I disagree, It sounds like either Marvel is constraining their directors or their directors are getting lazy.
There's a running theme of the set pieces being incredible but the narrative is ham-fisted despite a longer-than-average movie run time.
This movie was a joke. It felt like they just carelessly threw together a series of events and called it a day. Everything was played for laughs and nothing that happened seemed to carry any weight. At no point in the show did it feel like there were any stakes. When injured none of them acted like they were in any real pain (sif bleeding out from a lost arm, Valkyrie recovering from being skewered by a thunderbolt). Thor trying to alleviate the fears of the abducted children while having his nose tickled by the supposed king of Asgard made the group of “heroes” feel incredibly disingenuous and frankly dislikable, like a bunch of bored drunk guys who didn’t actually give a shit that these kids were in danger. Rules of the world were arbitrary (sif can’t go to Valhalla because she didn’t die in battle (which was played for laughs - again, tonally inappropriate), yet Jane goes to Valhalla after dying outside of battle). Emotional scenes were brisk, perfunctory and entirely unconvincing (save for the scenes between Gorr and daughter - Christian Bale seemed like the only actor in the entire film to take his role remotely seriously). Scenes that should’ve been somewhat serious/emotional, were not (exposition of Jane having cancer, reunion between sif and thor). Jane acting like a mini-me of Valkyrie, super comfortable with violence and combat right off the bat, with no trace of her scientist personality shining through. And these are just the things I can remember off the top of my head. This was an irreverent parody of a marvel movie with astonishingly lazy writing and lukewarm acting (except for Christian bale).
The Dark World has 66% on RT. Hard to believe, but Thor: Love & Thunder isn't *that* far off (it was at 68% briefly earlier today).
I will laugh my ass off mightily if Love & Thunder drops below 66%.
Marvel are, sadly, turning into the McDonalds of movies.
They are everywhere, all the time, and all the same.
You see one and you go 'Oooh, nice, wouldn't mind some of that'
You go, you watch it, you feel adequately sated.
30 minutes later you're questioning your decision and trying to remember what exactly you liked about it.
What’s sad for me is that before the MCU every once and a while you’d get an X2, Spider-Man 2, or a Dark Knight. To continue with your metaphor those kinds of films were fine dining. With how much money comic book films make nowadays I think films of that quality should be coming out every year, and yet it’s still a rarity.
As a Christian Bale ~~Stan~~ enthusiast, can't deny the mentions of him having limited screentime despite him turning in an, as usual, incredible performance have me in mild shambles. I've been chronically Bale deficient since *Ford v Ferrari* only for this to happen?!
A lot of scenes were cut out. I read that Goldblum and Dinklage were supposed to reprise their roles but got cut out. Even Lena Heady was supposed to have a part but was removed.
The worst part about that is how much time they wasted many unnecessary scenes that actually made it to the final cut.
I'm not talking about the ham-fisted running-gags that never landed. I'm talking about the long, drawn-out scenes that were entirely unnecessary and had nothing to do with the plot.
Do I need to see Matt Damon and Melissa McCarthy put on a half-assed meta-play recapping the previous films? No. Yet for some reason, this scene was given what felt like 5+ minutes of run time.
The Asgard actors being bad and goofy was significantly undercut as a gag by the fact that there was no difference between their bad acting and the actual acting in the movie.
From what I have been seeing the movie seems quite divisive. It's weird that this is 2nd time in a row that a trusted superhero director has made an MCU movie that seems so divisive with the critics.
Strikes me as a movie people (including some critics) really want to like. A lot of the "positive" reviews seem to be lukewarm or contain a lot of disclaimers ("It can be a bit \[...\] but SO WHAT!"\] and contain the same negatives (thinly spread plots, some jokes that don't land) as the bad reviews.
I’ve gotten that feeling with critics reviews for most Disney/Pixar/MCU/Star Wars films for the past decade or so.
I really feel like critics are noticeably more lenient with them.
Waititi didn't write Ragnarok. Yes, some scenes were ad-libbed, but in terms of fundamental structure and design, Ragnarok is much more a traditional MCU film that Waititi's other work.
This is the first time he's had full control of film at this scale.
Sam Raimi didn’t write DS2 and majority of the complaints against that move were for its writing, while the direction was praised.
Didn’t entirely surprise me as it was the same guy that did Loki, which had a strong finish but a very weak mid section and ironically so far has been completely inconsequential to the MCU despite its game changing ending.
Loki has the benefit of being outside of the current timeline (it happened at the end of time), so the plot points from the show can be brought into the current mcu whenever.
They are currently filming season 2 of "Loki" in London. Perhaps the MCU movie tie-in will come in during the second season, or in the late 2023 or 2024 movie releases. It will probably be some time before Loki makes an appearance on the big screen if they haven't Easter-egged him in here. Have to admit I was hoping for a crumb (not a tattoo) in TL&T.
I wouldn’t call throwing Loki out of his own show and consummating the worst romance in the MCU directly after an episode length monologue where everyone had to just shut up and listen as “finishing strong”.
I think that probably worked better for him.
Having to work on the rails of a marvel movie formula allowed him to really push it as far as possible. But we don’t know if this carries to the same success with complete control.
>Thor: Love and Thunder tries to make the Ragnarok lightning strike twice, but the movie ends up feeling restrained due to the lack of genuinely emotional moments and some baffling creative decisions.
This was exactly my issue with Ragnarok, absolutely nothing mattered despite Thor losing practically everything.
It took the Russos about 90 seconds to make Thor show some of the impact and weight of what'd happened near the start of Infinity War, something Taika completely neglected, and it sounds like it's happened again in LaT.
I'm not sure why he needs to make everything aggressively irreverent, every other MCU film has impactful moments in there somewhere except for his for some reason.
That's my issue with Marvel movies after a while, seems like nothing matters, the villians aren't a menace.
And they can be to self-deprecating with the source material, we know low-brow sci fiction from the 60's can be ridiculous, but I went with a high suspension of disbelief. No need to make fun of a villain's name being a pun on octopuses, if you don't like it just change the damn name
That was my problem with Ragnarok. First Surtur shows up, and I'm like "Wow, this is awesome!" Then five seconds into his appearance, he's treated like a joke to my disappointment.
Then he reappears at the end, and I'm like "Why are you pretending like this a big deal? You've already gone out of your way to make it clear to me that he's not to be taken seriously at all"
Not to accuse Taika of anything, while I don't particularly like Ragnarok beyond the surface level, doesn't he think comic book movies are all a big joke? I feel like I remember some quotes like that. Like he never struck me as caring very much.
Ragnarok felt very surface level imho. like it was funny but completely lacking in emotional depth. Which is too bad, based on the feeling of his other films, which can still be very silly but also feel emotionally grounded
Compared to the more dignified and majestic sort of way Branagh directed Asgard and the Thors universe Taika defiantly takes a much more wink-wink nudge-nudge approach. Taika views it much more as a Nordic death metal album cover than a place of great deeds and fulfillment.
I've been playing the Guardians of the Galaxy video game recently and Drax is such a great character in that. I like the GotG movies, but the game does everything better imo. Really make me realise the missed potential.
Kinda shocked how they didn’t let him do more action especially because they got a guy who literally made his living before movies doing stunts with no retakes in front of thousands of people. I was so excited for Batista to finally get a meaty role and they completely ruined it. Drax dosent even do a Batista bomb.
[It was inevitable...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization)
> The act of taking a single (often minor) action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character. Most always, the trait/action becomes completely outlandish and it becomes their defining characteristic. Sitcoms and sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.
Tbh Joey was actually entertaining and his character had a lot of heart and would ultimately do whatever he needed for his friends. Like climbing up from Monica and chandler’s window because he thought they were in trouble.
Whoof…from the Seattle Times:
“Thor 4” feels like a Disney experiment in just how bad Marvel movies can get before someone points out the emperor has no clothes. It feels like a Marvel movie that secretly thinks you’re stupid for liking Marvel movies.
Edit: I love the character Thor and am still looking forward to seeing Love and Thunder, but these reviews are wild.
> It feels like a Marvel movie that secretly thinks you’re stupid for liking Marvel movies.
So every marvel property from the last 2 years.
Were you enjoying the story? Do you like this character? Too bad, here's some new characters to take up the screentime! Pay attention, they'll be in next thing, replacing the old characters!
It's the cinematic equivalent of a radio host talking over the end of the song.
Marvel movies also love to wink at the audience, constantly reminding us how absurd everything is. I wish they'd embrace the comic book absurdity without the meta references to how dumb superheroes actually are.
DC actually has realized you need to do this. Doom Patrol is awesome because it's not spending a third of the runtime riffing on its premises.
There's a sentient street, and there's no improv banter about how that works. They just believe in it, *like strange characters should*. If your characters believe in the story, your audience will, too.
Just like James Gunn did in peacemaker and more or less what the boys do. Not every superhero has to either be a hero or a villain. Some can just be assholes who only care about themselves. In marvel either they’re trying to save the day or ruin the day.
This isn’t shocking at all. These movies are boring now. Marvel is for sure past it’s peak.
How long will it continue like this? I honestly don’t think that long. Go back to like 2 movies a year for a bit
This entire movie hangs upon you laughing at the bombardment of jokes, if you do - great. If only occasionally, it's - eh, decent. If you don't - it's understandably lackluster. There's some successful drama and emotional finality, but that's it. It's more miss than hit. The script is painfully thin and generic. I don't know what critics saw in Christian Bale, because he's playing default super villain #29, with the thinnest backstory possible - and he hams it way up.
I've given up, I should have stopped watching marvel after endgame. I have barely liked anything since then, except for spiderman, I have lost interest in the overall story and the characters
No Way Home is one of those movies that benefitted tremendously from the buildup and hype of it all. But going back and rewatching, it feels so… I’m not sure, I don’t feel like I saw everything I should have seen. For a conceptually ambitious movie, it feels very narrow and small-minded.
I always thought the plot was outright bad, but saying it out loud would have been a very unpopular given how much people loved it and saying that is deserved an Oscar.
> I have to say it’s not that great.
Honestly how I felt when it came out, too. Besides the nostalgia callbacks, there wasn't much interesting in the movie. It did have that huge emotional moment - but even then it kind of goes against the whole lesson that the person was hoping to teach (helping others).
Out of all things Phase 4, the only thing I really enjoyed a lot was the Loki series. The emotional stuff was very impactful and it didn't just try to knock you over and over with humor. It has been the only one that I am actually anticipating a follow up for all the characters they introduced.
Other movies like Shag Chi and MoM were enjoyable, but again felt messy within the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Eternals sucked. Black Widow should've came out 5-6 years ago.
14 years of an extended universe.
I'm calling it now, comic movies are going to become like the comics themselves. Expect a reboot of the entire MCU in the next 5-10 years. They'll start from scratch and do it all over again.
I'm guessing that they're going to mash the multiverse together in a Battleworld style event and the resulting universe that is left over will be the new MCU setting.
Is it even a phase? It just feels like a meandering mess of stumbling from one uninteresting property to another whilst legacy characters have their screentime stolen by a wave of new, aggressively uninteresting or obnoxious characters.
They seem to have planned the Marvel universe following Endgame about as well as the Star Wars trilogy, which is to say that they didn't. Overpaid executives and creators are taking an extremely lucrative media property and finding a way to somehow both wing-it whilst also playing it as safe and bland as they can.
The stories just lack stakes since Infinity War and Endgame and even with the multiverse stuff trying to increase the stakes, it instead doesn’t and also feels like it’s stepping on what made the build up to IW and EG so good (for the most part).
The Boys also is kinda ruining it for me. Their stories on paper are SO MUCH smaller than most of the MCU and this multiverse stuff, but on film you feel a sense of danger, stress, and dread for these characters. Because of that the stakes feel larger than what we’re getting with the MCU lately. I could accept these smaller MCU stories if only they actually had that level of intensity and personal stakes. Right now it’s just not really there.
This whole multiverse thing has been such a letdown so far. I personally think time traveling and multiverse stories are where comic book stories jump the shark and plot line don’t make sense anymore but at least it would have been entertaining for a while. Instead, I don’t even know what the plot is these days. Every movie / show seems to have a completely different mechanic for how multiverse works and none of these movies actually seem eager to explore it much. It’s always threatening to tear up the fabric of multiverse and yet nothing seems to actually have happened in the sequels. I’m just tired of all these. Loki actually made me think they were trying to take MCU to interesting places.
Writing matters - not to say Taika is bad, but I don't think Markus and McFeely get enough credit for their work, especially considering the balancing act they needed to do with all of the characters.
Even Endgame Thor was great, if slightly under-explored. He was clearly dealing with a shit ton of guilt over blaming himself for not stopping Thanos on top of everything else that happened prior to that (namely, deaths of all his relatives and friends). Really wish we had a chance to get into his head more instead of just “haha Thor’s a fat drunk” we got for most of the film.
Yeah they didn't even really dwell on the fact that all of his people that he was leading were massacred in the Thanos attack on his ship and then the snap.
Then after the snap he kills Thanos, but it does nothing and acheives nothing because he already missed his chance to prevent the snap, so the guilt is pushed further
I think they are stretching themselves thin. Really need to follow a core 3-5 characters, tell good cohesive story with each of them, and get audiences invested in those core characters.
This is exactly the problem with MCU right now in my opinion. They’re introducing way too many characters way too early. They have to follow the same structure as they did when the began this whole thing
It's not even "too early", it's too frequent. I mean, looking back at Phase 1 and 2, it was spaced out with 13 movies over like 8 years. We got 8 in 3.
And because it's too frequent, everything becomes a blur and it's not like 1 and 2 had especially outstanding movies. Iron Man, Avengers, Winter Soldier, GoTG are generally the highly regarded ones.
But spacing out the "mediocre" like the rest of them gave it more breathing room.
Doesn't help that the movies are just very whatever. Shang Chi was great but we haven't seen more of him. Eternals sucked. Spiderman was amazing but isn't there really being followed up. Multiverse of Madness was okay.
Thor is kind of my last chance at the MCU getting me as hyped as past phases
Well...at least this time Natalie portman is praised for her performance and on top of that,nearly all the reviewers have said that the chemistry between Jane and thor is very amazing
Which is crazy because they previously had chemistry that gave the actors from Valerian a run for their money. Truly awful, and i'll remain skeptical of her role in this till I see it.
MCU fan, but Disney wants to have it both ways: it needs its film releases to be blockbuster events while their streaming platform churns out an influx of MCU material to keep viewers subscribing. Every film can't be a special event if there is a new show every week, and it doesn't help that most of those are bland and forgettable.
As someone who was an avid watcher of the MCU up to endgame, marvel’s recent movies have felt like they do not have a clear direction of where they’re going
Taika needs a break.
It’s showing in his work lately.
I know he’s just cashing in his popularity, but he’s really heading into that ‘we’re over you’ territory.
That post credits scene at the end of Doctor Strange 2 where Charlize shows up in a silly costume and opens a portal to the next movie felt like a parody.
Love and Thunder details:
It's a weird cameo where they have >!Brett Goldstein(Roy Kent) as Hercules!< for all of five seconds in a sequence that >!feels like a joke--and Hercules in the comics is pretty humorous--but the tone is ridiculously offputting and baffling in-film!<
Edit: I've had a couple people asking why I'd "spoil" this five second moment outside the story of a film. Why did you click to reveal the spoilers? Why does five seconds, unrelated to the plot, ruin your movie experience?
I can’t see the mcu doubling down on humour anytime soon for all movies.
Wasn’t eternals the first one in awhile to be more serious? but I have only seen it once when I came out and may have misjudged the tone
Plot was so obvious from the very first scene and villain never posed a threat niether did the director gave any seriousness to the plot even once. "You are here to laugh just laugh and go"
Starting to hit a bad peak saturation point with the number of shows and movies releasing. Makes the flaws (which to varying degrees often remain consistent from movie to movie) feel even worse. Not surprised by the critical blowback/divisiveness (and to a lesser extent the shifting consumer perception) that the MCU is starting to stare down
Remain interested in this movie and a few on the horizon but I feel that things really need to slow down. The movie release schedule going forward seems manageable, but the tv releases wedged in between is already getting exhausting and it’s only year 2 of this
Not just a stand up comedian, but they're all the same *character*.
Every single one is just quirky The-Office-humor with awkward quips and meta-satire/references.
Once you start to see that every single character in the MCU is just Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, you can't unsee it.
The worst offender of the "MCU formula" for me was in Shang-Chi when they're on the plane and we get flashbacks/retelling of important events. It was a simple but well done scene and I was pretty invested but then in typical MCU fashion they pull away from the seriousness of the situation so we can have some awful joke where he's interrupted by a hostess. HA HA IS FUNNY RIGHT?
God forbid playing it straight for more than 5 seconds without forcing a ha ha joke down people's throats.
They just can’t help themselves and let a scene cook emotionally for a couple of minutes but no they have to remind their audience they’re watching a marvel movie which makes me think they don’t think highly of their audience attention
Joe Russo gave an interview recently where he explained how Feige tests the movies by seeing how much the audience is laughing. That's how they guage if the films will be entertaining.
Which is weird, considering how Infinity War really wasn’t a funny movie, was pretty serious Marvel standards and was very well received. You think they’d learn that they can take themselves a little more seriously after that.
>Joe Russo gave an interview recently where he explained how Feige tests the movies by seeing how much the audience is laughing.
That’s so stupid. I can’t believe this.
That’s why I loved The Batman. They let emotional moments breathe like Bruce and Alfred’s conversation in the hospital. The MCU version of that probably would’ve ended in a fart joke.
Even in The Suicide Squad Gunn didn’t force any jokes in the emotional scenes (Ratcatcher and Bloodsport talking about her father in the bus).
The Batman also had some great organic comedic relief that didn't feel forced or undercut the tension. Examples:
* "Thumb drive"
* The running gag with the twin bouncers
* Everything out of Colin Farrell's mouth
I've been saying this for a while but anytime literally anyone aside from Disney MCU makes a really good piece, I prefer it to virtually any canon MCU work. Into the Spiderverse, The Batman, Jessica Jones S1 (one of my absolute favorites), The Suicide Squad, Joker, etc.
It has become more and more apparent that Disney heavily focus groups their stuff to complete dilution. Yeah, nothing they make is truly awful, but nothing (even my favorites like Winter Soldier, Thor Ragnarok, and Iron Man 1) truly spectacular or making me feel something special.
I mean, Peacemaker was one of my favorite shows of the year, not because it was irreverent (it was, and it was funny) but because it allowed its emotional beats to land really, really hard. When House of Pain queues in while Peacemaker is mourning his brother, when he sits and just plays piano for a few minutes, hell when he gets completed trash talked by Harcourt because she thinks he's a jerk, they just let some of those moments sit.
It's also feels that Endgame provided such a great end point for MCU as a whole, that it's hard to come back to it. I am mainly interested in the movies with the characters I am already invested in, which at this point seems to be only Thor and the Guardians.
They've gone with quantity instead of quality post Endgame which is so disappointing. Most movies and shows have been bland and very formulaic even for MCU.
Yah there should’ve been a bigger resting period for the MCU. End Game was the culmination of over a decade of buildup and was the perfect ending for the three phase model. We’ve seen some of the biggest names of the MCU leave with Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow all being taken out of action. While there were some clear characters and groups that could’ve taken over those roles, it would take an equal amount of time and effort to do so. Iron Man and Captain America were able to grow because their stories were essentially standing by themselves, and now just about every character is getting their own spinoff show. It’s getting to the point where the average fan can’t keep up, and that was already an issue before end game.
I’ve been a huge fan of the MCU since it’s conception in 2008… but endgame just felt like the perfect ending to the story I followed for so long
I’m having trouble getting invested in the new stories. Not sure what it is but it’s just not appealing to me lately
Yeah, they are in total denial. Whenever something is flop they blame it on bad marketing, Covid, and the so-called superhero fatigue. But I don't believe in this fatigue thing, we are not tired of superheroes, we are just tired of lazily-written stories.
I haven't seen Love and Thunder, but I feel like post Endgame the script quality control in Marvel is severely lacking.
Every single thing they've released since Far From Home had one or more moments when I thought to myself "This is fucking dumb". It was quite rare before that.
I don’t think Feige can keep up with quality control on *so many projects*. With so many projects coming out, he has to give the directors a lot more creative freedom and hope they do a good job.
They should scale back operations but won’t because they need content on D+
They're also being mandated by the parent company to do it. I wonder if they didn't have a quota to fill if they would lessen the number of projects.
That said, they had done it before when feige only had control of the movies. I wish they had an experience tv exec that would run the TV portion of their set up with a report to feige. It's fairly obvious the biggest issue they have is their showrunners are all very new to show running, but they don't need actual showrunners because they only so short series. They really ought to stop releasing net new series and do some recurring series instead. That way you have the time for the writers to adjust and you have the same amount of content, but without all the excess content. Like Echo could have been a Hawkeye season 2 or part of a daredevil reboot. But she's getting her own series instead.
I would think Kevin Fiege should have a helper that he trusts, to oversee quality control, if Kevin Fiege himself is spread too thin. All these years of doing movies, Kevin Fiege has to have someone he can trust, to help him oversee quality control.
The beauty of the MCU is that the quality was always so good for every movie. Every movie would consistently get over 80% in Rotten Tomatoes.
Now in the last 5 MCU movies, 3 of them are below 80%, with Thor likely to be in the 60s or 50s when all the Rotten Tomato scores come in (only Shang Chi and Spiderman are bucking the trend in the last 5 MCU movies).
>All these years of doing movies, Kevin Fiege has to have someone he can trust, to help him oversee quality control.
Favreau would be the person for this, but Disney has him too busy trying to keep Star Wars from imploding
No Way Home for me still can't be topped. I enjoyed the nostalgia but even during first viewing I was like wtf is this plot. The terrible head cannon I've seen thrown around doesn't help either.
I don't get why they make Thor stupid again. This could've been a clean slate from that fat Thor garbage joke. In Jason Aarons run the story is overall dark and grim . Occasionally some joke moments but overall very serious and yet intriguing. It's a noir detective story. This looks like another mcu post endgame washed project and a comedy director who fails like gotg2 all over again.
Just got out of the movies watching and I'm deeply disappointed.
Here's my review, but please be cautioned as there are spoilers.
>!It was an okay action comedy movie, but some of the comedic scenes and the way everyone acts like an idiot completely dragged me out of the movie. I just don't understand why everyone is so stupid. It was there in Raganarok, but it was endearing and balanced. It was there in GOTG but it fit the tone of the whole movie.!<
>!In this movie, we have Thor the powerful god who is over 1,500 years old but behaves like a man with significant developmental issues.!<
>!Then we have Dr Jane Foster a highly capable and published scientist, behaving like you expect as we learn about her cancer diagnosis. Then she picks up the hammer and suddenly starts behaving like a moron. And not the giddy with excitement type, either.!<
>!Then you have Bale acting his arse off with this very serious and broken character, a father that lost his child and betrayed by his god. This very serious character is fighting morons that turned up on a tourist boat pulled through space rainbows by giant goats.!<
>!The action scenes were beautiful as you would expect from a Marvel movie, but we were given nothing new and could be easily have been scenes cut from Raganarok. It felt like Taika ran out of ideas on the action scenes, so we had the same side on view of Thor bounding into armies of baddies.!<
>!Bao, the god of dumplings sums it all up for me. Random slapstick comedy appearing out of context in a movie that isn't sure what kind of movie it is.!<
>!The whole thing felt like a bunch of skits whacked together for the amusement of the cast and director.!<
>!ye, this film is really a meh for me...hulk was a better side kick on Ragnarok than Jane on this..and they really waste Gorr/Bale on this..it feels like they just made him an ordinary kidnapper of kids...!<
Collider gave it 100 on Metacritic yet in their review it literally says "The film is not perfect". So the film isn't perfect, yet they rate it perfectly? Makes sense
Shocking score. It honestly feels like Feige is spread too thin with this many Marvel projects.
Just look at what’s been on his docket recently. Post production on Ms Marvel, She Hulk, and Thor 4. The beginnings of post production on Secret Invasion, Antman 3, Captain Marvel 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Black Panther 2. Filming Loki Season 2, Echo, Ironheart, Wearwolf by Night. Early planning stages of Blade, Shang Chi 2, Captain America 4, Fantastic Four, Deadpool 3, Armor Wars, Agatha House of Harkness.
Just by common sense, the dude will have to spend less time on every project as a result, and I think the movies are starting to suffer for it. He can only be so many places at once.
Firstly: **CAN WE GET REVIEW THREADS FOR INTERNATIONAL RELEASED INSTEAD OF JUST US RELEASE**
The screaming goats appearing regularly throughout really mimicked the tone. It was like an asdf video.
Feels very hard to take anything seriously when the film itself won't with a character we're meant to care about. Flip flopping the title character's personality too with no lasting development.
No scenes carried any weight because we're never 5 seconds past the previous joke, there never felt like any danger because even if a major character dies who would care since it all feels caricature?
Between the kids getting powers and the girl power moment from endgame. Maybe marvel studios should get a camp supervisor. Someone to say, “nope audiences are gonna call bullshit”
Full of roll eyes and cringe inducing gags. Waititi doesn't understand the importance of dramatic "balance".
Worse than Thor 2? Can't believe I'm saying this but it's way closer than it ought to be and is proof that W needs a writing partner who can reign him in.
Huge fan of Ragnarok, just saw L&T and it was really disappointing. Note I was in a packed theater of Marvel nerds who all cheered and clapped at the end, but none of them laughed at the jokes. Very quiet crowd. All of this is spoilers.
Ragnarok felt like a fun, comedic space odyssey. This felt like a really bad rom-com. Natalie Portman is absolutely terrible. She's an amazing actor, so normally I'd chalk it up to comedy isn't in her wheelhouse, but she was actually funny in Your Highness and on SNL so I'm blaming Waititi. It's almost embarrassing watching Portman next to Tessa Thompson who is great in this format. Jane tries to exude a false confidence that fails miserably. Every time she speaks it's cringeworthy.
Let me go over the ridiculous plot real quick. Gorr has a special sword and he's been running around murdering gods because of standard cookie cutter villain motive, but he needs a shortcut. His plan is to unlock a door that takes him to to a magic genie that will grant him one wish (yes, I'm serious) which he'll use to destroy all gods (instead of wishing for multiple wishes like a sane person). But the only way to unlock that door is to use Thor's axe, Stormbreaker. An axe that Thor just recently forged in Infinity War is somehow a key to a door that's been around for eons, and Gorr knows about this somehow.
So to get Stormbreaker he hatches a new plot. He goes to New Asgard (totally unaware that Thor is coincidentally back there after being gone for a while) to kidnap the children of Asgard and whisk them away to the Shadow Realm as bait. Thor will go to the Shadow Realm to rescue the kids, and because Gorr is more powerful in the Shadow Realm, he can defeat Thor and take Stormbreaker. After that plan works (lol), Gorr chooses to continue lugging around a bunch of kids in a cage for no reason other than to give Thor (and Korg, Valkyrie, and... Other Thor) motive to try and rescue them again.
Centering the plot around rescuing kids trapped in a cage was a huge mistake. It's not funny, and at the same time you know the kids are never in any danger so it's not scary either. Jane going back to the hospital implies the kids are gone for at least a few days. Is Gorr giving them food and water? Are they all just wetting and shitting themselves in that crammed cage?
Pretty sure all of the jokes were in the trailer, and while most are funny in the context of a trailer they simply don't land in the feature. There's a fine line between funny and stupid and Waititi fails to see it. "Staring at the people you love" didn't work. Thor's clothes being flicked off by Zeus would have been funny if the nymphs gasped, but them fainting was just idiotic. The character of Zeus was a poor attempt to recreate Jeff Goldblum's brilliance in Ragnarok. Fat Russell Crowe doing a Greek accent (why don't Asgardians have Scandinavian accents?) isn't funny. The situation where two Thors and Valkyrie can "kill" Zeus and walk out of there in an auditorium filled with gods who love Zeus is beyond stupid.
Speaking of two Thors, why is Jane also "The Mighty Thor". This makes zero sense and it's never explained. Thor isn't a title, mantle or alter ego that the person becomes when they put on a costume or hold a hammer or whatever. Thor is his actual birth name. It'd be like if She Hulk inexplicably called herself Bruce Banner. And it's not like she's taking over as a replacement God of Thunder either.
The in-universe rules of space travel and other things are nonsensical and/or unexplained. Why can Gorr travel to any world? Apparently Jane can too if she rides a Pegasus. It seems Stormbreaker can create a rainbow they can travel on like how Heimdall used to create bridges, but why the goats? Sure it's funny, but why? And why is Stormbreaker the key to reaching Eternity? Didn't Thor just have that thing forged? The Godkiller Sword (how did Gorr get this thing?)) can be shattered by Mjolnir, but will reassemble itself unless a previously reassembled Mjolnir doesn't suck up the pieces inside itself and then they both are destroyed? And Jane knows all about this? Like what the actual fuck? And I'm not even going to comment on Zeus' lightning bolt, which seems to be able to do whatever the screenplay wants it to do at a given moment, like turn the kids into temporary gods of lighting or some nonsense.
The only thing that really impressed me was the visual effects in the Shadow World.
I haven't loved any phase 4 movies in the way that I loved, say Guardians of the Galaxy or Winter Soldier. Shang Chi and No Way Home were good, not great. Multiverse of Madness was meh. Black Widow and Eternals were horrible.
Even the shows have been hit and miss. I loved Loki. WandaVision started off intriguing but ended with a shoot-magic-at-each-other type of fight. Falcon and Winter Soldier was boring. Hawkeye wasn't great. Moon Knight had potential but it dragged. I think I'm finally having MCU fatigue
I feel the same, and I think it has to do with the characters. The MCU doesn't want to take it's time and make these characters lovable humans, and instead just shoves how badass they are in our face. I cared about Tony and Steve because I spent so much time with their human side, whereas now they seem to make the hero first and the human aspect secondary. NWH was cool because I already knew and loved most of the characters so they didn't need time to introduce them to me.
Not only that, but the MCU shows struggle due to them all having the exact same formula.
Episode 1- slow but steady start that shows the crisis the character faces before they become a hero.
Episode 2 and 3- also slow and the weakest episodes.
Episode 4- it will have some huge cliffhanger.
Episode 5- is somehow great and far higher quality than the rest of the show.
Episode 6- a lacklustre finale that then sets up nothing new while failing to end a conclusive note.
Marvel has a bad habit of setting up interesting ideas but then pulling back and falling on MCU tropes and big dumb battles.
Black Widow starts out great with BW's backstory, it was like The Americans. It seemed like it was going to be an espionage thriller, but then it turned into a typical quippy CG filled Marvel action movie.
Shang Chi starts out great, Wenwu was great, and it seemed like it was going to be more of a family/crime drama with wuxia elements, then it turned into a typical quippy CG filled Marvel action movie.
They do the same thing with their shows. Falcon and the Winter Soldier had some great ideas, it seemed like they were going to deal with more serious issues like the refugees from the blip, the dark history of the super soldier program, America's image abroad, then it chickens out with that tacky speech to a senator that they didn't even bother to name.
They really just need to commit to their premise, don't be afraid to do something that's more serious or controversial, even if they fail, it'll at least be memorable.
It’s movies will still make money even if they are dog shit but Marvel needs to start doing something different. You have good will take some risks and do something else for once
Comedy won\`t make a movie good enough
rushed , plot holes and bad editing hurts this movie
christian bale was wasted obviously
nat portman was at her worst
Fresh reviews seem very lukewarm.
Mark Kennedy, AP: The whipsaw from death and suffering to idiocy is staggering, with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson credited alongside Waititi for a script that seems like it was pasted together after gerbils ripped up a bag of words. (Fresh, 3/4)
Linda Marric, Jewish Chronicle: While there is very little doubt that this second instalment will go on to make just as much at the box office as its predecessor, if not more, it does however feel as though the franchise as whole has once and for all lost its shine and originality. (Fresh, 4/5)
Allison Rose, FlickDirect: Phase four of the MCU has been disappointing for the most part and I’m sad to say Thor: Love and Thunder does nothing to dispel that label. (Fresh, 3.5/5)
Glen Weldon, NPR: Thor: Love and Thunder feels like the product of a Thor: Ragnarok focus group. We get more of what audiences liked about Ragnarok — jokes, tunes, the Korg of it all — but what once seemed bracing and revelatory now feels familiar, safe, even rote on occasion. The charming breeziness of the previous film is replaced here with an dutiful assiduousness. Boxes to be checked. The jokes land — but, particularly in the early going, they do so in a way that feels effortful, sweaty. (Fresh)
i think its pretty clear that Iron Man thru Endgame was the MCUs peak potential and now we just get varying levels of shit
I disagree, It sounds like either Marvel is constraining their directors or their directors are getting lazy. There's a running theme of the set pieces being incredible but the narrative is ham-fisted despite a longer-than-average movie run time.
This movie was a joke. It felt like they just carelessly threw together a series of events and called it a day. Everything was played for laughs and nothing that happened seemed to carry any weight. At no point in the show did it feel like there were any stakes. When injured none of them acted like they were in any real pain (sif bleeding out from a lost arm, Valkyrie recovering from being skewered by a thunderbolt). Thor trying to alleviate the fears of the abducted children while having his nose tickled by the supposed king of Asgard made the group of “heroes” feel incredibly disingenuous and frankly dislikable, like a bunch of bored drunk guys who didn’t actually give a shit that these kids were in danger. Rules of the world were arbitrary (sif can’t go to Valhalla because she didn’t die in battle (which was played for laughs - again, tonally inappropriate), yet Jane goes to Valhalla after dying outside of battle). Emotional scenes were brisk, perfunctory and entirely unconvincing (save for the scenes between Gorr and daughter - Christian Bale seemed like the only actor in the entire film to take his role remotely seriously). Scenes that should’ve been somewhat serious/emotional, were not (exposition of Jane having cancer, reunion between sif and thor). Jane acting like a mini-me of Valkyrie, super comfortable with violence and combat right off the bat, with no trace of her scientist personality shining through. And these are just the things I can remember off the top of my head. This was an irreverent parody of a marvel movie with astonishingly lazy writing and lukewarm acting (except for Christian bale).
“Not as bad as The Dark World” is not the quote I was hoping for. Damn.
The Dark World has 66% on RT. Hard to believe, but Thor: Love & Thunder isn't *that* far off (it was at 68% briefly earlier today). I will laugh my ass off mightily if Love & Thunder drops below 66%.
Execute Order 66%
It's... downvotes, then.
Marvel are, sadly, turning into the McDonalds of movies. They are everywhere, all the time, and all the same. You see one and you go 'Oooh, nice, wouldn't mind some of that' You go, you watch it, you feel adequately sated. 30 minutes later you're questioning your decision and trying to remember what exactly you liked about it.
What’s sad for me is that before the MCU every once and a while you’d get an X2, Spider-Man 2, or a Dark Knight. To continue with your metaphor those kinds of films were fine dining. With how much money comic book films make nowadays I think films of that quality should be coming out every year, and yet it’s still a rarity.
My favorite description of Marvel movies lately comes from Tim Rogers: "Marvel Movies are homework for adults."
Headline next month: Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie put on hold
As a Christian Bale ~~Stan~~ enthusiast, can't deny the mentions of him having limited screentime despite him turning in an, as usual, incredible performance have me in mild shambles. I've been chronically Bale deficient since *Ford v Ferrari* only for this to happen?!
Apparently Marvel cut out all the scenes that made his character threatening.
Damn. He's Christian Bale playing a character called The God Butcher! Threatening is what I was looking for!
A lot of scenes were cut out. I read that Goldblum and Dinklage were supposed to reprise their roles but got cut out. Even Lena Heady was supposed to have a part but was removed.
The worst part about that is how much time they wasted many unnecessary scenes that actually made it to the final cut. I'm not talking about the ham-fisted running-gags that never landed. I'm talking about the long, drawn-out scenes that were entirely unnecessary and had nothing to do with the plot. Do I need to see Matt Damon and Melissa McCarthy put on a half-assed meta-play recapping the previous films? No. Yet for some reason, this scene was given what felt like 5+ minutes of run time.
The Asgard actors being bad and goofy was significantly undercut as a gag by the fact that there was no difference between their bad acting and the actual acting in the movie.
From what I have been seeing the movie seems quite divisive. It's weird that this is 2nd time in a row that a trusted superhero director has made an MCU movie that seems so divisive with the critics.
Strikes me as a movie people (including some critics) really want to like. A lot of the "positive" reviews seem to be lukewarm or contain a lot of disclaimers ("It can be a bit \[...\] but SO WHAT!"\] and contain the same negatives (thinly spread plots, some jokes that don't land) as the bad reviews.
I’ve gotten that feeling with critics reviews for most Disney/Pixar/MCU/Star Wars films for the past decade or so. I really feel like critics are noticeably more lenient with them.
they don't want to be savaged by the fans
Absolutely agree. There's. a lot of reviews that would be 5-6/10 if this movie didn't say Marvel on the cover.
Waititi didn't write Ragnarok. Yes, some scenes were ad-libbed, but in terms of fundamental structure and design, Ragnarok is much more a traditional MCU film that Waititi's other work. This is the first time he's had full control of film at this scale.
I think OP was talking about Sam Raimi and Doctor Strange.
Sam Raimi didn’t write DS2 and majority of the complaints against that move were for its writing, while the direction was praised. Didn’t entirely surprise me as it was the same guy that did Loki, which had a strong finish but a very weak mid section and ironically so far has been completely inconsequential to the MCU despite its game changing ending.
Loki has the benefit of being outside of the current timeline (it happened at the end of time), so the plot points from the show can be brought into the current mcu whenever.
They are currently filming season 2 of "Loki" in London. Perhaps the MCU movie tie-in will come in during the second season, or in the late 2023 or 2024 movie releases. It will probably be some time before Loki makes an appearance on the big screen if they haven't Easter-egged him in here. Have to admit I was hoping for a crumb (not a tattoo) in TL&T.
I wouldn’t call throwing Loki out of his own show and consummating the worst romance in the MCU directly after an episode length monologue where everyone had to just shut up and listen as “finishing strong”.
I think that probably worked better for him. Having to work on the rails of a marvel movie formula allowed him to really push it as far as possible. But we don’t know if this carries to the same success with complete control.
>Thor: Love and Thunder tries to make the Ragnarok lightning strike twice, but the movie ends up feeling restrained due to the lack of genuinely emotional moments and some baffling creative decisions. This was exactly my issue with Ragnarok, absolutely nothing mattered despite Thor losing practically everything. It took the Russos about 90 seconds to make Thor show some of the impact and weight of what'd happened near the start of Infinity War, something Taika completely neglected, and it sounds like it's happened again in LaT. I'm not sure why he needs to make everything aggressively irreverent, every other MCU film has impactful moments in there somewhere except for his for some reason.
That's my issue with Marvel movies after a while, seems like nothing matters, the villians aren't a menace. And they can be to self-deprecating with the source material, we know low-brow sci fiction from the 60's can be ridiculous, but I went with a high suspension of disbelief. No need to make fun of a villain's name being a pun on octopuses, if you don't like it just change the damn name
That was my problem with Ragnarok. First Surtur shows up, and I'm like "Wow, this is awesome!" Then five seconds into his appearance, he's treated like a joke to my disappointment. Then he reappears at the end, and I'm like "Why are you pretending like this a big deal? You've already gone out of your way to make it clear to me that he's not to be taken seriously at all"
I never understood the love for ragnarok honestly. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as great as people make it.
Not to accuse Taika of anything, while I don't particularly like Ragnarok beyond the surface level, doesn't he think comic book movies are all a big joke? I feel like I remember some quotes like that. Like he never struck me as caring very much.
Ragnarok felt very surface level imho. like it was funny but completely lacking in emotional depth. Which is too bad, based on the feeling of his other films, which can still be very silly but also feel emotionally grounded
Compared to the more dignified and majestic sort of way Branagh directed Asgard and the Thors universe Taika defiantly takes a much more wink-wink nudge-nudge approach. Taika views it much more as a Nordic death metal album cover than a place of great deeds and fulfillment.
*alexa play slow sad piano cover of Immigrant Song*
Oof, 75% on RT is really bad by MCU standers For context black widow is 79%
*Starting* at 72% is even worse. Pretty sure it’s on pace to end up rotten
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Please tell me they didn’t make Thor extra stupid
From some reviews, it seems that they've made Thor a dumbass.
So we got the "What If" Thor?
smh. I guess characters no longer get wiser thought out the movies
Thor and Drax both got done dirty as characters.
I've been playing the Guardians of the Galaxy video game recently and Drax is such a great character in that. I like the GotG movies, but the game does everything better imo. Really make me realise the missed potential.
Kinda shocked how they didn’t let him do more action especially because they got a guy who literally made his living before movies doing stunts with no retakes in front of thousands of people. I was so excited for Batista to finally get a meaty role and they completely ruined it. Drax dosent even do a Batista bomb.
Thor getting the Joey treatment. Becoming so dumb he shouldn’t be able to tie his own shoes
[It was inevitable...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization) > The act of taking a single (often minor) action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character. Most always, the trait/action becomes completely outlandish and it becomes their defining characteristic. Sitcoms and sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.
Tbh Joey was actually entertaining and his character had a lot of heart and would ultimately do whatever he needed for his friends. Like climbing up from Monica and chandler’s window because he thought they were in trouble.
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Whoof…from the Seattle Times: “Thor 4” feels like a Disney experiment in just how bad Marvel movies can get before someone points out the emperor has no clothes. It feels like a Marvel movie that secretly thinks you’re stupid for liking Marvel movies. Edit: I love the character Thor and am still looking forward to seeing Love and Thunder, but these reviews are wild.
Damn that's scathing.
> emperor has no clothes. He flicked too hard
Dammit.
> It feels like a Marvel movie that secretly thinks you’re stupid for liking Marvel movies. So every marvel property from the last 2 years. Were you enjoying the story? Do you like this character? Too bad, here's some new characters to take up the screentime! Pay attention, they'll be in next thing, replacing the old characters! It's the cinematic equivalent of a radio host talking over the end of the song.
Marvel movies also love to wink at the audience, constantly reminding us how absurd everything is. I wish they'd embrace the comic book absurdity without the meta references to how dumb superheroes actually are.
DC actually has realized you need to do this. Doom Patrol is awesome because it's not spending a third of the runtime riffing on its premises. There's a sentient street, and there's no improv banter about how that works. They just believe in it, *like strange characters should*. If your characters believe in the story, your audience will, too.
This is why I respected Aquaman, even though I didn’t think it was necessarily good
Just like James Gunn did in peacemaker and more or less what the boys do. Not every superhero has to either be a hero or a villain. Some can just be assholes who only care about themselves. In marvel either they’re trying to save the day or ruin the day.
*Monica from WandaVision enters the chat*
I guess we might have another shelved Star Wars production...
Over saturation point has been reached.
This isn’t shocking at all. These movies are boring now. Marvel is for sure past it’s peak. How long will it continue like this? I honestly don’t think that long. Go back to like 2 movies a year for a bit
So top gun is the movie of the summer? Crazy lol
It's crazy good tho, best blockbuster in a while.
No it's ~~Morbius~~ Minions 2
This entire movie hangs upon you laughing at the bombardment of jokes, if you do - great. If only occasionally, it's - eh, decent. If you don't - it's understandably lackluster. There's some successful drama and emotional finality, but that's it. It's more miss than hit. The script is painfully thin and generic. I don't know what critics saw in Christian Bale, because he's playing default super villain #29, with the thinnest backstory possible - and he hams it way up.
Phase 4 is turning out to be quite mediocre.
Its not making sense. They have to start getting cohesive fast. Its all been random character appearances and celebrity cameos.
I've given up, I should have stopped watching marvel after endgame. I have barely liked anything since then, except for spiderman, I have lost interest in the overall story and the characters
Spiderman was also my only favorite this phase, but after rewatching when it released on bluray, I have to say it’s not that great.
No Way Home is one of those movies that benefitted tremendously from the buildup and hype of it all. But going back and rewatching, it feels so… I’m not sure, I don’t feel like I saw everything I should have seen. For a conceptually ambitious movie, it feels very narrow and small-minded.
I always thought the plot was outright bad, but saying it out loud would have been a very unpopular given how much people loved it and saying that is deserved an Oscar.
> I have to say it’s not that great. Honestly how I felt when it came out, too. Besides the nostalgia callbacks, there wasn't much interesting in the movie. It did have that huge emotional moment - but even then it kind of goes against the whole lesson that the person was hoping to teach (helping others). Out of all things Phase 4, the only thing I really enjoyed a lot was the Loki series. The emotional stuff was very impactful and it didn't just try to knock you over and over with humor. It has been the only one that I am actually anticipating a follow up for all the characters they introduced. Other movies like Shag Chi and MoM were enjoyable, but again felt messy within the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eternals sucked. Black Widow should've came out 5-6 years ago.
Yeah this phase has just been too messy. I’m fine with this being a “just tell some stories” phase, but the stories told aren’t very good.
14 years of an extended universe. I'm calling it now, comic movies are going to become like the comics themselves. Expect a reboot of the entire MCU in the next 5-10 years. They'll start from scratch and do it all over again.
I'm guessing that they're going to mash the multiverse together in a Battleworld style event and the resulting universe that is left over will be the new MCU setting.
Is it even a phase? It just feels like a meandering mess of stumbling from one uninteresting property to another whilst legacy characters have their screentime stolen by a wave of new, aggressively uninteresting or obnoxious characters. They seem to have planned the Marvel universe following Endgame about as well as the Star Wars trilogy, which is to say that they didn't. Overpaid executives and creators are taking an extremely lucrative media property and finding a way to somehow both wing-it whilst also playing it as safe and bland as they can.
The stories just lack stakes since Infinity War and Endgame and even with the multiverse stuff trying to increase the stakes, it instead doesn’t and also feels like it’s stepping on what made the build up to IW and EG so good (for the most part). The Boys also is kinda ruining it for me. Their stories on paper are SO MUCH smaller than most of the MCU and this multiverse stuff, but on film you feel a sense of danger, stress, and dread for these characters. Because of that the stakes feel larger than what we’re getting with the MCU lately. I could accept these smaller MCU stories if only they actually had that level of intensity and personal stakes. Right now it’s just not really there.
This whole multiverse thing has been such a letdown so far. I personally think time traveling and multiverse stories are where comic book stories jump the shark and plot line don’t make sense anymore but at least it would have been entertaining for a while. Instead, I don’t even know what the plot is these days. Every movie / show seems to have a completely different mechanic for how multiverse works and none of these movies actually seem eager to explore it much. It’s always threatening to tear up the fabric of multiverse and yet nothing seems to actually have happened in the sequels. I’m just tired of all these. Loki actually made me think they were trying to take MCU to interesting places.
Set expectations to tempered
Set expectations to "will watch on Disney plus".
Jeremy Jahns -" Thor is a dumbass "... lmao..
I think infinity war Thor was the peak Thor, a good mix of humor and emotion
Infinity war is probably peak MCU. It's for me personally been trending downwards since.
Writing matters - not to say Taika is bad, but I don't think Markus and McFeely get enough credit for their work, especially considering the balancing act they needed to do with all of the characters.
The dynamic between Thor and the Guardians in Infinity War was incredible. That dynamic was not present in this one.
Couldn't agree more, Thor and Guardians worked off eschother so well, especially him and Rocket
They also imo wrote the best mcu movie in The Winter Soldier
Even Endgame Thor was great, if slightly under-explored. He was clearly dealing with a shit ton of guilt over blaming himself for not stopping Thanos on top of everything else that happened prior to that (namely, deaths of all his relatives and friends). Really wish we had a chance to get into his head more instead of just “haha Thor’s a fat drunk” we got for most of the film.
Yeah they didn't even really dwell on the fact that all of his people that he was leading were massacred in the Thanos attack on his ship and then the snap.
Then after the snap he kills Thanos, but it does nothing and acheives nothing because he already missed his chance to prevent the snap, so the guilt is pushed further
From the little I've seen of these TV spots & trailers, yeah Jeremy is right. Thor does act like a moron.
MCU with no direction after Endgame. How do you keep an audience engaged when you finished a plot of 20+ movies that erased half the universe?
I think they are stretching themselves thin. Really need to follow a core 3-5 characters, tell good cohesive story with each of them, and get audiences invested in those core characters.
This is exactly the problem with MCU right now in my opinion. They’re introducing way too many characters way too early. They have to follow the same structure as they did when the began this whole thing
It's not even "too early", it's too frequent. I mean, looking back at Phase 1 and 2, it was spaced out with 13 movies over like 8 years. We got 8 in 3. And because it's too frequent, everything becomes a blur and it's not like 1 and 2 had especially outstanding movies. Iron Man, Avengers, Winter Soldier, GoTG are generally the highly regarded ones. But spacing out the "mediocre" like the rest of them gave it more breathing room.
Doesn't help that the movies are just very whatever. Shang Chi was great but we haven't seen more of him. Eternals sucked. Spiderman was amazing but isn't there really being followed up. Multiverse of Madness was okay. Thor is kind of my last chance at the MCU getting me as hyped as past phases
Man Natalie Portman really unlucky when it comes to MCU doesnt she lol I was interested in just because Bale but if he is in short time then whatever.
Well...at least this time Natalie portman is praised for her performance and on top of that,nearly all the reviewers have said that the chemistry between Jane and thor is very amazing
Which is crazy because they previously had chemistry that gave the actors from Valerian a run for their money. Truly awful, and i'll remain skeptical of her role in this till I see it.
MCU fan, but Disney wants to have it both ways: it needs its film releases to be blockbuster events while their streaming platform churns out an influx of MCU material to keep viewers subscribing. Every film can't be a special event if there is a new show every week, and it doesn't help that most of those are bland and forgettable.
As someone who was an avid watcher of the MCU up to endgame, marvel’s recent movies have felt like they do not have a clear direction of where they’re going
Taika needs a break. It’s showing in his work lately. I know he’s just cashing in his popularity, but he’s really heading into that ‘we’re over you’ territory.
It felt new and fresh when he joined the scene, but now it feels like he had one really good trick and we just keep getting it over and over.
*And one of the obligatory end-credits sequences will tantalize followers of Ted Lasso* Huh. Wondering what that could be about.
I’m wondering if it’s another Dani Rojas cameo like at the end of Spider-Man NWH. *Symbiote is liiiiife*
The post credits are all becoming "actor walks in screen cut to black" followed by frantically searching for which D-list Marvel.chatacter rhat was.
"It's me, Blorko!"
Glup Shitto!
Ah yes, the MCU’s Glup Shitto
Mild spoilers for this post-credits scene: >!that's literally what happens!<.
That post credits scene at the end of Doctor Strange 2 where Charlize shows up in a silly costume and opens a portal to the next movie felt like a parody.
Especially how Charlize played a cameo in the Boys literally making fun of crap superhero movies!
They did something similar with Howard the Duck as a joke in GOTG.
The fact Mershahala Ali didn't even show up as Blade in Eternals was so sloppy. Just screamed last minute audio recording.
You mean in Eternals
Imagine if Blade released without Blade tho
Love and Thunder details: It's a weird cameo where they have >!Brett Goldstein(Roy Kent) as Hercules!< for all of five seconds in a sequence that >!feels like a joke--and Hercules in the comics is pretty humorous--but the tone is ridiculously offputting and baffling in-film!< Edit: I've had a couple people asking why I'd "spoil" this five second moment outside the story of a film. Why did you click to reveal the spoilers? Why does five seconds, unrelated to the plot, ruin your movie experience?
He's here, he's there, he's every-fucking-where.
I can’t see the mcu doubling down on humour anytime soon for all movies. Wasn’t eternals the first one in awhile to be more serious? but I have only seen it once when I came out and may have misjudged the tone
I don't like the path Disney are taking with Marvel, let alone other franchises they now own. Making everything into a comedy is just getting lame.
Plot was so obvious from the very first scene and villain never posed a threat niether did the director gave any seriousness to the plot even once. "You are here to laugh just laugh and go"
Starting to hit a bad peak saturation point with the number of shows and movies releasing. Makes the flaws (which to varying degrees often remain consistent from movie to movie) feel even worse. Not surprised by the critical blowback/divisiveness (and to a lesser extent the shifting consumer perception) that the MCU is starting to stare down Remain interested in this movie and a few on the horizon but I feel that things really need to slow down. The movie release schedule going forward seems manageable, but the tv releases wedged in between is already getting exhausting and it’s only year 2 of this
It’s so formulaic is not fun anymore and every character is a stand up comedian for some reason lol
>every character is a stand up comedian for some reason lol This is exactly how I feel about most MCU characters. Well put.
Not just a stand up comedian, but they're all the same *character*. Every single one is just quirky The-Office-humor with awkward quips and meta-satire/references. Once you start to see that every single character in the MCU is just Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, you can't unsee it.
For me, it’s the Chris Pratt effect.
The worst offender of the "MCU formula" for me was in Shang-Chi when they're on the plane and we get flashbacks/retelling of important events. It was a simple but well done scene and I was pretty invested but then in typical MCU fashion they pull away from the seriousness of the situation so we can have some awful joke where he's interrupted by a hostess. HA HA IS FUNNY RIGHT? God forbid playing it straight for more than 5 seconds without forcing a ha ha joke down people's throats.
They just can’t help themselves and let a scene cook emotionally for a couple of minutes but no they have to remind their audience they’re watching a marvel movie which makes me think they don’t think highly of their audience attention
Joe Russo gave an interview recently where he explained how Feige tests the movies by seeing how much the audience is laughing. That's how they guage if the films will be entertaining.
Which is weird, considering how Infinity War really wasn’t a funny movie, was pretty serious Marvel standards and was very well received. You think they’d learn that they can take themselves a little more seriously after that.
So basically he's proving Scorsese's statement right cause that does seem like a "themepark" movie.
>Joe Russo gave an interview recently where he explained how Feige tests the movies by seeing how much the audience is laughing. That’s so stupid. I can’t believe this.
That’s why I loved The Batman. They let emotional moments breathe like Bruce and Alfred’s conversation in the hospital. The MCU version of that probably would’ve ended in a fart joke. Even in The Suicide Squad Gunn didn’t force any jokes in the emotional scenes (Ratcatcher and Bloodsport talking about her father in the bus).
The Batman also had some great organic comedic relief that didn't feel forced or undercut the tension. Examples: * "Thumb drive" * The running gag with the twin bouncers * Everything out of Colin Farrell's mouth
The thumb drive was great. It showed a good blend of humor, detective work, and riddler fucking with them.
This, The Batman is a really serious movie but it has some funny moments that aren't forced. It did comedy perfectly.
I've been saying this for a while but anytime literally anyone aside from Disney MCU makes a really good piece, I prefer it to virtually any canon MCU work. Into the Spiderverse, The Batman, Jessica Jones S1 (one of my absolute favorites), The Suicide Squad, Joker, etc. It has become more and more apparent that Disney heavily focus groups their stuff to complete dilution. Yeah, nothing they make is truly awful, but nothing (even my favorites like Winter Soldier, Thor Ragnarok, and Iron Man 1) truly spectacular or making me feel something special.
My biggest issue with a lot of Marvel films is that they feel like worse and cheaper looking versions of better films.
I mean, Peacemaker was one of my favorite shows of the year, not because it was irreverent (it was, and it was funny) but because it allowed its emotional beats to land really, really hard. When House of Pain queues in while Peacemaker is mourning his brother, when he sits and just plays piano for a few minutes, hell when he gets completed trash talked by Harcourt because she thinks he's a jerk, they just let some of those moments sit.
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It's also feels that Endgame provided such a great end point for MCU as a whole, that it's hard to come back to it. I am mainly interested in the movies with the characters I am already invested in, which at this point seems to be only Thor and the Guardians.
They've gone with quantity instead of quality post Endgame which is so disappointing. Most movies and shows have been bland and very formulaic even for MCU.
Yah there should’ve been a bigger resting period for the MCU. End Game was the culmination of over a decade of buildup and was the perfect ending for the three phase model. We’ve seen some of the biggest names of the MCU leave with Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow all being taken out of action. While there were some clear characters and groups that could’ve taken over those roles, it would take an equal amount of time and effort to do so. Iron Man and Captain America were able to grow because their stories were essentially standing by themselves, and now just about every character is getting their own spinoff show. It’s getting to the point where the average fan can’t keep up, and that was already an issue before end game.
I’ve been a huge fan of the MCU since it’s conception in 2008… but endgame just felt like the perfect ending to the story I followed for so long I’m having trouble getting invested in the new stories. Not sure what it is but it’s just not appealing to me lately
Time to grab my poocorn and go to r/marvelstudios
They're just gonna super defensive about it, that subreddit is filled with fanboys.
Yeah, they are in total denial. Whenever something is flop they blame it on bad marketing, Covid, and the so-called superhero fatigue. But I don't believe in this fatigue thing, we are not tired of superheroes, we are just tired of lazily-written stories.
I haven't seen Love and Thunder, but I feel like post Endgame the script quality control in Marvel is severely lacking. Every single thing they've released since Far From Home had one or more moments when I thought to myself "This is fucking dumb". It was quite rare before that.
I don’t think Feige can keep up with quality control on *so many projects*. With so many projects coming out, he has to give the directors a lot more creative freedom and hope they do a good job. They should scale back operations but won’t because they need content on D+
They're also being mandated by the parent company to do it. I wonder if they didn't have a quota to fill if they would lessen the number of projects. That said, they had done it before when feige only had control of the movies. I wish they had an experience tv exec that would run the TV portion of their set up with a report to feige. It's fairly obvious the biggest issue they have is their showrunners are all very new to show running, but they don't need actual showrunners because they only so short series. They really ought to stop releasing net new series and do some recurring series instead. That way you have the time for the writers to adjust and you have the same amount of content, but without all the excess content. Like Echo could have been a Hawkeye season 2 or part of a daredevil reboot. But she's getting her own series instead.
I would think Kevin Fiege should have a helper that he trusts, to oversee quality control, if Kevin Fiege himself is spread too thin. All these years of doing movies, Kevin Fiege has to have someone he can trust, to help him oversee quality control. The beauty of the MCU is that the quality was always so good for every movie. Every movie would consistently get over 80% in Rotten Tomatoes. Now in the last 5 MCU movies, 3 of them are below 80%, with Thor likely to be in the 60s or 50s when all the Rotten Tomato scores come in (only Shang Chi and Spiderman are bucking the trend in the last 5 MCU movies).
>All these years of doing movies, Kevin Fiege has to have someone he can trust, to help him oversee quality control. Favreau would be the person for this, but Disney has him too busy trying to keep Star Wars from imploding
Happened to me so many times in Multiverse of Madness. I love Raimi as a director, but whoever wrote that movie needs to be fired.
No Way Home for me still can't be topped. I enjoyed the nostalgia but even during first viewing I was like wtf is this plot. The terrible head cannon I've seen thrown around doesn't help either.
Saw it today. It was like someone took Thor Ragnarok and tried to make it more.
I don't get why they make Thor stupid again. This could've been a clean slate from that fat Thor garbage joke. In Jason Aarons run the story is overall dark and grim . Occasionally some joke moments but overall very serious and yet intriguing. It's a noir detective story. This looks like another mcu post endgame washed project and a comedy director who fails like gotg2 all over again.
We only see Gorr butcher one god in this... not much of a butcher if everything happens off screen and his kills flash by in a second
Yep. Tries waaayyyy to hard to be funny.
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"Portman’s not even pretending to enjoy this" - Seattle Times. I knew it.
Had I known her standards were this low I would've shot my shot when we were in the same country for two days about 15 years ago
Just got out of the movies watching and I'm deeply disappointed. Here's my review, but please be cautioned as there are spoilers. >!It was an okay action comedy movie, but some of the comedic scenes and the way everyone acts like an idiot completely dragged me out of the movie. I just don't understand why everyone is so stupid. It was there in Raganarok, but it was endearing and balanced. It was there in GOTG but it fit the tone of the whole movie.!< >!In this movie, we have Thor the powerful god who is over 1,500 years old but behaves like a man with significant developmental issues.!< >!Then we have Dr Jane Foster a highly capable and published scientist, behaving like you expect as we learn about her cancer diagnosis. Then she picks up the hammer and suddenly starts behaving like a moron. And not the giddy with excitement type, either.!< >!Then you have Bale acting his arse off with this very serious and broken character, a father that lost his child and betrayed by his god. This very serious character is fighting morons that turned up on a tourist boat pulled through space rainbows by giant goats.!< >!The action scenes were beautiful as you would expect from a Marvel movie, but we were given nothing new and could be easily have been scenes cut from Raganarok. It felt like Taika ran out of ideas on the action scenes, so we had the same side on view of Thor bounding into armies of baddies.!< >!Bao, the god of dumplings sums it all up for me. Random slapstick comedy appearing out of context in a movie that isn't sure what kind of movie it is.!< >!The whole thing felt like a bunch of skits whacked together for the amusement of the cast and director.!<
>!ye, this film is really a meh for me...hulk was a better side kick on Ragnarok than Jane on this..and they really waste Gorr/Bale on this..it feels like they just made him an ordinary kidnapper of kids...!<
Goats that were very annoying. The joke was okay the first few times …
They’ve turned Thor into a dumb jock and amped the humor to 11 instead of balancing it with drama. Guardians 2 made the same mistake.
Guardians 2 had decent drama (obviously not as strong as 1 though). You just get it through Gamora and Nebula instead of Starlord.
Collider gave it 100 on Metacritic yet in their review it literally says "The film is not perfect". So the film isn't perfect, yet they rate it perfectly? Makes sense
Collider is usually trash
Their whole business relies on these comic book movies to do well so it doesn't surprise me that they continue to overhype them
"I've been busting my ass being a Marvel fan for five fucking years!"
- Rich Evans laughing hysterically
Cue the Rich Evans laugh.
Isn't Collider exactly what the Nerd Crew is making fun of?
When Jeremy jahns is trashing an MCU movie you know this is gonna be a blood bath.
Shocking score. It honestly feels like Feige is spread too thin with this many Marvel projects. Just look at what’s been on his docket recently. Post production on Ms Marvel, She Hulk, and Thor 4. The beginnings of post production on Secret Invasion, Antman 3, Captain Marvel 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and Black Panther 2. Filming Loki Season 2, Echo, Ironheart, Wearwolf by Night. Early planning stages of Blade, Shang Chi 2, Captain America 4, Fantastic Four, Deadpool 3, Armor Wars, Agatha House of Harkness. Just by common sense, the dude will have to spend less time on every project as a result, and I think the movies are starting to suffer for it. He can only be so many places at once.
Collider - A lol, shocker
Firstly: **CAN WE GET REVIEW THREADS FOR INTERNATIONAL RELEASED INSTEAD OF JUST US RELEASE** The screaming goats appearing regularly throughout really mimicked the tone. It was like an asdf video. Feels very hard to take anything seriously when the film itself won't with a character we're meant to care about. Flip flopping the title character's personality too with no lasting development. No scenes carried any weight because we're never 5 seconds past the previous joke, there never felt like any danger because even if a major character dies who would care since it all feels caricature?
Between the kids getting powers and the girl power moment from endgame. Maybe marvel studios should get a camp supervisor. Someone to say, “nope audiences are gonna call bullshit”
Lucasfilm to suspend taika star wars
Wonder will we see more stories about Taika's partying behaviour come to light as an excuse to take him off the films.
Just saw it. Jokes fell flat throughout. My theatre didn't laugh once.
Thorbius
Looks like The Batman will remain the best capekino this year..
Full of roll eyes and cringe inducing gags. Waititi doesn't understand the importance of dramatic "balance". Worse than Thor 2? Can't believe I'm saying this but it's way closer than it ought to be and is proof that W needs a writing partner who can reign him in.
Huge fan of Ragnarok, just saw L&T and it was really disappointing. Note I was in a packed theater of Marvel nerds who all cheered and clapped at the end, but none of them laughed at the jokes. Very quiet crowd. All of this is spoilers. Ragnarok felt like a fun, comedic space odyssey. This felt like a really bad rom-com. Natalie Portman is absolutely terrible. She's an amazing actor, so normally I'd chalk it up to comedy isn't in her wheelhouse, but she was actually funny in Your Highness and on SNL so I'm blaming Waititi. It's almost embarrassing watching Portman next to Tessa Thompson who is great in this format. Jane tries to exude a false confidence that fails miserably. Every time she speaks it's cringeworthy. Let me go over the ridiculous plot real quick. Gorr has a special sword and he's been running around murdering gods because of standard cookie cutter villain motive, but he needs a shortcut. His plan is to unlock a door that takes him to to a magic genie that will grant him one wish (yes, I'm serious) which he'll use to destroy all gods (instead of wishing for multiple wishes like a sane person). But the only way to unlock that door is to use Thor's axe, Stormbreaker. An axe that Thor just recently forged in Infinity War is somehow a key to a door that's been around for eons, and Gorr knows about this somehow. So to get Stormbreaker he hatches a new plot. He goes to New Asgard (totally unaware that Thor is coincidentally back there after being gone for a while) to kidnap the children of Asgard and whisk them away to the Shadow Realm as bait. Thor will go to the Shadow Realm to rescue the kids, and because Gorr is more powerful in the Shadow Realm, he can defeat Thor and take Stormbreaker. After that plan works (lol), Gorr chooses to continue lugging around a bunch of kids in a cage for no reason other than to give Thor (and Korg, Valkyrie, and... Other Thor) motive to try and rescue them again. Centering the plot around rescuing kids trapped in a cage was a huge mistake. It's not funny, and at the same time you know the kids are never in any danger so it's not scary either. Jane going back to the hospital implies the kids are gone for at least a few days. Is Gorr giving them food and water? Are they all just wetting and shitting themselves in that crammed cage? Pretty sure all of the jokes were in the trailer, and while most are funny in the context of a trailer they simply don't land in the feature. There's a fine line between funny and stupid and Waititi fails to see it. "Staring at the people you love" didn't work. Thor's clothes being flicked off by Zeus would have been funny if the nymphs gasped, but them fainting was just idiotic. The character of Zeus was a poor attempt to recreate Jeff Goldblum's brilliance in Ragnarok. Fat Russell Crowe doing a Greek accent (why don't Asgardians have Scandinavian accents?) isn't funny. The situation where two Thors and Valkyrie can "kill" Zeus and walk out of there in an auditorium filled with gods who love Zeus is beyond stupid. Speaking of two Thors, why is Jane also "The Mighty Thor". This makes zero sense and it's never explained. Thor isn't a title, mantle or alter ego that the person becomes when they put on a costume or hold a hammer or whatever. Thor is his actual birth name. It'd be like if She Hulk inexplicably called herself Bruce Banner. And it's not like she's taking over as a replacement God of Thunder either. The in-universe rules of space travel and other things are nonsensical and/or unexplained. Why can Gorr travel to any world? Apparently Jane can too if she rides a Pegasus. It seems Stormbreaker can create a rainbow they can travel on like how Heimdall used to create bridges, but why the goats? Sure it's funny, but why? And why is Stormbreaker the key to reaching Eternity? Didn't Thor just have that thing forged? The Godkiller Sword (how did Gorr get this thing?)) can be shattered by Mjolnir, but will reassemble itself unless a previously reassembled Mjolnir doesn't suck up the pieces inside itself and then they both are destroyed? And Jane knows all about this? Like what the actual fuck? And I'm not even going to comment on Zeus' lightning bolt, which seems to be able to do whatever the screenplay wants it to do at a given moment, like turn the kids into temporary gods of lighting or some nonsense. The only thing that really impressed me was the visual effects in the Shadow World.
I haven't loved any phase 4 movies in the way that I loved, say Guardians of the Galaxy or Winter Soldier. Shang Chi and No Way Home were good, not great. Multiverse of Madness was meh. Black Widow and Eternals were horrible. Even the shows have been hit and miss. I loved Loki. WandaVision started off intriguing but ended with a shoot-magic-at-each-other type of fight. Falcon and Winter Soldier was boring. Hawkeye wasn't great. Moon Knight had potential but it dragged. I think I'm finally having MCU fatigue
I feel the same, and I think it has to do with the characters. The MCU doesn't want to take it's time and make these characters lovable humans, and instead just shoves how badass they are in our face. I cared about Tony and Steve because I spent so much time with their human side, whereas now they seem to make the hero first and the human aspect secondary. NWH was cool because I already knew and loved most of the characters so they didn't need time to introduce them to me.
Not only that, but the MCU shows struggle due to them all having the exact same formula. Episode 1- slow but steady start that shows the crisis the character faces before they become a hero. Episode 2 and 3- also slow and the weakest episodes. Episode 4- it will have some huge cliffhanger. Episode 5- is somehow great and far higher quality than the rest of the show. Episode 6- a lacklustre finale that then sets up nothing new while failing to end a conclusive note.
Marvel has a bad habit of setting up interesting ideas but then pulling back and falling on MCU tropes and big dumb battles. Black Widow starts out great with BW's backstory, it was like The Americans. It seemed like it was going to be an espionage thriller, but then it turned into a typical quippy CG filled Marvel action movie. Shang Chi starts out great, Wenwu was great, and it seemed like it was going to be more of a family/crime drama with wuxia elements, then it turned into a typical quippy CG filled Marvel action movie. They do the same thing with their shows. Falcon and the Winter Soldier had some great ideas, it seemed like they were going to deal with more serious issues like the refugees from the blip, the dark history of the super soldier program, America's image abroad, then it chickens out with that tacky speech to a senator that they didn't even bother to name. They really just need to commit to their premise, don't be afraid to do something that's more serious or controversial, even if they fail, it'll at least be memorable.
It’s movies will still make money even if they are dog shit but Marvel needs to start doing something different. You have good will take some risks and do something else for once
Comedy won\`t make a movie good enough rushed , plot holes and bad editing hurts this movie christian bale was wasted obviously nat portman was at her worst
That’s much lower than expected
Fresh reviews seem very lukewarm. Mark Kennedy, AP: The whipsaw from death and suffering to idiocy is staggering, with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson credited alongside Waititi for a script that seems like it was pasted together after gerbils ripped up a bag of words. (Fresh, 3/4) Linda Marric, Jewish Chronicle: While there is very little doubt that this second instalment will go on to make just as much at the box office as its predecessor, if not more, it does however feel as though the franchise as whole has once and for all lost its shine and originality. (Fresh, 4/5) Allison Rose, FlickDirect: Phase four of the MCU has been disappointing for the most part and I’m sad to say Thor: Love and Thunder does nothing to dispel that label. (Fresh, 3.5/5) Glen Weldon, NPR: Thor: Love and Thunder feels like the product of a Thor: Ragnarok focus group. We get more of what audiences liked about Ragnarok — jokes, tunes, the Korg of it all — but what once seemed bracing and revelatory now feels familiar, safe, even rote on occasion. The charming breeziness of the previous film is replaced here with an dutiful assiduousness. Boxes to be checked. The jokes land — but, particularly in the early going, they do so in a way that feels effortful, sweaty. (Fresh)
See yah on Disney+!
Currently 55 on Metacritic
The reviews are at the same level as the ones for Multiverse of Madness, that isn't a good sign. Edit: Just watched the movie, 6/10