Thor Headed

Sort of reviewing Thor: Love and Thunder

For the record, this was me trying to look tough. Not grumpy. But it does suit the tone of the piece.

Damn.

Here I am, at the very beginning of my Substack journey. Self-proclaimed poster boy for youthful enthusiasm. Intent on snuffling out and celebrating the joy-truffles in this raging dumpster fire of a world. But I can't say that's quite gone to plan here.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) felt, to me, like a safe place to start. Something breezy, bright and full of fun to turn our frowns upside down and leave us skipping out of the cinema.

Wandering into the press show yesterday, those expectations felt reasonable. I wasn't holding out for a classic. Films as pure and wonderful as Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) are few and far between. Honestly, I'd have been happy with another Ragnarok (2017). So my fingers weren't crossed for some A5 Japanese Wagyu Kobe Sirloin Steak situation. But I did expect a tasty burger. That's what I was hungry for. That's what I was hoping for.

What I got was a circus hotdog. Easy enough to choke down, but on the satisfaction scale, no one's patting a belly full of pig snouts and anuses.

Again, then: Damn.

A little context, first, for anyone dismissing my reservations as the grumblings of a stuffy old critic.

God, I hope these aren't the grumblings of a stuffy old critic.

Spider-Man was my first superhero. It was 1977 and I was eight years old. When the pilot episode of TV's The Amazing Spider-Man was, for whatever reason, granted a British theatrical release, I was in like Flynn, my head swimming with images of cross-town swinging and thief-ensnaring webbing.

Pyjama-Man, Pyjama-Man, does whatever a man wearing Spider-Man pyjamas can - which sadly wasn’t much in 1977.

So there I was, at my local fleapit, fizzing with excitement and blissfully devoid of even the most rudimentary critical faculties. Or so I thought. Mere minutes in, really the instant I first saw actor Nicholas Hammond running about in what amounted to ill-fitting Spider-Man pyjamas, and certainly by the time he started swinging around with webbing that was clearly just thick white rope, I rolled my eyes for perhaps the first time, and decided, this was not my Spider-Man.

What I wanted was a Spider-Man movie that played out on the screen the way his adventures did in my head whenever I read one of his comics. I was in for a very long wait.

The following year, everything that Spider-Man got wrong, Superman: The Movie (1978) did right, and I'm not just talking about the effects. I mean, sure, I believed a man could fly, and that was magical. But more importantly, the cast and crew of that movie respected their source material. Sure, they had fun with it, but they didn't treat it like stupid kids’ stuff. They didn't talk down to their audience. And they delivered something of value. Something with substance. Something epic. Mythic. An American classic.

It was years before another superhero movie hit that nail quite so squarely on the head. The Superman movies ran their course, dropping a little in quality every time. And most other comicbook features, films like The Shadow (1994) and even Burton's Batman (1989), felt like they were made by people who were just a little bit embarrassed about making superhero films. Folks who neither understood the heroes whose stories they were telling, nor their enduring appeal. Beyond which, the costumes always looked so wrong in those movies - so damn stiff - and the effects clearly weren't special enough.

Finally, at the turn the millennium, things picked up. A generation of filmmakers, raised as much on comicbooks as they had been on films and TV, started making the sort of superhero movies that they, and the rest of us, had long dreamed of seeing. And they were all Marvel: Blade in '98 and, better still, Blade II in 2002; X-Men in 2000, and, greater yet, X2 in 2003. And Spider-Man in 2002, then, best of all, Spider-Man 2 in 2004. These are the films that paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It was all so damn exciting. I felt like I was going to burst. Then Iron Man came out in 2008 and, well, I think I did explode a little. Marvel finally took control of their live action destiny and, thanks largely to Jon Favreau, who turned out to be a bloody genius, they fashioned the perfect formula for big screen, comicbook success: a fine and beautiful balance of fun and colour and pace and tone, of high stakes drama, rollercoaster thrills and genuine good humour. Everything working together in perfect harmony like the folk-singing, coke-drinking hippies of yore - only not annoying.

The God of Thunder enjoys a moment of calm in Thor: Love and Thunder

These were the golden years, and from Thor (2011) to Endgame (2019) I was happy as a clam. But nothing lasts forever. Even the freshest formulas grow stale. And if a little bit of what you love does you good, what happens when there's an unlimited supply? Or to go one step further, what happens when it's crammed down your throat 24/7?

Eventually you have to stagger back and reassess. Accept the thrill is gone. Alter your expectations for the future and start looking for the next big thing. Once musicals ruled the roost. For years it was westerns. And through the Eighties, we had psychopathic action heroes.

The MCU, though I expect it to drag on for years, occasionally pulling a No Way Home (2012)-sized rabbit out of the hat, has likewise crept past its sell-by date. It's just all too familiar, these days. It's all been done. We've seen it. We've been there. We've bought the t-shirts, the action figures, the hammers, the shields and it was glorious. But now, sitting through Thor: Love and Thunder, for all its rainbow-hued spectacle and knockabout, cheeky humour, I felt almost instantly tired of it all.

In a plot resembling Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, only with more cancer, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who's also a Thor now, but has cancer, square off against The Child Catcher - I mean Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) - who kidnaps New Asgard's kids in a bid to lure Thor to his doom.

Thing is, Gorr's beef with the gods seems entirely reasonable. After his child dies - yes the laughs keep coming - the former religious zealot realises that Gods don't care about the little people. So he sets about decapitating them with a magic sword, and I, for one, wish him the best of luck. Because who cares if the Gods survive? Even Thor, who's probably the best of the gods, is a bit of a dick. And certainly Zeus - played by Russell Crowe with all the cultural sensitivity of Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - is a monstrous piece of crap. So really the stakes couldn't be lower. And though Chris Hemsworth is clearly having a ball playing a sillier, more vulnerable Thor, his dithery, dorky stylings are less God of Thunder than they are Hugh Grant. It's an act that quickly wears thin.

Ultimately, yes, the movie's easily watchable. Though I already can't recall a single action scene with any enthusiasm, and really it's just a big, cheesy panto, only with dead kids and cancer, it's likely most will find it moderately pleasing.

Now there's a line for the poster:

"Moderately Pleasing!"

- Some Grumpy Old Bloke on Substack

I'm just ready for something new. Aren't you? Can someone please make something new?

Do you think the MCU has run out steam? I’d love to hear your thoughts.