Thor: Love and Thunder

It's a complete mess with a polymorphous narrative structure, where everything is being slaughtered. Unfortunately, that also applies to the visuals. It's clear that Waititi is primarily a toymaker and it doesn't matter what happens on screen, what's important is how it looks and if it's funny, even with Christian Bale putting himself forward as a potentially interesting villain. It looks average, it's funny only sometimes – like 5 or 6 good lines and gags and then when Russell Crowe enjoys his cameo as a chubby Zeus, and conceptually it's still the same, give or take. The next installment will need a different director, unless the producers plan to dump this god altogether. (07/23/2022)

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)

The hysteria around this film it’s pointless, I didn't find it any worse than Waititi's previous entry. It's almost heretically disrespectful to the comic book genre, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and as someone bored to death with most Marvel movies who sees the whole of Phase 4 as a degradation of everything the entire Marvel universe stands for, this film actually made me happy. No one speaks seriously, no one delivers pathetic speeches, and if anything, you can feel Waititi's irony in it; Gun´n´Roses gives it the right note of rebellion, and the annoying goats that a lot of people complain about take up only minimal space. Bale's Gorr is great, he has a believable dramatic arc, and Russell Crowe and his lard-soaked character finally got a meaningful use, I enjoyed his Zeus a lot. Normally I'd give 3*, but I'm rooting for crazy nerds like Taika, cinema needs people like him. (09/25/2022)

Taika Waititi's first Thor film (the third) was quite different from its predecessors thanks to its distinctive and unmistakable directorial approach, and Love and Thunder is no different. The lover of vampires or alternative Hitler gets creatively unleashed again and serves us a two-hour dose of wacky humour, sweet romance and heroic adventure. It has many references to previous MCU films, pop culture and mythology, all wrapped in the director’s typical style of parody. In some places, the humour was perhaps too much and missed the mark, but in the end I had a great time in the cinema. There were also some touching emotions, mainly due to the line with Jane, but also with Gorr, who was indeed a multi-layered villain. You could sense that everyone involved must have thoroughly enjoyed the filming. The Guardians of the Galaxy were more of an afterthought, but at least we could focus on the main Thor-Jane and Thor-Gorr storylines. Love and Thunder has, as I mentioned, many wonderful ideas like the bawling goats, the spawning of "little Korg", the dramatization of Ragnarok (Melissa McCarthy as Hela killed it), or the gods’ assembly with a horny Zeus. I also liked the art of the duel in Shadowland and the visuals of Gorr's monsters. The first end-credit scene teased a possible sequel, so I'm curious to see if Thor will see another film. (07/07/2022)

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)