Thor: Love and Thunder

Pretty much nobody would say that a new Marvel movie is anything special. And yet, with Thor: Love and Thunder, that’s kind of true. Because while most of the original Avengers have now died on the screen or have retired, the thunder god is the only one of the initial troupe who is still really involved. But the return of Jane Foster was not a matter of course either. After all, she was last in Thor: The Dark World to see – and that’s now nine years ago. Very few should have expected a comeback at all in advance. Much less with the fact that she herself, as it became known at some point, would become a kind of female Thor. It’s not wrong to help out here again. Although the Marvel Cinematic Universe recently introduced a whole range of new characters, there is still a lack of concise heroines.

And what about heroism in Thor: Love and Thunder such a thing is? Of course, there is a villain that must be defeated. There are people – okay, gods – whose lives are in danger. Above all, children were kidnapped. And nothing is more suitable for proving yourself a hero than the liberation of children. Kind of a free pass, if you will. And yet, somehow you never quite get the feeling that you are part of a great heroic epic. There are several reasons for this. One of them is that the danger posed by Gorr is always hypothetical. It is true that he is given a stronger motivation than one is sometimes used to from antagonists. But since you hardly see what he’s actually capable of, he remains an assertion in his film. There was Hela in the previous Thor: Day of Decision a much more impressive opponent, the otherwise reliable Christian Bale remains largely unused.

• Thor: Love and Thunder