Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi)

[Grouchy]

https://terrigen-cdn-dev.marvel.com/content/prod/1x/thorloveandthunder_teaser_prin ted_1-sht_v4_lg.jpg

[Grouchy]

Wow, this is terrible. I'm used to taking anything Film Twitter says with a healthy spoonful of salt so while the backlash tempered my expectations, I still went in expecting a fun time at the movies. But this is just... way below the competence line. The editing is so atrocious it won't let any moment (comedic or dramatic) work. It's all either unfunny quips or exposition dump. The fights are a mess. I don't disagree with the concept of making a superhero comedy but it's gotta be funny. And also, I know everyone's been saying this, but Gorr and the cancer stuff belong in a completely different movie. Kudos to Christian Bale for being the only one putting in the work, hope he walked away with a fat paycheck.

[Peng]

Among my bottom two of MCU alongside Captain Marvel, and if I still rank this above the latter it's because Waititi's irreverent tone is preferable to that one's connecting-the-dot dullness, even if his tone feels calcified from infectious into tossed-off shtick now, not to mention having some of the studio's ugliest CGI. Christian Bale and Russell Crowe are easily the film's MVPs, the former a bit more than the latter. Bale locates a genuine core of anguish and heartbreak underneath his villainy, which has his every scene snap the film's narrative momentum back into place (and makes the Shadow Realm among the film's high points, even apart from its striking visual gimmick), while Crowe's sequence feels like Waititi's tone finally working at an extended stretch rather than in bits and pieces, a case the actor modulating to the director's sensibility so well. I find our core hero group still very likeable, but it doesn't bode well for the film that I would rather follow the two villain figures here than their journey. 5.5/10

[Skitch]

Loved it. Not the greatest movie, but I laughed my ass off.

[DFA1979]

The dramatic elements don't really work and Bale is way too creepy for the material yet the comedy works and I loved the goats. I thought it was a blast.