Thor: Love and Thunder Review: Strong Emotional Depths with Epic Battles

Chris Hemsworth is “thundering and sensitive” in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder.

Thor: Love and Thunder are no less than a romcom featuring some epic battles. We see Thor, who is a big hunk coming across Jane Foster (played by Natalie Portman) resulting in a wild encounter. Even by the standards of superheroes, this encounter is nothing out of ordinary.

Thor notices that Jane is carrying the famously powerful and heavy hammer during a battle against the newest evil forces. It turns out that Jane, the big-brained Earthling, and Astrophysicist is now wearing a red cape, and armour, and is rocking blonde locks.

As they both look into each other’s eyes, Thor mentions, “That’s my hammer you’ve got!” That scene had the audiences rooting for them both. In a way, the new Thor movie by Taika Waititi is a story of two Thors. It is a rom-com that revolves around some battles where the universe is at stake.

First of all, Love and Thunder is an extremely fun movie. Waititi is known for previously bringing a unique taste into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. Yet once again, Waititi uses the same old formula featuring some the bat adventures and breath-taking action. However, it is the combination of action and light-heartedness that makes Love and Thunder different from the other more sombre movies in the MCU.

Love and Thunder feature more emotion as compared to Ragnarok. Furthermore, it chooses more of a heavy-weight theme revolving around love and death, and belief. While these themes may not be fully obvious in the movie, they do certainly exist.

Another thing to note is that Love and Thunder is not a story necessarily about Jane. The marketing that Disney has done significantly shows Jane as a wielder of Thor’s hammer. However, despite that, Thor: Love and Thunder is still very much a Thor movie. So, Jane is in no way replacing the original God of Thunder as we know him.

We are still fortunate that Chris Hemsworth is maintaining the charm of Thor after all these years. In fact, he delivers an even more incredible performance in the new Thor film. What fans love about his performance is that he makes Thor look more lifelike and human. He is an average human being, of course, until it is time to save the world.

The film starts off with a goofy account of Thor and Jane’s love story as narrated by Korg. It really gets the viewer’s attention early on. It does not take long for the characters to become threatened by Gorr, a new villain who looks more like Voldemort with a nose. And interestingly, it is played by none other than Christian Bale.

After becoming disillusioned with the gods, Gorr decides to wield revenge. Of course, he could have become an agnostic or an atheist. However, Gorr has bigger and terrible plans. However, the plot is quite fast to get into action. As a result of this, the transformation of Jane is not focused upon enough.

Viewers notice that Jane is quite ill, and some hints of her new identity are dropped. However, her real identity finally gets revealed when Thor sees her in the battle gear. Waititi may have saved the entire image for the final reveal. However, this strategy does not really make sense.

After all, the role of Natalie Portman in the movie was announced 3 years back. Things would have been a lot more interesting if fans could see things from the perspective of Jane. After all, suddenly becoming a superhero must not be easy at all.

On the other hand, Chris Hemsworth, like always, has a lot of room to work within the movie. He shifts beautifully from comedy to emotional drama. Thor’s character has always had a little bit of ego due to which he is always aware of his stature and image. Hemsworth continues with the same meta but this time, with certain elements of comedy. The instalment really reveals his love for Jane as deep.

However, Gorr kind of makes the movie less suspenseful despite giving open threats to the major characters. After all, long-time fans of MCU know that nobody in the MCU really stays dead forever and that is a big problem.