At this moment in time, the MCU is in shambles, the fatigue is quite real and when the output of content surpasses the output of quality is which is severely lacking, the fans get rightfully fed up. In fact, I didn’t even bother watching this one in theatres and waited till it became available on Disney Plus. Considering how the narrative around the MCU has been so horrible, I honestly was not in the mood to waste two hours of my life watching something that I’ll regret but I managed to keep an open mind. My brother and I had this whole argument even about giving every movie a chance and to not listen to the opinion of others and forming one on your own. Somehow, I convinced him to watch it with me and after a good twenty minutes, one of us finally admitted that this is actually really entertaining so far. By the first half, we were having a blast and I was ready to pull out the “I told you so” card but then the second half came along and we found ourselves speaking less and less because we were genuinely in disbelief as to how a movie fell so stunningly hard in its third act.

massive spoilers for ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ are featured in this review.

By this point, when it comes to the MCU movies, I usually go in with low expectations and just expect to be entertained, I don’t care about the quality, I just want to turn my brain off for two hours and just watch these beautiful people run around in ridiculous costumes at this point, it’s that bad. Obviously, there are still some projects they manage to get me excited about but I can’t say this was one of them. I was never a Thor fan, I liked ‘Ragnarok‘ but that’s where my love for this character ends. I think Chris Hemsworth is fantastic in the role but it couldn’t be any clearer that they don’t know what to do with him at this point. They even try to set up a fifth, a goddamn fifth ‘Thor’ movie and I just don’t know if that’s something that anyone wants. This entire movie asks Thor to do some self-reflection and it is unintentionally the funniest part of the movie that the ending is the way that it is. More importantly with the introduction of Mighty Thor, the movie fumbles the bag quite epically. Her involvement in this movie felt incredible small let alone how it’s going to look when you reflect on the entire franchise. It was a giant mess when it came to every character really with not even a single character getting a satisfying arc.

If you loved Thor, Korg and Valkyrie in ‘Thor: Ragnarok‘, then get ready because ‘Love and Thunder’ does not utilize them well at all. Valkyrie was one of my favourite characters and now she gets reduced to basically a shell of a character with no real depth or exploration whatsoever. Her bisexuality is only mentioned twice, for a movie called ‘Love and Thunder’, romantic love is only taken seriously when it’s between Thor and Jane. Korg’s entire involvement is quite literally useless, his jokes fall flat every single time without fail and the reveal that his entire species consists of men feels more like a joke to laugh at than a joke that’s made to be laughed at if that even makes any sense. In fact, the tone is a major problem this movie faces as when it tries to be this quirky space viking comedy, it works but then it asks you to take that ridiculousness and take it seriously. For example, the crazy, over-the-top nature of ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ worked because it was in context to characters we already know and care about, the conflict and emotion were established so the movie could get away with its craziness. Here, the movie doesn’t quite know what to do with itself or its characters so when it asks you to care, there’s nothing there to care about and it makes that first half feel like a completely different movie.

It’s quite telling how good the writing of this movie was when the opening scene came up. It’s the most cliched thing you can imagine, it genuinely felt like a parody at times. Gorr’s child dies in the first two minutes proving how much the movie isn’t concerned with backstory. Christian Bale does the best with what he’s given, I actually really liked his power set and aesthetic, it’s sad that he was wasted in a movie like this. As for what I did actually like in the first half, I thought that the stupid, genuinely stupid humour was funny at times. Chris Hemsworth doing a split in between two ships? Extraordinary. The screaming goats? I’m ashamed to say I found them funny every single time, it’s stupid, it is but I wasn’t mad at it. That being said, Jane saying “Eat my hammer” to Gorr in the final battle… I can’t imagine anyone defending that line. I also cannot tell if Thor ending up with Gorr’s child and becoming a father figure was a joke that was made to laugh at or just the actual path they’re taking this character on. I actually cannot imagine how this was approved but it was and somehow it’s a real movie.

Overall, with ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’, the MCU has dropped to an all-time low, making me less and less excited for the franchise’s future. How many times can you be let down by something till you just drop it? This was a waste of time, honestly, one of the worst movies of the year and I wish I was exaggerating but truthfully I even found myself liking ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ and that says a lot. Nothing really more to say other than that this was just a colossal letdown.

‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is now streaming on Disney Plus.