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.

Thor: Ragnarok is the distraction we require

Thor: Ragnarok nearly lives up to the hype, with the accent being on Marvel's patented triplicate move, slick action, lots of jokes and a particularly intense emphasis on making sure the movies from their studio tie into together. It wouldn't be unfair to say that the movie would be incoherent for plot and character if one hadn't seen a long string of other Marvel brand films, in the right sequence. Perhaps part of the promotional hype should have been for Marvel to own the potential impenetrability of this film's core rationale for those other less familiar with this connected universe and provided for them a list of titles to view beforehand. All the same, Thor and Hulk seem less Avengers than they do Hope and Crosby of the 'Road" movies. Is the ramped up comedy a good idea? Yes, since is this is only good Thor movie of the three that have been made. The laughs were honestly achieved from character interaction , personality clash, the whole shot, and the humor were managed much, much better than the repetitive joke-fight-joke-joke-fight tedium of Civil War. Marvel movies are Disney movies, after all, and franchise films are required in this studio to very much resembling in style and tone what was made before; for them, judging their movies becomes how well the individual directors made the house style entertaining and just a little different. The present movie is an inspired variation on the formula.

For special effects set pieces, this effort is among the best of the year, diluted a notch or two for crowding too many into this two-hour movie. It works much better than the previous EF fiesta Valerian, which I thought was merely busy despite the amount of money spent constructing that confounding mess. Thor: Ragnarok has the benefit of character recognition--despite what I've already said about potential plot incoherent, the host of characters are known commodities, and well portrayed, full of plausible quirks and comic nonchalance. Matters move along briskly, the spectacle builds well, and the decision to use the design ideas of comic book genius artist Jack Kirby and Thor co-creator is a way to differentiate this picture from the three tepid films in this franchise. It has the psychedelic visual style of Kirby used to good and effective measure here. 

This isn't the game changer for the Marvel Universe that fans are hoping for--for all their polish, crafted fury and a sense  of ongoing wit, Marvel films have fallen prey to a lurking Disneyism that has all but infiltrated the rebel spirit of the comic book ethos and has made each hit they produce to be otherwise indistinguishable from the one    before it. Spectacular effects, superb editing, snappy dialogue, in that order or similarly changed   up to minuscule degrees, are what dominate this connected universe, and there is a mounting tedium in their ongoing slate of releases, which explains why the punchlines are ramped up in this production and that the small amounts  of self-reflective dread and existential moments are removed or reduced to all but inconsequential plot requirements. If that's the case, it works on its own terms, a distraction from real-world headlines that inform you that the world is filled with awful people doing hideous, heinous, ugly things to other people. This was a hoot, a laugh, a nail-biter, the entertainment we need.