Short Take: LOVE AND THUNDER IS A SHAPELESS MOB SCENE

 

In the ever-widening universe of Marvel's cinematic empire, Thor: Love and Thunder emerges not as a product of creative evolution, but as an unfortunate caricature of its own franchise. Director Taika Waititi, previously hailed as the maestro who revitalized Norse myth with a cocktail of slapstick and sincerity, finds himself caught in the thresher of Marvel’s self-perpetuating cycle: feed the machine, no matter the coherence. His first outing, Thor: Ragnarok, charmed with its buoyant reinvention—a cosmic buddy comedy that drew from the golden age of Jack Kirby with stylish aplomb. More importantly, it gave Thor a meaningful arc: a meditation on worthiness and self-discovery wrapped in offbeat humor and thunderous set pieces. The tonal dance was tightrope-walking brilliance, and the character of Thor was allowed, finally, to grow.

But Love and Thunder seems to operate under the delusion that more whimsy automatically means more charm. Jane Foster’s return—ripe with potential for tragedy, complexity, and catharsis—is reduced to a romantic subplot that demands Thor regress into a lovesick buffoon. The hero’s mantle is no longer earned through trials, but stumbled upon in a haze of slapstick and undercooked jokes. What was once a noble god reckoning with existential dilemmas is now a hollow punchline in his own mythology.The film’s structural woes are legion. It pivots erratically from sitcom banter to mythological spectacle, then into saccharine melodrama with Jane’s death—all without earning the audience's emotional investment. Characters arrive without purpose, jokes land with the dull thud of setup without payoff, and the tonal shifts feel less like bold risks and more like indecisive rewrites. Even Christian Bale’s haunting Gorr the God Butcher is given scant attention, lost amidst shrieking goats and visual clutter.

But Marvel, ever conscious of fan retention, tosses us an afterlife teaser—Valhalla—as a backdoor to more Jane Foster appearances. Death, it seems, is no longer an ending but a cameo setup. The sanctity of narrative consequence is sacrificed at the altar of franchise continuity.This is not a critique of Waititi’s talent—he remains a director of singular voice and courage. It is a critique of what happens when that voice is swallowed by a system that values momentum over meaning. If Marvel wishes to keep its gods relevant, it might consider letting them be human again—flawed, evolving, and worth rooting for. Otherwise, they risk becoming nothing more than well-dressed clowns in a never-ending circus.