Zane Foyle’s review published on Letterboxd:
100% the best marvel poster of all time. Now for a review of the movie.
So yes, Thor Love and Thunder is good, very good, not great. Thor Ragnorok was a much better movie in terms of it's storytelling, use of humour and music, but what I will say is that this film's style and aesthetic were absolutely fantastic, and possibly an all time great for the MCU. Christian Bale's performance was pretty damn ominous, and stole the show whenever he appeared. The use of black and white was absolutely incredible to display a villain's power and presence, making him feel all the more intimidating whilst giving visually stunning scenery to entertain audiences. The use of visual humour was also very good, despite it's share of the not so great marvel humour.
However the film's pacing, storytelling and character building have a lot to improve on. What I loved about Ragnorok was it's ability to utilise it's large scope to tell a mostly compacted story which did at times fall apart. However, this film didn't exactly hold so much coherency in plot. It was a series of moments which zig zagged towards one destination to another, so there's a lot of planet/setting hopping, and an unfortunately almost Star Wars Rise of Skywalker level of such. The marvel humour definitely made me cringe, and the final battle was a nice idea, but in my honest opinion not too well crafted, much unlike the previous battle.
I also wish I cared about more characters, as the title itself kind of pressures the film to deliver a story where the audience consistently cares about the characters. The character building was definitely a weakness in certain aspects, as aside from Thor and the titular antagonist, not too many of the characters resonated with me personally.
I DID like the use of Guns and Roses music (note this, I'm not even a fan of them but the music actually made the scenes a lot better). And to note another positive, as I mentioned before, Christian Bale was absolutely fantastic. He was extremely unhinged, creepy and provided a fresh and more original layer for the film, as he as a character has such a strong presence to the point where he actually controlled the colour palette itself, as well as making the rest of the film as ominous as it could. This is how MCU villains should be. His character building wasn't FLAWLESS, but what saved it was his performance as well as Taika Waititi's create direction decisions to determine his strong role in the story.
Overall, yes, I liked this film very much. It's a very creative and ambitious move from the MCU (2022 is looking pretty good for ambition in the MCU!), and very very entertaining. I reckon with some work on the story and better character building, the next Thor film could possibly be even better than the previous two.
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