Let’s take a moment and appreciate how terrible Thor: Love and Thunder was

Spoiler alert! This article is intended for people whose eyeballs have already been assaulted by the movie Thor: Love and Thunder.

Now, I don’t have any absolute proof that Marvel has ever asked a 13-year-old boy to write a story based on everything he considers ‘epic’, but you have to admit, the existence of Thor: Love and Thunder is pretty strong evidence that they have. 

Between the existential crisis flashbacks from Thor’s Endgame phase with his dreadlocks and ‘dad bod,’ to the muppet-esque aliens they fought at the beginning, it took me up to about the one-hour mark in the movie before I realized this wasn’t a situation where the main character was going to wake up and realize it was all a weird fever dream. 

The film is an unfortunate smoothie of strange events. 

Among many faults of the film, the characters are one of the most prominently cringe-worthy aspects of the trainwreck. For example, the main characters are: the obvious protagonist Thor, Thor’s ex-girlfriend who cosplays as him because she has major issues, Valkyrie whom they gave a grenade speaker in a cringey scene that was painful to watch, two massive goats who served no purpose but to scream at the top of their lungs the entire movie, and Korg who made this whole purposeless movie a little better. Although I didn’t see the purpose in having his face fall off, it was a little weird, I enjoyed learning more about his species and I’m at least 90% sure his boyfriend was supposed to look like Dwayne The Rock Johnson. 

Going with the random theme, the villain was no Thanos or Ultron. He was just some normal dude we had never seen before. Oh, but he and his daughter worship an oddly flamboyant god. So when the daughter dies and the god doesn’t help, dad is a bit upset. And oh, look! There just happens to be a magic god-killing sword right here! Now I’m sad and powerful! A+ villain origin story. 

If I have to praise the plot for one thing, it would have to be finally getting rid of Jane Foster. It has to be the one good thing cancer ever did. I mean, I don’t wish death on people, but boring vanilla characters who are nothing more than frail NPCs can get written out in any tragic or gruesome way. Too bad her hot assistant had to go with her. 

The movie feels written by and for prepubescent boys. The fact that every time Thor does something even remotely cool, our ears are assaulted by the aggressive guitar riff of Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns n’ Roses, is proof in and of itself. The band has three featured songs in the movie despite the fact that neither the songs nor lyrics have anything to do with the events or theme of the movie. 

For some reason, the Guardians of the Galaxy made an appearance. When the screenwriters were planning this part out, this is how I imagined it went. 

“We should include some character from another movie just for funsies”

“How about the Guardians of the Galaxy?”

“Perfect! How much screen time should they have?”

“45 seconds.”

“Great! What should they be doing?”

“Shooting aliens or something”

“Genius.”

In the end, all that the Guardians of the Galaxy did was get us excited, and then fly off into space never to be seen again. 

Then, more epic nonsense: they killed Zeus? The Greek God of lightning??? The king of all gods?????? When we were first introduced to the character I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it sure wasn’t a weak old guy with a potbelly. Although I will admit the orgy jokes were pretty good and made me chuckle, that entire section of the movie served no purpose except for the fact that they stole his magic lightning weapon. The fact that they stabbed him in the heart along to yet another Guns n’ Roses song was extremely cheesy and made me cringe.  

The cherry on top of this trainwreck of a movie has to be the ridiculously dramatic ending. The little girl with the face tats, whom they didn’t even give a name, got brought back to life and watched her father, the god butcher, die with a grin on her face.

Then, like two seconds later is when Jane Foster decides to kick the bucket due to her cancer. 

The nonsense is upstaging other nonsense at this point and it isn’t over. Then, there is the final scene where we see the girl use magic powers we didn’t know she had and we learn that Thor adopted her. What? 

All in all, I have to say, after watching the entire 119 minute film, the only part I found myself truly enjoying — in the way film is meant to be enjoyed at least — was the 1.5 seconds where we got a glimpse of Thor’s bare ass.

Featured image: Marvel entertainment