It’s fine, Thor’s fine, Marvel’s fine. Right?

Score: 3/5

As Marvel Studios continues down the road of what the heck to do after Avengers: Endgame it has felt more and more like Marvel doesn’t know either. Maybe it’s a strategy to come back with a more robust vision in time, or an admission that what came before will not be possible to sustain going forward. All that is to say Thor: Love and Thunder is another fine, okay, it’s alright kind of movie. One or two every so often in this never-ending journey of Marvel characters is one thing but it’s getting a tad exhausting.

Getting that out of the way time to really talk about Thor: Love and Thunder. It’s solid, and pretty funny at points if you are into the child-like humor that director Taika Waititi is known for. My two personal favorites are a pair of ridiculous goats and a love triangle you may or may not see coming between Thor and two other “characters.” Chris Hemsworth’s more comedic Thor still works so much better for me than serious over-the-top drama pre-Ragnarök Thor ever did. Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster / Mighty Thor feels like the first time that she has been given a fun role in a big blockbuster. It’s clear from the get-go that she got to enjoy herself and not feel trapped under the weight of a weak script for her character. Then there is Christian Bale’s Gorr. He is creepy, he is interesting, he is fun to watch on screen, and just like 85% of Marvel villains he gets very little time for the audience to enjoy him.

While the movie is funny and has plenty of action beats, I felt that as I watched the movie felt hollow. It ran at a quick pace like it wanted to be over as quickly as possible. Very few beats had moments to breathe or be challenged. Gorr, as I mentioned before, was severely lacking in some of that department. While on the topic of Gorr and Marvel villains again. I have reached a breaking point of seeing random monster henchmen designs. They don’t make for interesting action scenes after you have seen it done a bajillion times in the MCU. One last nitpick, for me, voice-overs are the hardest thing to pull off in a movie without feeling lazy or too over the top to get the point across and this movie has moments like that. It didn’t work for me in the slightest.

I still can’t quite put my finger on what has been going on recently with the Marvel releases but Love and Thunder continues the trend of being adequate. It isn’t wowing you with anything so amazing on screen that you can be distracted from other shortcomings, but it also isn’t so offensively terrible that you won’t have at least a good time at the moment. Thor: Love and Thunder is the second best-ish Thor movie, which after Ragnarök the bar is admittedly low. It’s fun at times, dumb at others. It’s very empty of a movie but moves fast enough that you may forgive it. It’s okay, which hey take that as you will when deciding if it’s worth seeing in theaters or waiting eight weeks for Disney+.