Did we really need another Thor movie? No. Did we have many places to go with it? Not really. Is it brilliantly fun getting to see Chris Hemsworth swinging his axe around again? Absolutely. Is Natalie Portman as the Mighty Thor a brilliant use of her original casting and hugely entertaining? Damn straight! And was it worth giving Taika Waititi a gigantic budget and (seemingly) absolutely no oversight? Hell yeah 😂
There's a lot about Love & Thunder which never quite makes that much sense. Why are the Guardians in the film for about as long as they appear in the trailer? I guess that was set up during Endgame and (in what is now a classic Thor tradition) they had to immediately undo that plot point but, really, we could have just had Thor and Korg adventuring together at the start without Quill and co tagging along (or leading the way). What exactly is this magical sword and why does it exist? Nevermind that. If the God Butcher can make any wish he wants when he gets to Eternity, why not save himself, his daughter, and Jane Foster? Who knows (probably to set up Thor 5, a decision which will immediately be written out in the first 20 minutes of that movie 😉). What even are the gods of the MCU at this point? In the first Thor, they made a big deal about how the Asgardians are aliens that vaguely "look after" Earth (or at least consider it part of their empire), but they went to great lengths to do the whole "magic is just advanced technology" thing. Then we got some ambiguous spirituality in Black Panther which could be explained as a drug trip, and more "gods are just creatures beyond human understanding, but mostly aliens" in Eternals and Doctor Strange. But now we have Egyptian gods running around in Moon Knight and an entire realm of deities who appear to somehow feed on worship and faith, Good Omens/Discworld style, including Roman and Mayan and all manner of civilisation-based pantheons, and somehow the Asgardians are both gods and aliens... I give up. It's clear Feige has!
On the other hand, we get Valkyrie being a general badass, and I really, really enjoyed Portman as a new Thor – she has such a lot of fun with the role! I do get that her heroic arc and the whole having cancer schtick gave a level of seriousness and humanity to the rest of the movie, and that her and Thor's relationship ultimately helps both characters finally heal and move on, something which was important for Hemsworth-Thor most of all, but it really sucks that they killed her off. Similarly, I thought Christian Bale did wonders with a fairly two-dimensional and half-baked villain (another Thor staple, at this point) and Russel Crowe is a solid casting for Zeus. It was also more than a little funny that the MCU has finally succumbed and let there be onscreen LGBTQIA+ relationships, so now we get an unambiguously lesbian Valkyrie, gay Korg, and even Thor having a bit of a bi moment, along with just so many other clearly same-sex or genderqueer couplings happening around the main cast. I mean, it's about time, but it almost swung the needle a little too hard and began to feel almost token (almost).
L&T definitely has strong parallels with Multiverse of Madness, in that they both feel like vehicles for their respective directors to just have some big-budget fun, whilst not overly progressing the core characters too much. This is clearly a Waititi project, with everything from the soundtrack to the creature design to the humour being incredibly quirky and flamboyant, but in the best way. The jokes (mainly) land, and the action is solid throughout, plus, when we get to the more abstract ideas, they're really nicely executed. I thought the Shadow Realm was particularly fun to watch on a big screen, with clever (albeit not particularly novel) use of colour and contrast.
The result is a fun romp. I'm sure I could sit here and poke a thousand holes in the plot and the wider impact on the MCU, but the reality is, everyone involved clearly had a great time making this film and that bleeds through to the audience. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "kids banding together" bits or the overly absurd opening temple destruction, but that's the kind of messy, ridiculous film that the Thor franchise has become, and the fact that it still makes me laugh and smile along says it all.