Taika Waititi, with his iconoclastic humor, arrived in the Marvel universe by readjusting the relevance of Thor, with fun and more dense that was offered by James Gunn in the Guardians of the Galaxy brand. It worked in 2017 and does not disappoint now in 2022 with “Thor: Love and Thunder”.
The film follows the return of Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) as Mighty Thor, who saves the scientist from her advanced cancer stage, to fight together with the protagonist (Chris Hemsworth) against the evil forces of Gorr (Christian Bale) that aim to eliminate all the gods of the universe.
Taika’s objective here is the lack of commitment to the archetypes of the hero’s universe, and although this premise is a little too trivial at the beginning of the film, this vision seeks to bring a more sensitive and even silly hero amid the personal setbacks he finds himself in. .
Being a story of successive jokes has its risks, but it works. Especially when opposing the dramatic force of the other part of the plot, in a strange tone that helps maintain interest in the story.
Of course, within this caricature, there are things that don’t work so well in what the film needs most: dramatic arc. Thor builds his muscles, but has his own narrative overshadowed by his laugh-out-loud rage. In that sense, the most (say) dramatic part of the story sounds most interesting and elemental in the whole. Including Gorr’s Shakespearean villain (Bale, great!).
Amid hits and misses, Thor: Love and Thunder reinvigorates itself to stay relevant. Taika Waititi‘s good intentions and good cinema give the escapist veneer needed to maintain the new vision started there in Ragnarok. Keeps. But it doesn’t evolve.
Between being right and making sense, the film is halfway there in the lack of pretension and exaggeration in the joke. That’s why in the end (and I’m not even talking about the cathartic post-credit scene) it doesn’t disappoint. We realize the trickery of the (apparently) easy way, but we end up having fun together.
