Thor Love and Thunder review: Marvel epic does too much and not enough

Because the follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder, is only half as fun as its predecessor.

Expectations were high for Kiwi director Taika Waititi’s next Marvel Cinematic Universe instalment and Love and Thunder fails to rise to them. Disjointed and, at times, verging on incomprehensible, Love and Thunder is a mishmash of genres that doesn’t always flow.

Is it a “bad” movie? No. It has many elements that dazzle, it just doesn’t dazzle as a whole. And you want it to shine, you don’t want to settle for mostly OK.

Picking up after Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is with the merry-band of the Guardians of the Galaxy but they quickly part ways – it’s remarkable how little screen time the Guardians have considering those actors all served the two weeks of quarantine for essentially some cameos.

Thor is at a crossroads. He doesn’t have the same bloodlust for battle as he once did and he’s questioning his purpose in life. Who is he meant to be now that he isn’t locked into either his princely Asgardian destiny nor a Blip-fuelled depression of video games and too much beer?

Chasing a lead, he comes across an injured Sif (Jaime Alexander) who explains that Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) is on a tear, striking fear and a legendary weapon through the bodies of the universe’s deities.

And the drawling Gorr has his sights on the god of thunder, our titular superhero.

But before Thor can turn to the pantheon of the gods, and god-in-chief Zeus (Russell Crowe), he runs into his ex, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and she’s looking a bit different. Jane has taken on the mantle of Mighty Thor, powered by a reconstructed Mjolnir.

Their relationship ended eight years ago but Thor is clearly still pining, and there’s obvious sparkage between the two former lovers – this is where Love and Thunder shifts into rom-com mode.

There’s a flashback montage of how they broke up in the first place, and the banality of the why enhances their relatability. Their flirtations are adorable, especially watching a crushing Thor be so self-conscious.

But as much as Hemsworth and Portman have an easy, appealing screen chemistry, it’s also why Love and Thunder feels like there’s something missing.

This more comically driven iteration of Thor needs a spiky opposite to bounce off and Jane doesn’t serve that purpose – their dynamic is different.

In the past, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has been that person and the brothers’ up-and-down relationship was one of the most compelling pairings in the MCU. Even Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner had a touch of the same playfulness against Thor, as did Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord in Avengers: Infinity War.

Without that oppositional alpha male force to knock him down a bit, the god of thunder’s grandiosity becomes too much. He needs to be contained.

Just like Thor: Love and Thunder needed to be contained. It veers from rom-com to horror to action comedy to family friendly adventure – and sprinting between them is cinematic whiplash.

There’s a looseness to the movie that instead of making it fun and riotous, makes it feel jumbled and tiresome.

The set pieces themselves are bombastic and electric, and there are plenty of amusing one-liners and laughs. The fight sequences have verve, the cadre of child actors are cute and the delirious visuals are feasty.

It just doesn’t connect particularly well when everything is coming at you at a frenetic pace. Perhaps, it’s thinking, if you’re distracted by the onslaught, you won’t notice the story is relatively thin and Thor’s character journey is limited.

You want to love it because of the good will from Ragnarok and Waititi’s greater body of work but desire isn’t enough, and neither is Thor: Love and Thunder.

Rating: 2.5/5

Thor: Love and Thunder is in cinemas now

Originally published as Thor: Love and Thunder does too much and not enough