Thor: Love and Thunder Spoiler-Free Review

Thor: Love and Thunder kicks off with the origin story for the chief villain, Gorr the God-Butcher (played by a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale). Guess what he does? Believe it or not, his motivation to...errrm... "butcher gods" is highly relatable. He takes "never meet your heroes" to an unhealthy extreme. With a run time of one hour 59 minutes, Thor is rated PG-13, and opens in theaters on Thursday July 7, 2022. 

For this review, I sent my number one and two Marvel fans, Dr. Daddy and Clara.  I hope you enjoy their thoughts!

After getting introduced to Gorr, we take some time to catch up to Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy. The film makes effective use of timeless Guns 'n Roses hits to unveil this back-to-godlike Thor after his brief sojourn as the Dude during Avengers: Endgame. 

Movie Poster for Thor: Love and Thunder

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The film hits all the usual notes of comedy, and at this point, I thought that I was going to enjoy this movie, but there would be nothing new. That it would rehash the same bumbling, arrogant Thor jokes, the clueless, but randomly insightful rock-thing Korg (voiced by the director Taika Waititi), some snark via Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and a major comeuppance from Jane Foster as Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman). But I was wrong. Starting with a pair of scene stealing goats, Thor: Love and Thunder takes interesting zigs and zags between bizarre and tragic that keep your interest beyond the spectacle and the humor. The repoire between all the main actors, especially Portman and Hemsworth's chemistry, makes this more than just a spectacle. 

But don't sell the spectacle short! 

As a comic book action flick, Thor: Love and Thunder exceeds expectations with creative fight scenes and just the right amount of humor throughout. 

The visuals, especially on planet in the shadow realm, plays stunning tricks with color and light. and underpinning it all is a soundtrack from the hey-day of Guns 'n Roses so well placed that you'd think Slash had this movie in mind when he wrote the riff to Sweet Child O' Mine. 

The 7th grader in attendance loved going through the who's who of various mythologies as Thor recruits a team to take on Gorr. 

I chose this for those of you that needed Thor eye candy.

Is Thor:  Love and Thunder family friendly? 

By and large, yes. There are shadow monsters that are big spider like creatures that serve as excellent fodder for our heroes. Most blood that is spilt is in cartoonish fountains of gold. There is some rear-end nudity, and a fair amount of S-bombs dropped in very noticeable places. The movie also has an adult attitude towards death where characters ponder how they would live knowing that their time is extremely limited. 

Thor: Love and Thunder is much tamer than Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. 

Overall, if your kids got through the tragedy of Tony Stark in Endgame, they are good to go. We will take all of the kiddos to this one!

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