Thor: Love and Thunder
Christian Bale brings an energy and enthusiasm to the project that helps to cover up the comfortability, lack of energy and sheer ineptitude of the rest of this been there, done that project.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth), having shed his dad bod and returned to his muscle-bound glory, is busy fighting with the Guardians of the Galaxy when he here’s word from Sif (Jamie Alexander) that Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) is headed to New Asgard to destroy the Asgardians. Upon arrival, he finds he is not only teaming up with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), but with The Mighty Thor herself, aka Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), his former love interest. Once Gorr takes the children in an attempt to destroy all Gods, Jane, Thor and Valkyrie must team up, visiting Zeus (Russell Crowe) in a bid for support, and ultimately tracking Gorr to the Shadow Realm to attempt to stop his nefarious plan.
Thor: Love and Thunder is a strange little beast. On the one hand, it feels very much like an unnecessary addition to the pantheon. Coming in at under 2 hours, it is a relatively short flick when compared with other Marvel fare. The first half of the film is largely irrelevant, full of seemingly improvised humor that would have found a better home on the cutting room floor. It also suffers from many of the same flaws as the rest of the MCU, with low stakes, heroes who can’t die, and an overreliance on random CGI monsters.
Then there’s Christian Bale. Bale is a tour de force, and whereas other famous thesps who have tried their hand at superheroism may have stumbled and conformed to the formulaic villainy, Bale is able to bring something special to his role as Gorr. He is often truly terrifying, and perhaps that should be of concern for children in the audience. But at least the ferocity of his performance feels fresh and new in a film that otherwise is incredibly stale.
The only other remarkable moment is a fight between the central trio and Gorr’s shadow monsters on an otherworldly planet. Done primarily in black and white, and with an almost Japanese stop-motion aesthetic, this scene is a brief flash of ingenuity and elegance in the runtime.
Ultimately, Thor: Love and Thunder feels too stale, too boring and too irrelevant to make a lasting impact on the canon. There are highlights, sure, but the lowlights - the feeling that this doesn’t matter, that there’s no cohesive story, that the entire thing is a holding pattern for better movies later in the MCU’s most recent phase - are never shaken.
