After Gorr (Christian Bale) suffers a great loss he stumbles upon his civilisation’s God and is met with disdain at his pleas asking why he allowed his people to suffer so much. Gorr slays his God as an act of vengeance and vows that all Gods must die. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) sets out to stop Gorr and enlists the help of his once girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and the current King of Asgard, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). 

Taika Waititi reinvigorated the Thor franchise with Thor: Ragnarok switching the tone to be more comedic. With Love And Thunder he has pushed that dynamic to its absolute limit and depending on your viewpoint that will make this film genius or diabolical. In my case it often bounced between both emotions. 

The story itself is framed as a children’s tale told by Korg (Taika Waititi) to a group of rapt youngsters. As such, the entire tone of the story is one of a pantomime being played out to those children. To some extent the question of a reliable narrator could come into play as well given who is telling the story and who it is being told to. One particular set of returning characters sum this mood up especially: The New Asgardian Players. Matt Damon, Sam Neil and Luke Hemsworth return as Loki, Odin and Thor to the delight of tourists in New Asgard and of course they bring some more famous cameos with them as well. The issue for me though was that in certain moments of the film its tone was exactly that of this comedy play which felt more than a little odd. 

As with Ragnarok only the villain is immune to the comedy stakes. Christian Bale feels somewhat incongruous in his attempts to paint real emotion whilst in other scenes those emotions are scrawled in crayon. Gorr has a genuine reason for his quest regardless of how insane it perhaps is and Bale does his usual brilliant and committed job to bringing this to life. 

On the flip side to this performance is another cameo which you may or may not be aware of from a big name appearing as a big God, which is frankly insane. I could not decide if it was genius or awful which is a theme I found across the board. Another example of this is the comedy stakes that Jane Foster’s character is given that really clashes against the super serious facet of her story. 

Some time ago Waititi made Jojo Rabbit and I found it rather brilliant. But I was also aware that many found its handling of such horrific events from a child’s perspective to be rather badly managed. Love And Thunder is the film that bizarrely makes me understand where they were coming from! 

It is by no means a bad film though. There is lots of fun to be had. The Guardians Of The Galaxy appear for some fun early on, some of the comedy moments hit and some of the action scenes are cool. It also has a great rock soundtrack with Dio featuring on the end credits and a plethora of Guns N’ Roses songs throughout. I just could not help every now and then posing the question to myself, “is this rubbish or is it meant to appear rubbish?”

As far as the adaptation of Jason Aaron’s brilliant comic run that created Gorr within the Marvel universe it is fine. It strips away vast amounts of the detail and distills Gorr’s decimation of God’s into six months rather than thousands of years but it does manage his key drive reasonably well. Whilst Jane Foster’s part in the story is a little more faithful. It certainly should make you more intrigued in checking out a great comic storyline which I highly recommend. 

As with all Marvel films stay for a mid and end credits sting. 

As for me perhaps further viewings will allow me to reconcile myself to its tone and enjoy it for what it is. Marvel phase four continues its rocky path.