Everyman Bristol
I am keeping up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe but it seems to be bifurcating. There are things like the Falcon and the Winter Solider and Hawkeye which offer stories about characters doing things in the setting. That kind of what I would like them to be, forever. The Falcon also pushed the idea of Captain America forward a notch or two, but let's not get sidetracked. And there are things like Shang Chi and the Eternals which create new sub-universes which will intersect with the main continuity in Phase Six or Phase Seven. That's essentially what Black Panther did. And then there are the Wandavisions and Doctor Stranges which are not so much stories as deranged riffs on Marvel imagery.
So. Thor, Love and Thunder. Is it good example of what superhero movies ought to be doing or a good example of what superhero movies really ought to stop doing?
The first Thor movie, with grand knights of the English theatre on both ends of the camera, basically took thirty years of Thor comics and squashed them down into one narrative: which is, if you think about it, what the original Christopher Reeve movie did to Superman. Which means that the only alternative to doing it all over again is not doing it all over again. I am happy to report that Thor: Love and Thunder is definitely not Superman IV: Quest For Peace.
Thor seems more prone than most comics to consuming its own continuity. Like the midgard serpent swallowing its own tail. The current incarnation of the comic has an older Thor ruling Asgard following the death of Odin. He worries about what Don Blake does when he is not being Thor and summonses all the former Heralds of Galactus to emergency crisis meetings. (I like the idea that Galactus came to our universe after his own universe was eaten by a being that eats universes, but that's not relevant to the matter in hand.) Way back in 1983 when the comic was dying on its arse, Walt Simonson remembered that Stan Lee's brother Larry had carved "Whosoever holds this hammer if he be worthy shall possess the power of Thor" on the side of Mjolnir, and asked the very reasonable question "What would happen if some equally worthy person picked it up?" This resulted in a horse faced alien named Beta Ray Bill temporarily becoming a back-up Thor. Before long he had also introduced Thunderfrog. More recently Jane Foster became a replacement Thor for about three years, which offended the kinds of people who are offended by that sort of thing.
Each movie has taken the Marvel Cinematic Thor further from the Kirbyesque prototype and further towards being is own very endearing thing. He has lost his hammer. Asgard has blown up. Asgardian refugees are living in a Norwegian village called New Asgard. He's quit the Avengers and joined the Guardians of the Galaxy, leading to a pun which should have been made years ago. As the film opens, he has partly quit hero-ing and is spending his time meditating underneath a tree. The story is narrated by the big rock-like alien whose name currently escapes me. This gives the movie and enjoyably arch flavour, not un-coincidentally like the Princess Bride. The bits which are two silly even for a superhero movie we are allowed to suppose are embellishments by the story teller. (Thor himself keeps describing things as "another classic Thor adventure".) This also has the advantage of bringing everyone up to speed with the now very convoluted backstory. For which much thanks: I spent quite a large amount of the running time of Doctor Strange saying, "hang on a moment, which one's that?"
Am I supposed to talk about the plot? There's a nasty bald guy who hates all gods because the god he was high priest of centuries ago failed to save the life of his baby daughter. He has acquired a magic sword from somewhere and is travelling around the universe killing deities, hoping eventually to open the Gate Of Eternity, apparently unaware that Eternity is really one of Doctor Strange's supporting cast. He kidnaps all the Asgardian kids and puts them in a cage and Thor sets out to save them. Meanwhile, Jane Foster, who is in this universe a brilliant scientist rather than a soppy nurse, has contracted cancer and decided that Thor's hammer might do a better job healing her than the chemo. She turns into a second Thor. Thor doesn't mind, but there's some delightfully gay business about Thor's battle axe feeling jealous because Thor is seeing mjolnir again.
For reasons I slightly forget, they all go off to a big gold coliseum where all the different gods of the different universe hang out. The gateway is flanked by two Celestials out of the Eternals. They get to the Omnipotent City on a viking long ship (on display in New Asgard) pulled by two giant goats given to Thor as a present by some alien he helped when he was in the Guardians.
I am pretty sure that the original film took the view that Thor was an alien from a world that happened to be very much like the Asgard of Norse mythology, but the Omnipotent City sections take it for granted that Thor and Zeus are actually gods with human worshippers. I found it a little bit too camp, in both sense, for my taste, although I did like the idea that Thor, a storm god, hero-worships a more ancient and powerful storm god from a different pantheon. (The post-cred teases use with Zeus's very strong son.)
They then head out to the Shadow Realm, where everything is black and white. Much apocalyptic fighting occurs. The film takes itself more seriously, but not much more seriously, as it goes on. Jane and Thor talk about love and mortality. Thor ends up using the hammer to make all the kidnapped children small Thors, temporarily. We do eventually get to meet Eternity, who does have the same kind of silly collar as Doctor Strange's Eternity, and the God Killer does get to make a wish, and it isn't the wish we were probably expecting. The final scene, which ironically justifies the film's title, is very silly indeed.
I guess, since Watchmen, we have had decades and decades of people deconstructing superheroes by making them dark and cynical and fascistic. The Guardians of the Galaxy strand of the MCU, of which this is part, deconstructs superheroes by making them silly and fun. Which is what they really ought to be. Thor keeps making melodramatic, Steve Rogers style pep talks and slightly messing them up: but we never feel that the basic heroism of the Thor myth is being undercut. Just everything else.
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