Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

(Disney Streaming, September 2022) Considering the let-down that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s “Phase Four” has been so far, it’s almost a relief if Thor: Love and Thunder ends up being a surprisingly average entry. It may even be a double relief considering how low the Thor series started, with two of the worse pre-Phase-Four films in the series. Taika Waititi is back as writer-director, but the pleasant surprise of the jokey third instalment had faded a bit—and what’s left often rings false. In keeping with much of Phase Four, Love and Thunder is aggressively insistent about its self-righteousness: Taking down its masculine hero as caricature in the film’s first half, putting all of its chips on showy grrl-power shtick that feels old when overdone (although I did like most of the interactions between the two female leads) and frequently going overboard with the comedy even as it also tries to cram more serious material. The result feels confused yet self-satisfied, dull even when it loudly announces how it’s subverting expectations. Screaming goats are among the film’s lesser annoyances when the film gleefully plays with God-level characters and notions of death and the afterlife… making the various struggles of the characters feel increasingly meaningless. (Not to mention increasingly at odds with more realistic aspects of the MCU, but that’s the harvest of desperately making the MCU as wide-spanning and incoherent as the comic books—if you get the feeling that it’s all sound and fury signifying nothing, well, you’ve arrived at the right location.)  What’s more solid are some of the series regulars: Chris Hemsworth is great as Thor when the film allows him to be, Tessa Thompson remains one of my favourites for a reason, and Russell Crowe makes a bombastic but enjoyable supporting appearance as none other than Zeus. It’s not all good, however: Christian Bale is unrecognizable and unremarkable as a generic villain, while Nathalie Portman seems lost in an underwritten and atonal subplot. Love and Thunder all feels messy and unfinished, which is also an increasing issue with an MCU that has convinced itself that audiences won’t care, and there’s always the next movie to turn things around. Except that if we’re to compare the reputation of the MCU at this end of Phase Four to the one immediately following Endgame, well, maybe they’re not turning things around.