SPOILERS FOR A RECENTLY RELEASED MOVIE

COVID fucked up a lot of stuff. Case in point, Marvel celebrated the release of Thor: Love and Thunder because that meant they had finally caught up with all the projects announced at San Diego Comic Con 2019 (that had a release date). November 5, 2021? Whoopsie! But it’s here now, and it’s getting… very mixed reviews. And I kind of agree. To an extent, at least.

When we last saw Thor in Avengers: Endgame, he was chunky and hanging out with the Guardians of the Galaxy. That status quo gets changed pretty quickly as Thor sheds the extra weight and bids the Guardians farewell almost immediately. He hasn’t been coping very well with the loss of… like everyone in his life, so news of someone butchering gods and the return of Sif sends him running.

Our villain this time is Gorr (Mr. Christian Bale), a devout follower of some god that it turns out is a total asshole. His daughter died thinking there was an afterlife, but nope! Not for puny mortals! Easily corrupted by the god-killing Necrosword, Gorr goes on a quest to, well… kill all gods, including Thor. And Thor!

While all that is going on, Jane Foster is dying of cancer. Not many jokes about that, and the few that are in the movie don’t really land. But hearing a call from the shattered Mjolnir, the hammer reforms in front of Jane, granting her the powers of Thor. But isn’t Thor Thor? It’s… complicated. Even more so since Jane and Odinson haven’t spoken since sometime after Thor: The Dark World.

So the three plots are in motion. Thor, Jane Thor, Valkyrie, and Korg go to Omnipotence City and try to get help from Zeus (Russell Crowe), but he’s a dick. He does mention the movie’s MacGuffin: Gorr wants to reach Eternity, and if he does so he’ll be granted a wish. Eternity is the physical embodiment of the Marvel Universe in comics, so kind of a big deal. Our plucky band mortally wound Zeus, steal his Thunderbolt, and head to the Shadow Realm (I’m sure it’s called something else but that amuses me too much) to rescue a bunch of kidnapped Asgardian kids, including Heimdall’s son. But oh no! It was a trap! Gorr needs Stormbreaker to reach Eternity, and manages to steal it from Thor. Using Mjolnir is killing Jane so she’s supposed to stay behind for the final fight, but rushes to help regardless. Gorr does reach Eternity, but destroying the Necrosword and bringing up his daughter has him do a last minute change of heart; instead of wishing for all gods to die, he wishes for his daughter–apparently called Love–to come back to life. Hang on, she’s weirdly not listed on IMDB? Lemme look this up… Ah, she’s played by India Rose Hemsworth.

…wait a minute.

Anyway, Thor adopts Love and they save people together (get it? Love and Thunder?), Jane dies (and goes to Valhalla in a post-credits scene), Korg gets gay married off screen, Valkyrie certainly exists, and the other post-credits scene shows Zeus survived and is sending his son, Hercules (Brett Goldstein), to get vengeance.

I liked the movie, warts and all. Gorr is the absolute highlight of the film for me, but if you’ve read my blog you know my preference for horror. There’s a scene where he’s “trying” to not scare the children, and he’s absolutely chilling. Love to hear that Christian Bale was having a blast on set. But this is no Thor: Ragnarok. There’s a chunk about a half hour in where the dialogue is so incredibly clunky that I started wondering if this was a high school stage play. And at the climax, Thor uses Thunderbolt to imbue the children with the power of Thor, which… he can do that? The whole point of going to Omnipotence City was trying to get a god army, and you could’ve just grabbed a bunch of Asgardians and beefed them up? Seeing small children annihilate shadow monsters didn’t absolve such a weird decision for me.

And then there’s the queer content. I was promised–PROMISED–that we’d get confirmation that Scrapper 142 (yes I’m still doing that joke) was bi. And… I mean I guess we did, but in the weakest way possible. Korg mentions her girlfriend died, and she chastely kisses a woman’s hand. That’s it. Korg has more queer rep in the film, telling us that he had two dads and ending the movie married to another male Kronan named Dwayne. Queerness was lacking to an almost criminal degree after all the hype, but what did I really expect from the MCU at this point? I am Charlie Brown to their Lucy, falling for the same trick every time I’m promised that this will be the gayest MCU movie yet. For real, you guys! Just run full speed towards this movie/football!

MCU
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