Thor: Love and Thunder — Why Marvel Villains Keep Flopping | Anatomy Of A Failure

push into the wind i want i want to be with you what do you say i have cancer i'm sorry what i'm sick what's happening bye did i say i didn't mean that just kidding i don't have cancer let's go smash something [Music] love and thunder marks the fourth entry in the thor saga in which thor has to reunite with his recently buffed up ex-girlfriend jane foster to take on the mcu's widest villain yet the evil gore a broken father who seeks the infinity gauntlet of the eternity to eradicate half of life to irrigate old gods and right away i want to address the giant goat in the room which is that this is my second negative mcu video in a row so to ease any unsampled tension i do want to make it clear that there are positives here as well the inclusion of a sick jane foster and the thematic storyline of thor allowing himself to fall for her once more even though he's gonna lose her that is no sarcasm in some of the strongest emotions the mcu is dealt with if you don't count the entries with captain america and in addition to that this movie all around is full of great marvel stuff which really showcases why armies of superfans online are fighting all mcu criticism as if their own lives depending on it and i love all that stuff too i love how a lot of the jokes here are recycled from last time so we get to laugh at them twice i love how the verbal exposition here never ends i love how powerful the stakes feel at the end when we're watching little girls demolish a bunch of cg monstrosities i love how all the cgi here follows the usual mcu standards all thanks to the way marvel treats the digital artists they hire i love how half of this movie is characters just standing around being quirky hand grenade no it's a portable speaker [Music] i mean a portion of this movie plays in all black and white if that doesn't disprove the jealous allegations that marvel is in super smart arthur cinema i don't know what will i am affected by this film the camerawork was amazing the actors are terrific great editing and that sort of thing i think ultimately it's cinnamon but all those positive aside even though overall love and thunder is another 10 out of 10 i would argue that there is one negative aspect here as well a cancer that has existed in the mcu since the very start the villain see even though we have arguably the biggest acting talent in the mcu so far gore just ends up being another letdown that you're gonna forget just as quickly as all the other villains you've already forgot it's as if marvel is incapable of featuring villains that will stand the test of time unless they have half a decade to build them up so today let's focus on that we already touched on this topic before but since mcu villains are a gift that keeps on giving here's a couple more villain pitfalls to avoid when creating your own villain [Music] the first big villain issue here is that gore's ultimate goal lacks a way for him to continuously progress toward it which makes him a weak villain essentially gore is a god-serving father who loses everything because the god he prays to doesn't actually care which then leads to him being corrupted by this magical shadow sword and him killing his god after which his main objective becomes this is my vow oh god she will die and when we then go the thor we learn that killing gods is what gore has been up to we hear that these funny blue aliens lost their gods and our gods were murdered we see a bunch of distress calls about gods having a bad time all around us which means that gore has been sadly progressing toward fulfilling his ultimate call like a strong opposing force should except for the fact that the movie still hasn't established the logistics of how many guys actually need to be killed or what the end-game way of doing so is but never mind that for now the important thing to notice happens when gore soon shows up to asgard asgard to kill thor and take his axe which we later learn he needs to unlock this galactic wishing well to wish away all the gods and he actually handles himself very well he overpowers thor and has him at the mercy of a killing blow and then he does what he came to do he kills thor he takes his axe and he teleports way to fulfill his goal exactly as strong villains do oh god should die except oh wait that's not actually what happens instead of killing thor like the other guys before and taking his axe to do what it came to do gore starts exchanging quips this is going to hurt what pain what is pain and waiting long enough for thor to escape his grip and for the other heroes to show up to help and then because score apparently can't fight them all he runs away with a bunch of kids with the aim that thor will have to chase after him for another fight and the issue you're seeing here is that all of a sudden gore doesn't push toward fulfilling his main goal because that goal has been constructed in a way that if he did the movie would just end 30 minutes in instead he fights thor again an hour later to try to do the exact same thing he could have already done in the beginning in other words score is less of a strong active villain pushing the plot and more of a weak construct of the plot that does things only when it fits the plot and before you call me an overly nitpicky internet movie tuber of the 2020s this is something that sergio leone was addressing five decades ago is that the necro sword that's cool i've only ever read about in stories and you know this is going when you have to shoot shoot don't talk [Music] essentially it's the exact same issue as in doctor strange too rwanda's ultimate goal was to find america chavez and train her powers and when she could have just done it in the first act she stopped to idle around instead so the movie could go on for another 90 minutes every night the same day and so when you're constructing your villain goal you have to do it in a checkpoint kind of way to allow the villain to always progress toward it like a real force thanos is in trying to find the infinity gauntlet but instead five stones for it which you can always actively do the joker's plan involves multiple tiny pieces to assemble a grand masterpiece which he's doing even when we think he isn't hello there and it's that checkpoint mentality that you should have created for gore as well maybe he kills specific gods at the start because that for some reason is his only way of finding thor thor they were your friends you have to stop hiding here and go back out into the world maybe he doesn't kill thor because he actually needs him for something maybe his whole plan is about manipulating thor to go to the planet of the gods to get something that he himself needs to fulfill his goal and couldn't otherwise get thunderbolt is the key and then maybe at the end it becomes clear that every action gore has made brought him one step closer to where he's going now you have an active villain force instead of a construct of the plot that doesn't do much of anything until the plot finally allows it as one more different kind of example to make this very clear it's essentially like this let's say that gore's main goal is to learn a language to learn spanish so he can watch and support my spanish channel as well what you can't do is just present this goal and then have gore do nothing about it until at the end where he suddenly speaks spanish no you have to create checkpoints for him to progress through he chooses an easy-to-use app that teaches spanish he uses the app to do a couple 10-minute fun interactive lessons each day he starts getting better and expands into all kinds of lessons from games to videos and after three weeks of this he's able to have a conversation in spanish which he comes to morde our morass which makes it clear that he's that much closer to fulfilling his goal that's what i mean oh and if you want to learn the language on a site too the app is called babble they teach you through a variety of efficient and non-boring hands-on methods which are designed by real language teachers to get you talking in just three weeks yomismo lovzara paraprendespanol the sponsoring a 60 filament or discount with the link below right now even after lifetime subscription so what's the language you want to learn check it out the second big villain problem here is that gore doesn't remain faithful to his own core beliefs and motives which makes him very two-dimensional again gore at his very core is a father who has to endure the thing that no father should when he loses his daughter and because that loss was the fault of a god who never actually cared about anyone but himself coupled with the fact that gore becomes corrupted by this magical sword it gives him a driving motive of vengeance kill all gods for being selfish murderers but as i mentioned gordon immediately does something that in this context is very weird he kidnaps a bunch of children from their homes and families the torments saw children like a sick high school bully he lets those children be crushed to death had it not been for someone else he even sends his army of cj monstrosities to kill the kids and when he contrasts all that with a character motive driven by the loss of a child the character very quickly becomes one big contradiction [Music] like this in the background and the contradiction itself isn't bad it can actually be powerful to see a villain get so lost in their hatred and pain that they become the thing they sought to destroy but that requires a couple things which in this movie are missing firstly the contradiction has to serve the motive gore can't just bully the kids and laugh at their torment what a neat story it has to be more about him doing what in his mind is best for the kids him trying to convert them against gods because gods are evil him trying to help them at any cost in a way that he couldn't help his daughter was him just being like oh so you like god's kids well you go ahead and die that's not really in line with or in service of his core motive thor is on his way the same ax was used to cut off thanos's head oh good for you and secondly the contradiction has to be acknowledged gore can't just let the kids be crushed and try to kill them as if it makes no difference to him it has to be more about him making those tough choices even forcing himself to focus on the mission instead of saving the kids because his hatred of the gods now outweighs the thing he's fighting for him forcing himself to unleash his seizure monstrosities on thor thorn the kids despite how much he doesn't want to whereas him not even realizing that the kids are about to be crushed and him just seeking his monsters on the kids in a wide shot without any kind of emotional choice whatsoever no i mean at the end the movie makes this big deal about gore redeeming himself because deep down he's just the father destroyed by the loss of his child what kind of father would i be if i stopped i'm dying she would be alone all while completely ignoring the fact that he literally just kidnapped a bunch of children and tried to kill them not a single acknowledgement were to be like oh my god what did i do no the movie just disregards all that as if it never happened the reason thanos seems like a real person is because he is the hero of his own story he genuinely believes that he's in the right by snapping away half of life the joker as well he's a messed up guy who just once proved that he's not alone that behind the facades and masks that people put up everyone's just this messed up as him and when he's finally confronted with the idea that he might not actually be in the right here what were you trying to prove that deep down every once exactly as you you're alone you can feel him struggling with it because it just doesn't compute with what he believes where's a villain who just does bad things because he's the villain and he's corrupted by this magical macguffin without any kind of justification or acknowledgement of what he does that's not a person the audience can invest in that's a basic two-dimensional movie bad guy that's there just to be defeated and never to be given a second thought again [Music] the third big film problem here is that gore's entire existence is much more about the stuff around him rather than him as a character first off his motivation isn't even fully zoned he initially has a strong reason to seek vengeance against his god because that god's indifference took everything from him but then it just instantly kills him and suddenly his mother becomes more about the sword corrupting him to kill all gods because they're all the same which lacks that initial directness the motivation is there but imagine if in civil war tony stark just immediately dealt with bucky and then attacks the rogers for being friends with bucky he's my friend what a neat story it's just not on the same emotional level and so here what if you kept that directness what if gore doesn't manage to kill his god in the beginning and he said the whole movie becomes about him hunting the god down at any cost to get his vengeance which includes smashing through all other gods standing in the way like thor where are they someone knows where he is now it's much more about the gore's motivation rather than the sword that corrupts him secondly core's effects on the plot and other characters are never about him when gore kidnaps the kids and runs off in their shadow realm the heroes decide that they can't just go after him because his shadow powers probably make him too powerful in the shadow realm moves through shadows and he's going to the shadow realm he's right we can't just go marching in there when the heroes are trying to get zeus's help zeus is too afraid to help because the magical sword that gore carries can kill him which means he could kill us not good the whole big external reason way to stop core is because there's this magical wishing well that he's gonna walk up to to use what do you think a guy called the god butcher would wish for you know it's never about gore's actions it's not about seeing him wield this sword in a unique way to take down this giant god that nobody thought could be defeated it's not about seeing him use these toxic gifts in such a special way that it makes him specifically an incredible threat no he just swings the sword and unleashes cgi monsters in a way that literally anybody in his position could have and apparently gods have died in the process so you know thirdly and most importantly gore as a person just gets lost under all this from the makeup to the cgi powers like who is score what is it that makes him a great villain is he smart is he relentless is he invisible is he shameless what is required from him as a person i don't know all i do know is that he looks creepy he can summon cj monstrosities he can use shadows as weapons he wields a magical sword that apparently gives him power and immunity to all pain and injuries good for you and how was it i hope it was good because it's useless now isn't it i mean the reason it doesn't help to have a master chameleon actor like christian mill here is because there's nothing special about this character for him to pull from he's like a chameleon without a background all he can do is rely on his siege abilities looking cool and look at his creepy makeup in the mirror and then launch into crazy mood swings that just come off as a poor rendition of the joker are you a valkyrie and if christian bale couldn't pull this phil enough just imagine what would have happened with an actor that isn't christian bale i think the main point here is that marvel has got to stop over relying on all this all these magical mcguffins that make characters evil all these ugly cja monstrosities that artists are losing their health and sanity over all these world and galaxy ending threats from dragons to infinity stone rip-offs to flying spy bases to whatever this is you're just getting lost in the noise infinity war was awesome but it can't be that all the time how about you try to make a movie with less cgi for change and see what happens because still to this day the absolute best that the mcu has ever been is when it's just three people in an empty room [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Filmento

Views: 979,135

Keywords: thor love and thunder, love and thunder bad movie, everything wrong with thor love and thunder, love and thunder memes, love and thunder bad cgi, love and thunder fight scene, thor vs gorr, love and thunder black and white, thor black and white, love and thunder ending fight, love and thunder terrible movie, thor love and thunder sucks, love and thunder best moments, love and thunder funny moments, love and thunder full movie, love and thunder clips, love and thunder ending

Id: tghqgDo_k8k

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022