Say what you will about Taika Waititi as a filmmaker-writer-actor, but more than anything, the hyphenate is a genuine enthusiast. There is a joy to his work, the sense of a dude so unburdened by the creative process that he can't wait to get to it. This kind of zealousness translates engagingly to the screen in "Thor: Love and Thunder."
The secret of his previous MCU entry, "Thor: Ragnorak" was his approach to the character. In the two previous Thor films, directors labored with the stilted nature of the hero, an Asgardian god (the first film, helmed by Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh, brought echoes of the Bard, which only made the character seem more ponderous). It was Waititi who saw, instead of a cumbersome bore, the humor in the character, turning that heightened dramatic weight on its ear, and making Thor all too aware of how heroic he was supposed to come across.
It was a revelation, unlocking the character, the storylines, and most crucially, the snap comic timing of star Chris Hemsworth, reborn from a failed would-be Olivier to a winning Oliver (as in Hardy): pretentious and goofy, vainglorious and comically self-aware.
It's that same energy that has energized most of Waititi's burgeoning narrative empire -- madly busy, in addition to his various writing/directing projects (including a forthcoming Star Wars entry), the kiwi has helped produce several successful TV series, including "What We Do in the Shadows" and "Reservation Dogs" -- and helped establish his brand, fun-loving, and inventively shaggy, whose humor is straight out of the New Zealand deadpan standard.
One of the tenets of the Waititi ethos is a kind of fearlessness -- witness the LGBT-positive turn he takes in his HBO Max show "Our Flag Means Death" -- which must have served him well in trying to follow up the monster hit that was "Ragnorak." After all, the world of the MCU has changed a great deal since those halcyon days, pre-"Endgame," and before the tumult and various missteps of what has become a mixed-bag phase four for the studio.
A GREATER WHOLE
The films have still made their dollars (the latest Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies alone grossed nearly $3 billion, worldwide), but the lack of coherency between the films and the glut of MCU-based TV shows has yet to coalesce into anything resembling a greater whole.
Unfortunately, as amusing as "Love and Thunder" can be at times, it doesn't do much to right the narrative ship, so to speak. It can be rip-roaring fun, but it doesn't seem to sail anywhere in particular.
The film begins as a sort of spoken folktale by the rocky Korg (Waititi), telling the adventure story to a group of enraptured kids, which enables the narrative to skip past a bunch of the necessary exposition -- Thor, having lost his way and his waistline at the conclusion of Endgame, gets back in shape (and how!), and spends a lot of time alone, meditating on his place in the universe, before being called back into action by his good friends, the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Dispatching an invading army from a planet of peace-loving aliens (at the cost of much of their holiest shrines) with the remaining Guardians (notably minus a certain original member), Thor is again confronted with the meaninglessness of his existence, but is saved, in a sense, with the advent of an embittered figure known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale, with decayed teeth, and sporting a decidedly Johnny Rotten accent), who is making his way from realm to realm, killing the local gods with the Necrosword, an ancient artifact of enormous power that, naturally, takes possession of its handler.
TOURIST DESTINATION
It's not long before Gorr arrives at earthbound New Asgard, now a sterling tourist destination under the watchful eye of its leader, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), sending his shadow beasts after the townspeople, in an attempt to round up a group of Asgardian children to take with him back to the dark shadow realm.
Thor comes to help save the day with Valkyrie, but, to his surprise, he's not the only thunder god to heed the call. Enter Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), his former girlfriend now stricken with stage IV cancer of an unspecified sort, who has taken up the mantle of the mighty Thor, along with the original hammer, Mjolner, shattered into fragments in the beginning of "Ragnarok." Together, they fend off Gorr, but not before he makes off with the children, leaving the trio, along with Korg, to track them down, and stop Gorr before he reaches Eternity, and makes his wish to wipe out all the remaining gods in one fell swoop.
Much of the film's first act moves at such a frantic pace (reminiscent of the last MCU entry, "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness"), it's difficult to keep a handle on things, and it feels as if Waititi's control has slackened. There are callbacks to earlier gags (a return of the Asgardian Players, performing yet another theatrical production), several rushed together plot threads, and a great deal of '80s pop metal (at times, the film plays like an extensive music video for a Guns 'n Roses anthology).
GIVEN THEIR MISSION
Fortunately, things do settle down a bit, once the heroes have been given their mission -- in one of the film's better scenes, the quartet, led over the bifrost in a galley ship pulled by a pair of shrieking goats, get to "Omnipotent City" in an attempt to cobble together an army of gods to battle Gorr, but are met with stony indifference by a fatuous Zeus (Russell Crowe, in a delightful turn), vastly more concerned with the forthcoming orgy schedule -- and head to the shadow realm, a voyage that allows the pair of Thors to reacquaint themselves.
Based, very loosely, on the excellent series of comics penned by Jason Aaron (given a story credit), the film moves in these sorts of bursts of activity. It doesn't feel as well driven and coherent as "Ragnorak," but, more to the point, it also shares the issue with too many productions in this as-yet misbegotten MCU phase. Without a governing sense of story, connecting these disparate franchises, a la the Thanos bit earlier, this batch of films and shows have felt more standalone, sectioned off from any sense of greater narrative cohesion. The "Loki" TV series seemed to suggest a new, overriding threat that would begin to connect these bits and pieces, but neither Madness nor this film seem to carry any of these threads forward.
BURNED-OUT CRITICS
I realize one of the many aspersions leveled at the MCU in general by understandably burned-out critics is the sense that each individual film came to be less than the sum of its various parts, forced to serve both its individual narrative needs, and those of the greater storyline surrounding them, but, to my mind, the last batch of films have had a decidedly meandering quality to them that feels less than definitive.
It's entirely possible the MCU will never again reach the heights of "Infinity War" and "Endgame," a richly satisfying culmination of a decade of previous films that worked to heighten all the individual characters as well as the greater story being told, but without that sense of cohesion and purpose, even films as otherwise entertaining as "Love and Thunder" leave one feeling somehow let down.
Naturally, there are a couple of bonus scenes, mid- and post-credits, one of which alluding to yet another new path for the next Thor installment, but even that feels paltry, compared to the sweeping wave of the MCU's past. Perhaps, like a hero recounting his adventures to a rapt group of kids, the studio's best days are pretty well behind them.
‘Thor: Love and Thunder’
86 Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Chris Pratt, Karen Gillan, Dave Bautista, Ben Falcone, Melissa McCarthy, Matt Damon, Luke Hemsworth, Sam Neill
Director: Taika Waititi
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Playing theatrically
God of Thunder Thor Odinson (Chris Hemswoth) has recovered his physique but faces both an emotional crisis and a god-murdering villain in Taika Waititi’s comedy-heavy action movie “Thor: Love and Thunder.”