The Huge Missed Potential of Thor: Love and Thunder

[Applause] captain [Applause] midnight [Applause] this video is brought to you by skillshare before i start i should say that this will feature full spoilers for thor love and thunder so this is not the video i wanted to make about this movie long time viewers will know that i really enjoyed thor ragnarok back in 2017 and its follow up has honestly been one of my most anticipated mcu projects taika watidi has made some films that i really liked in the past and it seemed like a pretty solid bet that he would deliver here too but after seeing it i don't think love and thunder works i don't think it works as a dramatic thor story in basically any way and to make matters worse i also don't think it's a particularly funny comedy to be brutally honest i think this one is almost a complete misfire the most frustrating part of it is i feel like all the ingredients were here for something great this is a movie that features a really good cast and some interesting concepts and characters worth exploring but when all is said and done thor 4 seems too in love with its own loosely scripted comedy bits to do anything effective with those ingredients if my father have no desire to converse then i shall return to earth i say thee nay the fury in your eyes let's start where the film itself does with gore the godbutcher the film opens somberly with the scene where christian bale's gore desperate for food and water is forced to bury his dead daughter under the harsh desert sun after that harrowing experience he wanders into what appears to be a tropical oasis only to find the god he once worshiped lounging there completely indifferent to his hardships and mocking the very idea that he and his daughter's lives hold any value and let me just say i think this is a fantastic origin story not only does bale do an amazing job of playing the grief and anger that gore is going through here but we immediately understand why he's willing to go to these lengths to kill every god i will say though i do think this opening scene could have been even better the evil god killing sword just kind of floats into his hand at the best possible moment for no real rhyme or reason by giving this scene just a little bit more room to breathe i think it could have set up gore a lot more effectively instead of the sword just arbitrarily choosing him because it happens to be laying on the ground gore could have outwitted the god used the god's hubris against him and demonstrated why he's a force to be reckoned with beyond just being a sad guy who gets a magic sword that nitpick and some dodgy cgi aside i thought it was a really effective opening scene and honestly i couldn't wait to see thor have to confront the sins of the gods that gore would no doubt throw in his face here's the thing that didn't really happen after that opening scene bale still gets some decent moments but he's mostly stuck being a mustache twirling villain under a mountain of nosferatu makeup everything that was potentially interesting about this character is just wasted almost immediately and it's made extra frustrating by the fact that the movie goes to such great lengths to show that he's almost entirely correct about the gods these gods are shown to be egotistical buffoons who couldn't possibly care less about what happens to people like gore's daughter now this could have also been a really worthwhile story development because it places thor and jane in a very interesting ethical dilemma they want to stop gore but they're seeing mounting evidence that a lot of what he's saying is correct how does that impact each of them does it change how they view themselves or the hierarchy of the gods around them does jane maybe have second thoughts about embracing her god-like power now that she's seen how careless and cruel they often are basically the answer to all those questions that the movie comes up with is why would you care about any of this lame story crap here's another screaming goat joke love and thunder seems to have a commitment to not taking any aspect of its own story seriously apart from jane's cancer and even that it manages to severely undercut in a bad post-credits scene if anything this movie seems actively annoyed that it had to bother having a story at all and couldn't just be high budget improv comedy now all of that would be a lot easier for me to forgive if more of the jokes landed i feel like this movie has a lot more jokes than ragnarok did but the jokes don't actually land nearly as often and if you don't like one of those jokes like the screaming goats or jane's search for a new catchphrase well i have very bad news because the movie wants to go back to those wells over and over again when it comes to establishing anything that's not just a running gag the movie often feels pretty indifferent about the whole thing take new asgard which is now turned into a tourist trap complete with an ice cream shop named after the infinity stones in a very misplaced gag valkyrie seems to have made peace with asgard once a majestic and proud kingdom being reduced to a renfair attraction how the asgardians actually feel about their current circumstances is less than an afterthought it's really not even addressed because really why have a scene where the weight of leadership means something to valkyrie or we actually take new asgard seriously when we should really be doing lame gags about dancing to portable speakers instead i'm not saying the movie should have been humorless or anything like that on his better outings comedy is clearly one of this director's strengths but does it have to undercut everything else in the movie valkyrie was a breakout character in the last film but what they've given her here is really disappointing sure she gets to do a few cool action moves but her actual role as the ruler of asgard doesn't matter to the plot at all and she's sidelined for the final battle entirely the same can kind of be said of korg in ragnarok he helped lead a slave uprising in this one he doesn't do much of consequence other than same one-liners his speech near the end of the film tells us that he has a boyfriend now who he met off screen which seems like an odd choice in a movie where he doesn't actually have anything to do and could have used a romance subplot of his own as it is the thoughts and feelings of thor's weapons are given more impactful moments than those of korg or valkyrie then there's thor himself i think end game and ragnarok mostly did a good job of giving us a more goofy comedic thor without selling out the character wholesale yes the thor of in-game is often played as a joke but his response to the end of infinity war makes perfect sense he wasn't just played as a joke he was someone dealing with the weight of the universe being placed on his shoulders and failing here they seem to retcon that he's actually been hung up on jane this whole time which doesn't really mesh to me with his past few appearances but okay i can deal with that as a mildly forced development what i have a harder time getting over is just how stupid thor is in this movie don't get me wrong there's always been a huge element of comedy to mcu thor like half of his original movie is a fish out of water comedy but i don't think they've ever presented him as pathetic and clueless as he is here he comes off like new asgard's drunk uncle who rolls into town to knock some things over apologize and fly off and how our leads react to gore's kidnapping of the kids is just really weird it kind of feels like they barely care and instead are completely wrapped up in their own drama the scene where thor addresses new asgard before they all fly off is played purely for laughs for the second or even third time in the movie they repeat the joke of him giving a really bad hero speech that quickly goes off the rails i kind of liked this gag the first time in that scene with the guardians but it feels so so off here he's addressing the people of asgard many of whom are presumably the concerned parents of kids kidnapped by a murderer and it never occurs to love and thunder to treat that with any sort of weight or seriousness at all how the movie plays it thor jane and valkyrie might as well be leaving on a voyage to pick up some beer from the corner store when you look at thor in this movie stupid destructive and often totally lacking in self-awareness it's hard not to conclude that hey maybe gore the godbutcher has a point about these gods being terrible but of course any actual ethical dilemmas that could come from gore are completely neutralized by the fact that his plan is kidnapping innocent kids and then skulking around to kind of mock them what could have been a fascinating villain with a point of view that makes sense within the context of this world is just reduced to another scary-faced monster and because of that the ending where thor adopts his resurrected daughter just rings so hollow thor says he needs to embrace love the fact that this seemed to move gore was like laughable to me whose daughter died because the gods don't seem to actually care about embracing love and nothing in that equation had changed the action in this movie is also really hard to get invested in because the stakes never feel very high thor and company are always doing comedy bits in the middle of battle and they don't seem all that concerned about them i mean the cost of violence in this movie is such a mild and unimportant thing that thor and sif do like comedy riffs about her losing her arm as she still lays defeated on the battlefield the movie clearly doesn't care that sif was gravely injured and it never really comes up again so why should we lastly there's the jane foster of it all i liked how jane's storyline was handled in jason aaron's thor run but i don't think it works here very well it's very hard to get invested in jane's story when it's surrounded by a movie that has so little in the way of actual stakes i liked the scene where gore makes the connection between them clear they're both mortals who have a weapon that's slowly draining them of life but nothing is ever really done with that jane predictably sacrifices herself and has a death scene that's played like twice as dramatically as anything else in the movie aside from maybe that opening gore scene but even that is undercut by a terrible post-credits scene which only lessens her sacrifice i love big cities crowds merrymaking excitement the good life i shall go too hercules commands it [Music] in the end thor love and thunder feels like a mostly unsuccessful comedy sketch with an mcu plot sewn onto it i have no problem with the movie going big on comedy but it does so to the detriment of everything else i really do think there's a worthwhile story in here somewhere a sweeping epic even about love sacrifice and the abuse of power but love and thunder isn't interested in very much of that and i think that's kind of a shame i also think it's just not very funny which may be the most damning thing of all whether you agree or disagree with me on this movie i know a lot of you would love a platform to get your thoughts out there marquez brownlee's class youtube success script shoot and edit on skillshare can help i've pitched this one a few times for a really good reason because brownlee is honestly the perfect youtube mentor he started with a camera in his bedroom and so can you his class really hones in on using the tools that you already have like that smartphone camera and building out from there my viewers have already watched thousands and thousands of hours of skillshare classes so i know i have an audience that's interested in learning from their massive selection of classes whether they're classes on how to make youtube videos help with productivity directing films and just about everything in between skillshare is curated for learning so you won't see any ads i know it's hard to find time to 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Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 487,302

Keywords: Thor, Love and Thunder, Thor 4, captain midnight, captainmidnight, Chris Hemsworth, Marvel, MCU, Natalie Portman, review, reaction, gorr, goats, taika waititi, Valkyrie, god butcher, zues, russell crowe, phase 4

Id: H-fTJ2-yBAE

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022