Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is back in form after battling Thanos and competes alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy in new adventures on distant worlds, while Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) runs things in New Asgard. But then a powerful enemy appears in the form of Gorr (Christian Bale), who is out to wipe out all the gods. When he kidnaps the children of New Asgard, Thor, Valkyrie and Thor's loyal friend Korg (Taika Waititi) join forces to convince other gods to fight Gorr together. They receive support from Thor's ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), of all people. She has recently taken up the role of "Mighty Thor" wielding Thor's magical hammer Mjölnir, which was destroyed in the battle against Hela. But there is no time to worry about it, because the threat from Gorr is growing and soon more than the lives of the children of Asgard are at stake...

For "Thor: Love and Thunder" Taika Waititi could again be won as director. His "Thor: Day of Decision" was a real surprise, skillfully combining action, suspense and Waititi's very opinionated humor. There were some ideas that were simply terrific and that really brought a breath of fresh air into the MCU. In his successor, Waititi has remained absolutely true to his style. On the one hand, this is positive, because there are again some really funny gags and visual gimmicks that are again a lot of fun. On the other hand, the surprise effect that worked so well in the predecessor is missing this time. In addition, some gag is simply recycled and thereby badly overused.

What really bothered me personally, however, was that the mixture of colorful, whimsical humor and dark moments no longer worked as well as one is actually used to from Waititi. The film opens with a terrific, very depressing scene that is meant to illustrate why Gorr wants to destroy all the gods. A really interesting, sinister character is established here, and Christian Bale embodies him really well. Waititi unfortunately doesn't manage to adequately exploit the potential he has built up here himself. He prefers to ride the gag about screaming giant goats to death, which is quite funny at first, but loses its impact after the fourth time. And Gorr degenerates into a minor character who can never quite develop. Too bad.

Richly well works against the chemistry between Chris Hemsworth (again really great in this role!!) and Natalie Portman, whose transformation in "Mighty Thor" is also explained very plausibly - again with great emotional potential. However, even this is not really exploited at the end - or rather toned down at the last moment. The film is just too silly for the threat of Gorr to really unfold as such, and the emotional moments are also watered down as they end up shying away from the drastic consequences they initially seem to have.

No question: "Thor: Love and Thunder" is entertaining and very fun in places. But it's also nowhere near as good as it could be and not as surprising or original as "Thor: Decision Day" was. As well entertained as I was, I was also a little disappointed in the end. Therefore, there is from me overall a good, but also small little restrained: Worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp