Love and Thunder rewatch doesn’t do it any favours

I watched Love and Thunder in theatres when it first came out and felt… very whelmed. It was good to see the movie, but it wasn’t good to watch. I chalked it up to too much pointless dialogue and too much silliness at the time. Also a solid dose of over-hyped expectations.

But after a second rewatch, it’s more than the silliness. It’s the tonal shifts in the movie, whipping from darkness and grief to chicken muppets and jealous semi-sentient weapons.

Some of the jokes/gags land well (grenade shaped speaker with Jane and Valkyrie jamming out, Asgardian actors mocking the Hela scene) but others don’t (the muppets Thor fights at the start, most of the Hall of Gods scene - I still chuckle at “you flick to hard!”). The entire sentient Stormbreaker being jealous of Thor using other weapons is super stupid and feels like it was used as a gag (crashing into the memorial) and as an excuse to use the goats/boat to get around.

But it’s also some of the visuals - like the tonal shifts it whips from high quality to wanna-be cosplay. Sif doesn’t look like Sif when Thor finds her on the battlefield, Thor’s armour (both Odinson and Jane) looks like foam and plastic and the colours are also bleh - especially on Odinson, and the muppet chicken and other aliens look half-assed.

Jane’s use of the broken Mjolnir, most of Gorr’s scenes felt incredibly powerful (kinda wish the things Gorr summons looked more like symbiotes), Jane riding in on Aragorn as she attacks Gorr were all visually awesome and felt like they were from a different movie - a traditional MCU movie.

So much of the movie is great - almost all of Bale’s scenes, Jane’s cancer and how she was using Mjolnir to hide from it, luring Thor to the sepia toned place (Eternity? Nowhere?) was simple but visually cool.

But even more is just wasted on gags that don’t quite land and also don’t really propel the story (Thor or the MCU in general) forward very much.

I never really like the first two movies and placed them at the bottom of my personal MCU ranking, but I think this movie deserves to be down there with it.

submitted by /u/Bulliwyf
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