Opinions Editor Marjorie Smedley: THUNDER Crashes

Thor: Love and Thunder is a masterpiece of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is: off-timed jokes, general plot holes, and an abyss of potential that was never allowed to be.
Some might say I’m being unnecessarily cruel, and it’s absolutely true. I’m a comic book fan, which means I eye movie-adaptations of these same comics books with a lot of unfairly deserved wariness and judgment. I’ve never forgotten how bad a hand Ryan Reynolds was dealt in ‘Wolverine: Origins’ and never will. But the newest Thor movie wasn’t just a poor adaptation; it was a bad movie.
Right off the bat in the movie, we have Christian Bale truly giving it his all in a movie, despite the fact that he’s in a movie where he could basically do nothing and be paid a million dollars. Bale plays Gorr, the antagonist of the film, with an intensity of grief and anger that should surely put the tone of the movie somewhere near somber and reflective.
This is not the case, and for the next two hours of the film, each moment that should be at least pushing the movie into a more mature tone is offset by jokes that would generally not be ones that someone should be making at that time. This is not to say that there shouldn’t be jokes in movies or that every good movie has a no-nonsense, macho theme where no character is allowed to smile ever. This is to say, that maybe after a scene where small, defenseless children are kidnapped by someone who may or may not kill them, the two heroes of the film should not be joking about their relationship status.
And speaking of relationship statuses! Watching the film, it’s almost like the movies should have put more time and effort into Thor and Jane’s relationship with each other, because watching them interact with each other now is like two strangers flirting. And before someone says ‘But they dated! Didn’t you watch the movies?’, I did. It was painful. Thor had more chemistry with the script he was obviously reading from than he did with Jane Foster.
Then, of course, we have Valkyrie’s third appearance in the MCU, which was underwhelming at the most.