Finally saw this. Son and I both enjoyed it. We laughed, we cheered, we rocked out to G&R, we ate a tub of popcorn. Exactly what I want from a summer superhero movie.

I watched it again last week. I see enjoyed more the second time. You get over the jokes a little and see more. I think it'll age well. It was fun.

Awful. Waste of a solid villain and soundtrack.

TLR:

Thor 4 as a marvel movie is a miss, but Thor 4 as an art house movie is interesting. Thor 4 and The Last Jedi are similar movies with their creators grappling with similar issues.

A couple of thoughts I had on this movie:

1. This did not feel like a marvel movie, but rather a thematic sequel to JoJo Rabbit.

2. I think a lot of the "incoherence of the movie's plot and plot holes" is from Korg narrating the entire story. And Korg is an extremely unreliable narrator and rather child like so the events of the movie always seemed to bend back to Korg's understanding of the story. For example, did the kids really get the power of Thor or was that Korg's simplistic explanation on how the kids fought Gorr's monsters. Much like the Ancient Greek/Roman/Viking myths would have the gods give their gifts to mortals. I think the movie is suggesting that plot holes are inevitable in any work of fiction and how Taika has an author chooses to deal with it, is to fully ignore them. Further, I think this is why Thor's personality is so different in different parts of the movie and the MCU, different authors highlight different aspects of Thor causing the audience to view him differently.

3. I think this is what made the GOTG scenes work for me, Korg and Thor are living "one version of the story" and the GOTG are living in "another version of the story", so they are out of sync with each other and their time on the screen is therefore intentionally chaotic, tonally mismatched, and the more serious GOTG are quickly bored of the childlike Thor's story and ditch the story. I also think Taika is talking to the audience here.

4. Jane Foster and Thor are also out-of-sync, because they each process their existence in different ways. Jane believes she has a limited time to contribute to the betterment of the universe due to her mortality. Further, her contribution is knowledge which is by its very nature subject to misunderstanding. The scene with her and the other cancer patient goes back to main theme of the movie, authorial intent. She would happily have her work destroyed if it meant another would gain understanding. Further, the wormhole discussion goes into the movies other main theme which is love and pain are eternally connected together. Thor, however, sees his life plainly, he is to fight the good fight until he "dies" and goes to Valhalla. There is no deeper purpose in his eyes. Death is not an existential crisis for him, but death is an existential crisis for Jane.

5. Love and Pain. We almost see every aspect of of love being told from a child's perspective ("Korg"). And pain being told from the adult's perspective ("Gorr"). With Star Lord being the middle point of the two giving Thor his perspective on "it's better to love and lost than to never love at all"

6. Gorr and the Gods. I think Gorr is less a character and more a representation of post-modernism, where he is deconstructing the "Gods" and encouraging the other characters to embrace their own moral relativism. This next part, I don't want to spark a religious debate, but what makes Gorr's post-modernism interesting is he actually can directly interact with "gods". Zeus is a tangible entity, Thor is a tangible entity, Korg' god is tangible. Gorr can shake their hands or actually kill them. Where as we the audience are left with a more ethereal interaction with our "gods" and can only kill our gods by forgetting about them. Ultimately, the movie's climax boils down to a simple question of "Do gods give us love or give us pain/suffering?" The movie suggests they give us neither, it is us mortals who choose if it is love or if it is suffering. In the end Gorr chooses love. Or another way does the author give us meaning or do we choose our own meaning?

7. Looping back to the issue of tangible gods, I think the movie really wants us to debate the point that if the marvel gods are real, why didn't they stop Thanos? What purpose do the gods even serve in the marvel movies? And how can Thor, a literal god, not be the mightiest avenger? Ultimately, I think the movie suggests that even the characters in the MCU don't know what it means. The post-credit scene with Zeus is about this point, "How do superheros (modern gods of myth) and the gods of myth coexist?" Outside of the fiction, this gets back to idea that superhero's are modern myths and have they supplanted the ancient myths as our new morality tales?

8. One thing that I found, hilarious in this movie is that while tragedy of losing the kids is happening, Matt Damon's character immediately wants to create a play about it to contextual use the events for the public. Just like our 24 hour news cycle, humanity has this innate need to create narratives to understand the reality we are currently living in.

9. Ultimately, I think this movie is really about Taika's continued take down of authorial intent as a concept and firmly coming down on the side, that the only thing that matters is what the reader/audience chooses to takes away. I think the second post-credit scene presents the audience with the question, "Is Jane being in Valhalla good?" Without the author taking a position. And then we the audience are left to answer it.

10. I see this as being a very similar movie as The Last Jedi. Both are as interested as deconstructing the myths and concepts of the fictional universe they are set in as they are in telling a story in that universe. I just happened to enjoyed this version a lot more than The Last Jedi. Thor 4 worked better for me than the TLJ because comedy is a much better way for me to get onboard with this type of story than drama. It will be interesting to see what he does in Star Wars.

I think when the GOTG say they will tackle all of the other distress calls ("stories") is Taika saying to the audience the rest of the marvel universe can the serious tales of heroes and villains, but this one story can be about deconstructing authorial intent in myths and morality tales.

Uhhhhhhh....nice try, I guess. I mean, you really put some thought into trying to justify the choices Waititi made.

But no. None of that is what he was going for. He just forgot what made Ragnarok so good. He messed with the recipe, changed the proportions of the ingredients, and ended up producing a **** sandwich. Its as simple as that.

Dekker_Lentz said:

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TLR:

Thor 4 as a marvel movie is a miss, but Thor 4 as an art house movie is interesting. Thor 4 and The Last Jedi are similar movies with their creators grappling with similar issues.

A couple of thoughts I had on this movie:

1. This did not feel like a marvel movie, but rather a thematic sequel to JoJo Rabbit.

2. I think a lot of the "incoherence of the movie's plot and plot holes" is from Korg narrating the entire story. And Korg is an extremely unreliable narrator and rather child like so the events of the movie always seemed to bend back to Korg's understanding of the story. For example, did the kids really get the power of Thor or was that Korg's simplistic explanation on how the kids fought Gorr's monsters. Much like the Ancient Greek/Roman/Viking myths would have the gods give their gifts to mortals. I think the movie is suggesting that plot holes are inevitable in any work of fiction and how Taika has an author chooses to deal with it, is to fully ignore them. Further, I think this is why Thor's personality is so different in different parts of the movie and the MCU, different authors highlight different aspects of Thor causing the audience to view him differently.

3. I think this is what made the GOTG scenes work for me, Korg and Thor are living "one version of the story" and the GOTG are living in "another version of the story", so they are out of sync with each other and their time on the screen is therefore intentionally chaotic, tonally mismatched, and the more serious GOTG are quickly bored of the childlike Thor's story and ditch the story. I also think Taika is talking to the audience here.

4. Jane Foster and Thor are also out-of-sync, because they each process their existence in different ways. Jane believes she has a limited time to contribute to the betterment of the universe due to her mortality. Further, her contribution is knowledge which is by its very nature subject to misunderstanding. The scene with her and the other cancer patient goes back to main theme of the movie, authorial intent. She would happily have her work destroyed if it meant another would gain understanding. Further, the wormhole discussion goes into the movies other main theme which is love and pain are eternally connected together. Thor, however, sees his life plainly, he is to fight the good fight until he "dies" and goes to Valhalla. There is no deeper purpose in his eyes. Death is not an existential crisis for him, but death is an existential crisis for Jane.

5. Love and Pain. We almost see every aspect of of love being told from a child's perspective ("Korg"). And pain being told from the adult's perspective ("Gorr"). With Star Lord being the middle point of the two giving Thor his perspective on "it's better to love and lost than to never love at all"

6. Gorr and the Gods. I think Gorr is less a character and more a representation of post-modernism, where he is deconstructing the "Gods" and encouraging the other characters to embrace their own moral relativism. This next part, I don't want to spark a religious debate, but what makes Gorr's post-modernism interesting is he actually can directly interact with "gods". Zeus is a tangible entity, Thor is a tangible entity, Korg' god is tangible. Gorr can shake their hands or actually kill them. Where as we the audience are left with a more ethereal interaction with our "gods" and can only kill our gods by forgetting about them. Ultimately, the movie's climax boils down to a simple question of "Do gods give us love or give us pain/suffering?" The movie suggests they give us neither, it is us mortals who choose if it is love or if it is suffering. In the end Gorr chooses love. Or another way does the author give us meaning or do we choose our own meaning?

7. Looping back to the issue of tangible gods, I think the movie really wants us to debate the point that if the marvel gods are real, why didn't they stop Thanos? What purpose do the gods even serve in the marvel movies? And how can Thor, a literal god, not be the mightiest avenger? Ultimately, I think the movie suggests that even the characters in the MCU don't know what it means. The post-credit scene with Zeus is about this point, "How do superheros (modern gods of myth) and the gods of myth coexist?" Outside of the fiction, this gets back to idea that superhero's are modern myths and have they supplanted the ancient myths as our new morality tales?

8. One thing that I found, hilarious in this movie is that while tragedy of losing the kids is happening, Matt Damon's character immediately wants to create a play about it to contextual use the events for the public. Just like our 24 hour news cycle, humanity has this innate need to create narratives to understand the reality we are currently living in.

9. Ultimately, I think this movie is really about Taika's continued take down of authorial intent as a concept and firmly coming down on the side, that the only thing that matters is what the reader/audience chooses to takes away. I think the second post-credit scene presents the audience with the question, "Is Jane being in Valhalla good?" Without the author taking a position. And then we the audience are left to answer it.

10. I see this as being a very similar movie as The Last Jedi. Both are as interested as deconstructing the myths and concepts of the fictional universe they are set in as they are in telling a story in that universe. I just happened to enjoyed this version a lot more than The Last Jedi. Thor 4 worked better for me than the TLJ because comedy is a much better way for me to get onboard with this type of story than drama. It will be interesting to see what he does in Star Wars.

I think when the GOTG say they will tackle all of the other distress calls ("stories") is Taika saying to the audience the rest of the marvel universe can the serious tales of heroes and villains, but this one story can be about deconstructing authorial intent in myths and morality tales.

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how the hell did you write this on a phone?

C@LAg said:

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Definitely Not A Cop said:

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The CGI was absolutely terrible, especially at the beginning. That bubble room needs to go, it has only worked in The Mandalorian

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and even then only sometimes.

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Some of these recent marvel/SW shows have relied as heavily on it as the SW prequels did on old school CGI. I understand some of that is largely because of shooting limitations from Covid, but I hope we start seeing more practical sets and effects come back soon than we have the past year or so.

Watched it this weekend with pretty low expectations. Not sure it met them. Man, what a hot mess this movie is. I'd be embarrassed if my name was on it somewhere. This is literally like...you should be fired from your coaching job after the 2nd game of the season bad. And the Thor movies were always the Marvel movies I liked best.

Watched it this weekend with the kids. It was indeed all over the place. Some funny parts, some cool scenes (like the black and white) but overall on the lower tier for sure.

My 13 year old asked "Were the first 20 minutes supposed to be bad? Like on purpose?" lol. Says it all.

I feel like they played too much into the funny/fat Thor that got developed in Endgame. It was a funny joke but over the years Thor has lost all his gravitas. It's just an over the top cartoon and there is no weight to anything in the story.

Too much Korg is gay angst and not enough mentioning that Korg's god sits on a game of thrones style "iron Throne" made of smashed scissors.

holy crap....wow! this was great!

JJxvi said:

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Too much Korg is gay angst and not enough mentioning that Korg's god sits on a game of thrones style "iron Throne" made of smashed scissors.

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That was absolutely brilliant.

Ragnarok isn't the same because the movie actually balances light heartedness and seriousness much better. Love and Thunder was overtly trying to make you laugh for 90% of the movie and it fell flat on most.

But I definitely match your first two theories. Hated 1 and 2 and L&T, loved Ragnarok

I actually felt like Jane was a distraction from the Thor storyline and progression from Ragnarok and post-Endgame. They introduced Valkyrie and really built up her character, only to have her take a back-seat in L&T to make room for the Jane "going to battle with Thor" storyline. I just didn't think it was necessary.

I also think L&T kind of ignored Thor's growth in Infinity War and Endgame. At the beginning, he's sitting back and being silly while the battle is going on, then sweeps in to save the day...that just seemed out of character for Thor post-Endgame. It was odd. No, he's not as serious as the early Thor movies, but I think they took it too far in L&T.

There were still a lot of funny moments. Korg was Korg, which was great. Though I think they really forced the storyline of his origin when he clearly referenced in Ragnarok "I tried to start a revolution but nobody came except for my mum and her boyfriend who I hate" - now Korg just had two dads? Eh, I think they were trying too hard there.

Ragnarok had such a great balance of humor and serious moments. Loki probably helped with that. L&T tried to be too silly at times and it just didn't hit the same as Ragnarok. Still a funny movie and I enjoyed it. But it reminded me a lot of GoTG2, trying too hard at times with the jokes and less effort on the actual storyline. GoTG1 and Ragnarok are the most I've ever laughed in a superhero film. In the defense of GoTG2 and L&T, they had to follow up wildly successful films.

Still an enjoyable movie, but yeah it's definitely not as high on my rewatch list like Ragnarok.