Thor: Love and Thunder

The alternation of serious themes and humour for small children may have worked with Jojo Rabbit (though I didn’t like it too much there, either), but Waititi’s style is incredibly annoying, like a drunken clown you kick out of a kid’s birthday party, but he keeps on coming in through the window. As a result, the new Thor didn't work for me, neither in terms of humour, nor in terms of the dramatic level that the creators were trying to achieve, which is a recurring motif in Marvel movies of the last few years, for which I can more and more often say as a positive only the cliché that they are colourful and moving. And I would put the word positive in quotes. (08/08/2022)

Forget about Raimi’s Doctor Strange. Yes, this Thor may be mostly colourful and goofy at first glance, but Taika Waititi is such a stud that he doesn't have to give up his style to tell a serious story that will be very important to Thor again, and that will fail to touch perhaps only audiences with a heart more stony than Korg's. It'd be a shame to give anything away or imply anything, because the trailers are far from revealing everything. But it's a joy to see Marvel back in full force, which means a brilliantly shot great story (compared to the aforementioned Strange, it's not only funnier, but even more horrific and has the perfect villain), whose end credits make it clear you're not going to get bored of it. (07/08/2022)

An even bigger Thor: Ragnarok than Ragnarok itself. Overloaded action, 80s explosions, workable pathos, and a standard of taste trampled somewhere in the dirt. Thor has found the utmost limits of self-parody in his quest, and even though the public doesn't need to know him like this anymore, I couldn't be happier. It was a bold choice to alternate between the most infantile lines, the almost melancholic mood, and a theatrically demonic enemy, one that's not worth trying to overcome because it might not even be possible without disrupting the entire concept. (12/29/2022)

Dads and their daughters will love this movie. As will hard-ass homosexuals and superhero lesbians. Taika Waititi takes all contemporary popular trends, then shakes them up and stirs them, making fun of them all. Sometimes good fun and sometimes even better fun. And then they add goats, whose audio is reminiscent of Natalie and Tessa’s Annihilation, a load of big-headed gods who behave like they are in the House of Representatives when TV coverage goes dead. Bale’s Gorr is the powerhouse of this movie; at the beginning he’s moving, in the middle surprising and funny, and in the end every daddy ends up with his head in his hands, wiping away a tear. Both of the first Thors are fine and Love and Thunder brings a good conclusion to the romantic storyline of the first two movies. Hemsworth is now in great form, after working out with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Portman enjoys her role much more than before. Ragnarok was better and more consistent, but this is even more playful and out of control. If it’s going to be anything like this, I’m really looking forward to the sequel... But expectations difficult to live up to. (07/06/2022)

Too much of the same in Waititi's delivery. What was fresh last time has now become annoying. It's like a five year old directing, just cramming all the ideas in, not realising that if he gives a joke three seconds after a fateful scene, he'll be killing the whole thing. That said, we have a potentially very interesting bad guy, and even Thor's relationship with Jane Foster has some interesting depth. I remembered that video from The Onion featuring Chris Morgan, the writer of Fast and Furious, and he was a five-year-old boy. This is exactly the same thing. Waititi is having fun, his stars are having fun, and I'm bored because the movie, despite a ton of action, a lot of humor, and some strong emotional scenes, is neither engaging, nor funny, nor ultimately interesting. When Marvel first rolled out, I had a terrible time watching each film try to at least partially grasp the genre. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was at its core an old-school spy thriller, Iron Man a techno thriller and Thor honest-to-goodness fantasy. Now all that gone. Now it's just a movie by Taika Waititi, a director who can't give a film any dramatic shape. And he can't even manage not to be ironic and not cut his own scenes. Instead, he crams flying goats and has them scream hilariously about twenty times. Most of the time it was all slightly embarrassing. (07/07/2022)