2022, d. Taika Waititi - in theatre
(Maybe some spoilers)
During the pandemic I've sunk myself very deeply into film podcasts and youtube channels...not so deeply as to be a commenter or anything but enough that the uToob and Spot-iffy algorithms are constantly feeding me more movie criticism and throwing things into my email inbox. For the past week I've been dodging commentary on Thor: Love and Thunder, but unsuccessfully enough that I knew that the film was divisive. A friend clued me in on the divisiveness (after not heeding my warning that I didn't want to discuss it yet) and started discussing how much he hated it. Before I could stop him, he launched into his rant.
Not to speak for him, but the gist was two fold: 1) the film didn't do the "God Butcher" story arc justice, and 2) the comedy....
Let's tackle these two points briefly before even talking about the film.
The "God Butcher" story arc that took place in the 2013 Thor series (issues #1-12) is one of the greatest mainstream superhero story arcs of the past 20 years. It's just a masterful piece of storytelling that is both accessible to new readers and extremely rewarding to long-term fans. It's dark, intense, scary and epic, beautifully illustrated by Esad Ribic and masterfully constructed -- spanning three time periods -- by Jason Aaron. A direct adaptation would make a (no pun intended) marvelous film, but doing so would be a film more like The Norseman rather than something in line with the MCU's traditional offerings. It's also not co-writer/director Taika Waititi's bag.
Which brings us to the second point. Waititi, is a comedy guy. He like funny things, and he's really good at making things funny. He's got a particularly - astutely - silly sense of humour. He's able to do silly, while at the same time being aware that it's silly, not be arch about it, and really just enjoy the silliness. I've very much liked some of his work and largely loved some others in Waititi's output, but would I ever have thought he was the right choice to bring the gritty, gnarly "God Butcher" story to the screen? That's a hard no.
So, if you're one of those comic book guys, as my friend is, who deeply invests in the stories and the lore and deviations what what is already known causes little stabby pains of irreconcilable differences in one's brain, AND you don't really have a sense of humour about these stories about men and women in capes and tights which you've been taking seriously for decades... yeah, even without seeing the film I can see why this wouldn't be your cup of tea.
I on the other hand, understand that moving a product from one medium to another requires adaptation, and that the artists handling the adaptation tend not to be the artists of the original work, and therefore they're putting their own, often wildly different stamp on it creating a distinctly different product. I understand these things very well. I also understand the criticism of "the (book/tv show/cartoon/comic/video game/tweet/gif/song/etc) was better" as well. I'm sure I've made that reductive statement myself on this very blog...multiple times even. It's natural to compare, and it's natural to think that the thing we first encountered/experienced, the thing we're more familiar with is the "right" one/the better one. It's hard to separate what we know from what we get from an adaptation. Most often, yeah, the original work is superior (it's always a miracle when any movie -- given everything and everyone involved in making it -- is a good movie) but there's sometimes cases to be made that remaking or adapting something can create a superior outcome.
All this to say Thor: Love and Thunder, while very entertaining, kind of doesn't work. And why it doesn't work is two fold: it's adapting a very dark, serious story into a lighthearted action comedy, and that action comedy has way, way too much comedy undermining almost every scene for about 100 of its 118 minutes.
I would love to say it isn't so, but it is. It's too much funny.
One of the big (and increasingly fair) criticisms about Marvel is its penchant for cutting its dramatic tension with quippiness. Nearly every major character in every MCU movie has had a quip that lets a little of the tense air out of the bag. Here, it's not just quippiness, but sound effects, editing tricks, visual effects, background characters, stunt casting, and really letting Waititi, who has become a bit of an unlikely Hollywood golden boy, do his silliness thing seemingly completely unfettered with many tens of millions of dollars. One of the other big complaints about Marvel has been how directors tend to get quite muted under the weight of the Marvel machine, that they don't really have enough control to really put their distinct stamp on a film. This, I guess T:L&T is what happens when they are allowed to do their own thing.
Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok really stood out from the MCU pack because of his distinct sense of humour, but as well from the influences he was pulling from (largely Jack Kirby imagery and Norse mythology-by-way-of-Marvel Comics). Here, there's less influence, and more Waititi's freewheeling spirit. It's not that the comedy doesn't work in T:L&T. It does. I laughed at all the jokes, because they are funny (Waititi is a funny guy), but my brain still recognized that there was not enough time to reset from the previous joke, and that scene after scene after scene was deflated by bringing bit after bit after bit to it. The bits become the focus, not the actual intent or meaning of the scene. So when moments happen, like Thor reuniting with Jane Foster for the first time (now herself The Mighty Thor), there's too much quipping, to many cutaways to goofy things, too much happening around them, to really feel them connect, to feel the scene.
I get the sense that Waititi was experimenting to see if he could take an MCU budget and make a comedy-action-adventure, but putting the comedy first. And, it's apparent, Marvel let him proceed with this experiment.
The final 20 minutes, the film finally allows scenes to breathe, to let characters have moments together, to let there be something more than comedy, and it works so very well that it just makes me sadder that the earlier scenes weren't afforded the same luxury. People complain about the Marvel formulae, but I kinda missed it here.
It is entertaining, but it's not a storytelling success.
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Quickly:
- The Gorr: The God Butcher story here is a pale shadow of what it is in the comics, it's true, and it's not nearly as epic as it should have been. The film's focus is more on Jane and Thor, so any actual god butchering happens almost entirely off screen. As such, the menace of Gorr is pretty diluted.
- In looking at what happens in this film, there's entirely too much to really do any of it justice. There's the comedy/pathos of Thor still trying to find himself that would have made a fun, much smaller film (or bigger - just more conventional - adventure story). There's the dark menace and the huge theological ramifications of Gorr killing gods and then introducing a whole realm where all of the galaxy's pantheon gather. And then there's the tragedy-romance of Jane Foster, dying of cancer, reuniting with the space viking who loved her. These all don't cohabitate well together, especially when the unifying thread is Waititi's visual gags or silly patter.
- Thor gets all his clothes knocked off of him. Everyone, Thor included, was okay with it. I'm okay with it. But, there is certainly a conversation to be had about the cultural impact of "the Marvel body", and it's not a simple conversation. For another day.
- Because of the largely silly tone of the film, I'm not sure that Natalie Portman ever finds a recognizable tone for this iteration of Jane Foster/Mighty Thor. I think she's striving for science nerd with super-powers, while also trying to mirror Hemsworth's well-practiced goofy pathos, but I don't know that the script ever knew what note she should be playing. If it had more time to breathe it could have given her sort a prototypical origin story to define that.
- The Guardians of the Galaxy make a brief appearance at the top of the film, and it seemed like a lot of work to have them be there, only to not really contribute much. I can't think of anything more comic booky than having a bunch of recognizable heroes milling around in the background of scenes that have nothing to do with them. I was hoping this Thor-with-the-Guardians would convey their history together a bit more naturally. It felt quite forced.
- Sam Neill, Matt Damon and Luke Hemsworth reprise their roles of Asgardian thespian versions of Odin, Loki and Thor, respectively, from Ragnarok. Here they present the cheap stage version of Ragnarok, joined by Melissa McCarthy as Hela (should have been another Australian, like Rebel Wilson or Nicole Kidman). It was cute but went on too long, and probably could have been cut entirely and pasted in as the post-credit sequence. Also, I still think Matt Damon and Luke Hemsworth look much more like brothers than Luke and Chris Hemsworth do.
- Russell Crowe plays Zeus in what should have been a delightfully subversive sequence...but when every sequence leading into it tries to be delightfully subversive, its impact as delightfully subversive is greatly diminished..
Just a brief ranking of Phase 4 Marvel:
1. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
2. Spider-Man No Way Home
3. Black Widow
4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
5. Eternals
6. Thor: Love and Thunder
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