The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has introduced many distinctive superheroes but the one who has gotten a tonal shift and the one and only character who got his solo fourth movie is Thor aka The God of Thunder. Thor’s journey in the MCU has been an ebb and flow. His first two solo adventures, Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World, didn’t receive good receptions. Personally, I enjoyed both of these movies, they lie somewhere between the spectrum of MCU’s best and worst movies. I know, Thor: The Dark World still receives some huge backlash, but it is definitely not the most atrocious or boring MCU film, Black Widow (2021) still holds that mantle. But everything changed with Thor: Ragnarok. There was this excellent tonal change in the character of Thor and it was just a blast of a movie, still the best fun I’ve had in theatres. Taika Waititi’s humour, visuals and style added that much needed energy & fuel into this franchise and that’s exactly what was required for this character.
Now, after a lot of anticipation, Taika Waititi & Chris Hemsworth are finally back with Thor: Love and Thunder, which has been released worldwide. When a new movie releases, it brings an inevitable thing with it, Critic Reviews. And boy! have they started pouring in for this movie. Some critics are loving this movie, some didn’t enjoy it much and others are still confused about their opinions. So, to get a clearer picture of this ocean of reviews, I have combined several reviews in this one article to help you determine whether you should be excited for Thor: Love and Thunder or not.
Positive Reviews for Thor: Love and Thunder
Thor: Love And Thunder is a deeply weird, deeply wonderful triumph. It’s a movie that dares to be seriously uncool, and somehow ends up all the cooler for it — sidesplittingly funny, surprisingly sentimental, and so tonally daring that it’s a miracle it doesn’t collapse. The Gorr-centric cold-open is as dark as the MCU gets, but this is also a Thor romcom with a loved-up ABBA montage.
Weirder than Ragnarok, but incredibly sincere in its outlook, Taika’s Thor-quel is a big, beautiful blast. You’ll love it, and probably thunder it too. What a classic Thor adventure!
Thor: Love and Thunder is Marvel Studios’ most heartful and emotionally satisfying film to date, with absolutely rockstar performances from its cast of Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and Christian Bale. After years of tragedy and torment, filled with loss and solitude, director Taika Waititi finally allows Thor to be happy and we can't help but smile and celebrate with the strongest Avenger in his most important hour. He's all grown up and has become the God he was always destined to be, full of Love and Thunder.
Both of Waititi’s Marvel films struggle with the same issue – that he’s been lumped with so much franchise baggage that it takes about 20 minutes to clean up the mess before the fun can actually begin. The Guardians of the Galaxy appear here, but in a contractually obligated kind of way. And the film has absolutely no idea what to do with Thor’s clumsily handled weight gain subplot in Avengers: Endgame. But once Waititi, and his co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, push all of that out of the way, you can almost feel the stick-shift change in Love and Thunder.
Ragnarok’s distinctive humour is carried over, and there’s a blissfully dumb running joke about a pair of giant, heavy metal-screaming goats. But, really, it’s the heart that matters here. Love and Thunder’s characters are all running towards the same conclusion: that, no matter how long or short our time on Earth (or any planet) may be, we’re all inevitably living for the benefit of others. We love. Then we love again. It’s nice for Marvel, always caught up in its own chaos, to remind us of something so simple.
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi returns to helm Thor: Love and Thunder, this time taking the rapid-fire comedy of the previous entry and injecting a saccharin story that explores the challenges of love and loss. Tonally, Love and Thunder whips back and forth between heart and humor
Ultimately, Waititi ups the ante in Thor: Love and Thunder, delivering a film that is just as moving as it is funny. Waititi once again lays an uproarious comedy baseline but, unlike with Ragnarok, the filmmaker also weaves in a genuinely affecting message about life and love. It's a message that, in the end, informs and evolves the titular character and his ex-girlfriend-turned-superhero, paying off a decade-long storyline and establishing interesting new threads that can stretch into future MCU films.
Bale gives the series its best villain in years. He and Hemsworth make surprisingly natural screen partners, while Portman embraces the soap-operatics of her role – her death’s door scenes feel like something from EastEnders, which is exactly what they should feel like.
• Collider
While there might be complaints about the film's pacing or weaker first half, Thor: Love and Thunder recaptured exactly what charmed me about these MCU movies. I never once rolled my eyes at a joke that was clearly dropped in, so it could be a zinger and make it to the trailer. It successfully silenced a rather jaded MCU fan by offering a story that had it all without having to sacrifice its soul to the MCU machine that is eager to churn out stories for future phases.
The film embraces Thor as the flawed and sometimes silly man that he is. He has moments that easily prove that he is a god in more than just his name, but also moments where he can be a himbo. He's not stoic or difficult to connect to, there's genuine emotion there, happiness and heartache.
The title, Love and Thunder, has more than one meaning, which will become apparent to fans by the time the credits roll. Taken literally though, the titular nouns represent the two main aspects of the film. “Love,” for the central plot concerning the protagonist’s growing dependence on his own emotions, and “Thunder,” for the absolute exuberance emitted from every scene.
Thor: Love and Thunder is the most entertaining a comic book adaptation has been in a while, and it feels like Hemsworth and Marvel Studios are just getting started with this fresh take on the God of Thunder. While this sort of thing has been said about most recent blockbuster releases, this time it could actually be true. It’s a comic book come to life, with all the vibrant colors and out-of-this-world surrealism
• IGN
Thor: Love and Thunder is largely successful in honoring Thor’s long journey towards self-actualization and rarely falters while keying into the crackling chemistry between leads Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Tessa Thompson. It’s essentially the MCU’s first romantic comedy, and plays with those tropes in delightful ways. But while Thor and Jane’s relationship is handled well, Love and Thunder is less deft -- and a lot safer than you’d expect -- in pushing the greater MCU story forward.
Mixed Reviews for Thor: Love and Thunder
• TheWrap
That’s not to say that “Love and Thunder” is a total blunder; Hemsworth and Portman generate a magnetic rapport, whether they’re super-peers or just two very busy people trying to work out a relationship. Bale brings zero camp to his haunted villain, even when his journey leads him to one of Marvel Comics’ most powerful, reality-spanning characters — the script reduces him to a mere MacGuffin.
I didn’t leave “Thor: Love and Thunder” feeling annoyed — Waititi and Team Marvel are too shrewd as showpeople not to keep the pace lively and the scope massive — but it falls far short of the best of the franchise. If this latest one was aiming to mix it up by giving equal weight to the masks of comedy and tragedy, it’s an effort that falls short.
• CNN
The impressive mix of tones and styles that director Taika Waititi pulled off in "Thor: Ragnarok" largely fizzles in "Thor: Love and Thunder," which isn't as funny as it wants to be, as stirring as it needs to be or romantic as it ought to be. Although well paced at just under two hours, instead of the hoped-for fireworks this comes a little too close to feeling like a post-Fourth of July dud.
• Polygon
Thor: Love and Thunder sells out its characters for jokes. Taika Waititi’s return to the MCU is has its moments, but he never lives up to the bar he set with Thor: Ragnarok. Love and Thunder has nothing to offer that’s as compelling or attentively crafted as its jokes. Characters appear in ways that seem engineered to be funny rather than true. Even with a few solid jokes and more than a few talented performers in its roster, Thor: Love and Thunder is glib in ways that suffocate all of its strengths, as well as the audience watching it. It is, surprisingly, a cynical film — one that’s equally unworthy of its noble heroes lifting magic weapons and the regular people lifting their wallets to buy tickets.
It’s the kind of movie that ends on such an emotionally satisfying note that I was willing to forgive — and all too able to forget — the awkward path it traveled to get there, or how clumsily it gathered its cast together for the grand finale. If “Love and Thunder” is more of the same, it’s also never less than that. The MCU may still be looking for new purpose by the time this movie ends, but the mega-franchise can take solace in the sense that Thor has found some for himself.
A strong MCU sequel but not quite as entertaining as ‘Ragnarok.’ Director Taika Waititi goes to the well one too many times with similar jokes and set pieces as the last ‘Thor’ movie but still delivers a stylish and satisfying film. In the end, I may have been a little harsh on ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ and I really do hope that I will eventually love it as much as I wanted to, but for now, I only really liked it. Director Taika Waititi delivers a strong sequel, that tries too hard to recreate the magic of the last film, but is still entirely entertaining, funny, and action packed, and also features great performances from Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, and in particular, Natalie Portman.
Negative Reviews for Thor: Love and Thunder
This is a film full of choppy shifts, both in the narrative and the visuals. The CG environments are so expansive, and so garishly colorful, that it almost looks animated, and the jumps to the green fields of Asgard or the sterile rooms of the hospital where Jane is being treated give the impression of being dropped into a different movie. The movie feels weightless, flippant, instantly forgettable, sparking neither love nor thunder.
• Variety
The last 40 minutes of “Thor: Ragnarok” were disappointing, with the top-heavy Marvel DNA kicking back in, but “Thor: Love and Thunder” sustains its freshness to the end. This one, if anything, has a more awkward first act, as our heroes interface with the Guardians of the Galaxy, who seem to have wandered in from their own metaverse and, frankly, should have stayed there.
In the end, however, it’s the mix of tones — the cheeky and the deadly, the flip and the romantic — that elevates “Thor: Love and Thunder” by keeping it not just brashly unpredictable but emotionally alive. I like plenty of Marvel movies just fine, but they are what they are, and what they are is products. This one has enough wide-eyed boldness and shimmer to earn the designation of fairy tale.
• Forbes
Thor 4 attempts to adapt two fan-favorite comic arcs into a single too-short (110 minutes plus credits) feature and gives both short shrift. It mistakes abstract concepts for deep-dive storytelling. It is fatally hobbled by a super heroic lead who has become cringe-inducingly incompetent since his last adventures.
While Thor 3 blended quirky comedy with grim violence and mournful melodrama, Thor 4 feels closer in tone to one of those fake Asgardian plays.Love and Thunder is much shorter than it needs to be, and the time spent on three distinct plots leads to all three of them being barely developed beyond cursory acknowledgment.
Thor: Love and Thunder is an unnecessary sequel, existing only because its predecessor was unusually well-received even by those who weren’t all-in MCU fans. This installment flirts with the notion of “trickle-down worship” being no more effective than “trickle-down politics,” but it’s mostly about Thor rekindling with Jane, Natalie Portman cosplaying as Thor for a few sequences and hopefully cashing in on some of the Ragnarok goodwill. Like too many of the most recent MCU projects, it only exists because Disney can’t afford to stop this train. Bale, Thompson and ‘Guns and Roses’ tunes aside, this fourth Thor is a real chore.
Thor: Love and Thunder fully leans into Thor’s goofball attributes at the expense of narrative cohesion and the somber topics that the film broaches. But far worse is the audience’s reintroduction to Jane. In the first two Thor films, Jane is established as one of the smartest people on the planet, yet she’s prone to turning into a gibbering, blushing fool at the first glimpse of Thor’s pecs.
More than any other MCU movie, Love and Thunder epitomizes the trap that much of modern comic book culture finds itself ensnared in: demanding to be taken seriously while also relentlessly making self-deprecating jokes about how ridiculous it is because it’s aware that it’s derived from children’s entertainment.
So, summing up all these reviews, it seems like people who love Thor: Ragnarok and those who enjoy Taika Waititi's style & humour will have an excellent time with Thor: Love and Thunder, but it might feel a little over-the-top or crampy for other people. The movie is funnier & weirder than its predecessor, but it made Thor look like a parody character.
Christian Bale shines as Gorr looking equally terrifying and menacing. He could have been benefited with a little more screentime, some critics felt that Bale was underutilized. It seems like this film gave Natalie Portman's Jane Foster the development she needed, with her chemistry with Thor being one of the highlights.
According to some critics, the plot struggles a bit when it has to handle the weightage disposed by the cinematic universe, the Guardian of Galaxy, but once it is done with this and finds its own foot, the plot starts to get better and better.
Honestly, I don't mind negative critics reviews, they are inevitable. A movie containing Taika Waititi's humour & style with a shorter runtime won't resonate with some people. There also have been some complaints that MCU Phase 4 movies have been clueless and are not pointing in a certain direction leading to a greater threat (like Thanos) but what these people don't understand is that's what this phase is all about, developing individual storylines, giving characters their proper timing and then at some point in future correlating them to face a bigger threat, probably in phase 5 or 6 of the MCU.
So, that is all for this article. As you can tell, I'm pretty excited for Thor: Love and Thunder, and let's see where does it stand with other phase 4 properties. Thank you.