with some of his power, um, somehow, so they can battle back against some canon fodder in a really cringey moment where I take back what I said about a lot of the children’s acting, while Thor takes on Gorr. It doesn’t go well until Jane arrives with her Thor powers despite knowing it will most likely kill her, and the two beat Gorr but not in time to stop the magic doors opening. All three go inside and meet Eternity, where Thor tells Gorr to wish for something good like his daughter to return to life rather than killing all Gods before attending to Jane, who dies in his arms. Sure enough Gorr wishes for his daughter, Love, to come back and gets to see her before succumbing to his wounds, his last act is begging Thor to look after his daughter.

This picture of Gorr is in no way spoilery, but hey-ho. Love the black and white effect on this planet!

We then flash forward to see Thor and Love (or “Love and Thunder”, get it?) are now a father-daughter-like pair of galactic crime fighters; Korg has a kid with another male Kronan called Dwayne, which I guess is a gag aimed at The Rock but given his mate has a big moustache for what I can only assume is for extremely outdated stereotype reasons (given they’re made of rock and can’t grow hair) it sort of undercuts the joke for me; and an angry Zeus decides to send Hercules after Thor in a set up for the next film, I guess. Oh and the post-credits scene is Jane arriving in Valhalla and being greeted by Heimdall, quickly reprised by Idris Elba.